Air, water, and food spell happiness.

 

Air, water, and food spell happiness.

To go home, I drive by the Crowsnest Pass Food Bank. It is a relatively pleasant building with a good size parking lot that is never full. We often contribute in some ways, but hunger is not a glaring problem here.

I worked around homeless people in Calgary for a while. There were obvious problems, but we didn’t see people starving. It was not that rosy when I used to visit the United States. Statistics reveal that 38 million people there are food insecure every day.

We have our problems, but Canada is still one of the best places to be in, and our beloved mountain pass scores high even in our rich country. Anyone living here probably never witnessed the hunger and deprivation that is so common in other places.

As I am writing, there is a summit in the United Nations trying to address how to end hunger around the world by 2030. The world can produce all the food that we need, but there are millions, perhaps billions, of people who don’t know if they will have food on the table tonight.

If we have what people need, why are so many people migrating around the world and often fighting only to survive? Why do we need all the armies and very expensive weapons to secure our borders? How come millions of people are displaced with no place to call home? To me, it’s a question of management.

Everywhere in the world, people used to live on little self-sustaining farms. The efficiency of farming improved with modernization while jobs on farms disappeared. The same happened with industry. Until my grandparents’ generation, labour was a resource that we could not do without. Automation and offshoring took over. The goal of capitalism is to buy cheap and sell expensive, so we pushed the vast majority out of their sources of income. They had no work, and we had fewer customers.

People still need to eat, get medical care, and pursue happiness, which fuels the economy. What is left to do? Perhaps government jobs and service industries. Those jobs are simple to obtain, so their pay is being lowered. It does not motivate society to improve the situation, opting to chase the “surplus people” around and even exposing them to premature death. That is the rationale motivating people not to use vaccines and other life-prolonging measures.

I survey “news” from around the world and see a bleak picture. Life is good, but can’t stay that way. The world around me is literally burning, so I turn to professional help. The advice I receive is to restrict how much time I spend watching the news. It makes me feel like the cattle on a transport truck going to Cargill to be butchered and turned into Big Macs and Teen burgers. I search and find other solutions.

In 2015, a story went viral and soon disappeared. It resurfaced recently. It had the solution to our current problems, but it got buried in other news and people never followed through with the idea.

A young self-made millionaire named Dan Price changed the pay system in his company “Gravity Payments.” While he, as the CEO, was making 1.1 million a year, some of his employees who made less than 35,000 a year were having problems keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads. Dan Price took a scientific approach to solve the problem. His research revealed that people’s optimal income at the time was 75,000 a year. At that income level, they had a good life. Increasing the income did not add to their enjoyment of life. Dan met with all the employees and announced one pay for all the workers, including himself, 70,000 a year.

A few people lost pay and quit, his brother sued him, but the business went on and flourished. The media had a heyday. Fox News condemned him as a communist, but he was invited to the White House after winning business awards. All of this happened not far from the Crowsnest Pass, in Seattle. Now they also have an office in Boise, Idaho. There is much more information on the net.

The idea of changing society’s focus from predatory selfish goals to social caring and sharing is not new at all. When the focus is on people’s happiness instead of prestige and accumulated individual wealth, life becomes different. One can look at our neighbours, for example, the Hutterite Colonies around us. Although not everyone is cut for agrarian simple living, there is evidence that humans do well when freely sharing with each other.

Now Canadians have spoken clearly and decisively, choosing a minority government the second time around. We know that a third of us are believers in making the rich richer and waiting for it to trickle down. They also have other beliefs that may be the reason our hospitals are full to overcapacity. A third want to continue the way we are, and the last third wants a more progressive approach.

The Prime Minister is driving on a road paved for change. We have distributed money to many regular people and small businesses, which will alter the course of the country’s economy. Many people are choosing not to work for the barely livable income they had before. Many are choosing to work from home and others are starting new little businesses, choosing to be the masters of their own faith. Young students are begging to go to school. (Safely of course.) The Trump-engineered rift with China is healed and kids are out in the streets demanding solutions to the climate crisis. It’s a brave new world.

A person I don’t know said: “Let’s see if the whippersnapper has the guts to fight for food, water, and air for all Canadians.” I listened without saying a word.

The elections are over, yeah.

 

 

The elections are over, yeah.

If there ever was a time when I felt we didn’t need an election, it is now. In my long life, I saw some bad times, but it seems as if now it’s the worst. I will not bore you with the list of crises that we must promptly deal with, since you all know them. (A few deny it.) Can I prioritize? Hardly. I guess that the worst on the list is the attitude of some fellow humans that nothing should be done and things will improve on their own. I calculate this to be our worst enemy. When they say nothing should be done, they forget that most of our problems we caused and we must fix.

At the time I am writing these words, the election is three days away and when you are reading, it will be three days gone. We may have some results. The big question everyone is trying to answer is, did we need elections now. I didn’t think so, yet the strategists tasked with determining if we do or not did. We can blame Trudeau for it, but we know he wouldn’t decide such a step without careful studies and arguments amongst the experts, followed by the caucus and the party hierarchy. The results are a calculated risk that they felt they had to take.

We had a strong minority government enjoying opposition support for most measures needed for dealing with the crisis the country and the world are facing. No credible political party wanted to see the country plunged into chaos, despair, and possibly fighting. The solution was to pump money into the economy in such a way that the economy would not collapse. How it should be done was debatable.

If you pump money in, you stimulate whatever it is, but you must eventually take it back out or have other problems and it hurts. People demand politicians give them good times constantly.

Whatever comes out of the 2021 elections is now determined. The people will have spoken. Now we must get ready for the next elections, which I believe will be Civic elections and after that, the big one, the Provincial elections. We are called to make choices all the time and if we make wrong choices; we pay dearly. As proven in the last little while, some will pay with their lives.

How should people choose who should be handed the reins, be the leader, decide governing all aspects of our lives, even life itself? At the same time, how can we recruit suitable candidates and retain them?

Some will run for the prestige of being leaders. A guy fixed my washing machine and told me he was the mayor of a tiny hamlet. Why? Some may do it for the pay, directly or indirectly. Some have a hidden agenda. They wish to achieve something that will pay off and can only be done if there is political will. They may have pure intentions like, for example, building a new Seniors Centre in town, or may want to sell some parklands to a friend who will reward them somehow later. These days people get into politics often to promote the political or economic core beliefs of an established party.

The Right believes that private enterprise will stir society in the best way and the Left is the opposite. They want people, through democratic controls, stirring society in a predetermined direction for other reasons than personal gain. Each has advantages and setbacks. Some politicians wish to advance a religious way of life or open the door for making profits where they are now restricted, like in health care, for example.

 The opposite would be those fighting for Pharmacare. Drug companies will lose billions if governments will negotiate the best prices for their products and charge them for the publicly funded research constantly done.

We are back to the base question. How do we get politicians who will act on our behalf and be competent? I would say the first step is to pay for what they are worth. Second, have a system to recall them if they fail miserably. Third, make the Media accountable and demand accountability. They/we used to be that way much more than we are now.

How do we choose who to vote for? We could have professionals develop a test that each citizen can perform on every politician. Computers can help a lot.

I watched the last provincial elections here and in other provinces. It was easy to determine that some leadership hopefuls either didn’t publish their platforms or promised things that couldn’t be achieved. This, in my opinion, should be published for all to see and possibly punishable by law.

Elections should not be a contest for who is the best in telling lies but for who is willing to do the most work towards making life safe and enjoyable for all voters. Consideration should be given also for fairness and good moral standards. We should have leaders who are capable, hardworking, and give us a good example.

I watch the news to see what I can learn from these elections to help me decide my actions in the next two. Right now, I may live or die by the actions of those “free” to spread a virus. Only politicians with backbone can save me.

I watch and memorize which of them chose steps to let me live. In the next two elections, that will be the first bar they must clear if I may vote for them. Did they take steps to protect me and the millions of Albertans who are like me? Will my representatives publicly take a stand to choose “Life,” my life. If they coddle the “freedom terrorists” (My opinion), I am not even considering the rest of their opinions and let the people speak.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Old versus Young.

 

Old versus Young.

What a breath of fresh air to have an editorial from a young adult in the paper that I contribute to. My job is that of the opposition and I work on it. For a long time, we dismissed the political power held by young people who just became eligible to vote. There are millions of them, but we assumed they are not interested. I have a nineteen-year-old grandson and I know that they have opinions, analytical minds, and often a strong interest in the way we lead the country.

Their elders dismiss them, as Aiden Douglas said. In the past, people said the same about women. A known argument against women’s suffrage was that it will give every married man two votes, his own and his wife’s. I have been married close to fifty years and am still guessing how my wife may be voting. My grandson proudly told me who he was voting for. He is not voting for his dad’s favourite party. His dad, who runs a small business, thinks that he is a big entrepreneur and votes for big business against what my grandson Kaydan considers his group, the students and working people. His mother is a nurse risking her life daily while watching politicians cut her pay.

There are differences between the old and young. The old have more life experience, gather more information, but often have loyalty to someone or something that is changed or gone. They/we are also short-sighted physically and mentally. Why, for example, should I worry about fifty years from now? Kaydan and Aiden should be concerned with the future far beyond my limits. In politics, I may vote for a party that helped my parents 70 years ago while the young guys probably will be alive seventy years from now, if Medicare isn’t privatized. I may be concerned about coal while they will need microchips. Older guys may be concerned about their constitutional right to spread a communicable disease while the young are affected by cuts to education.  

Young people today are facing decisions that I never did. The world is a different place than it was in my youth. They are doing it bravely, but they base their choices on the information they learned from us older folks. They follow the examples we set for them. Is that freedom of choice? Do they have the tools they need for building the world of the future?

We the old, engineered world wars, a dog-eat-dog world, machines that  use up all the air and water that young generations need for their future. In 30 years, they may have to pay for air. We already pay and fight for freshwater. Here in our little paradise in the mountains, we see the fight shaping up today. We are facing up with our neighbours downhill about water as I am writing these words. Politicians are making the choices based on votes. Do the young people have the background needed to choose what will be their future?

Douglas wrote in his editorial about “Greta Thunberg, who is 15.” Sorry young friend, she is now 18 and still fighting. Canada is emitting only a small percentage of CO2 for its size but check the per capita figures. A billion-plus people in India and another billion-plus in China are emitting much more, but they are trying to survive while our emissions give us a life most of them can’t even dream to live. We need heat and they need cooling and food. Per capita, they do more to curb the atmospheric damage and there are no walls on earth to separate them from us. All we can do is start a nuclear war and destroy your future forever.

I am so impressed to see a young person calling other young people, who now have a vote, to dive in and do something about the way the country and the world are going. Lifeguards are especially good at it since they are trained to risk it all to save others. My generation fought to end wars, bring equality, and have the freedom to make moral judgments. We lost some but won much. At the time, we didn’t foresee the troubles the world will face now when the population doubled, corporations grew at the expense of little businesses, the Media bought by private interests to no longer give a complete picture and so much more.

I also, just like you, want young and old to take an interest in politics and have a say in running the world. We only have one. I encourage people to see who in politics are the habitual liars, who demonstrably do something for most of us, and who are concerned with what we will leave for you young people. Don’t be fooled by those who ask “who will pay for” the needs of the majority of people while giving away all of what we have to a chosen few. Ask who chose them to have what they can never even spend.   

Aiden, Kaydan, and others like them will run the world at the time that I and the dwindling group, who are now the “elders” will no longer have a say about our destiny and the world’s future. Looking into the crystal ball now is not promising. The neglect of the elders, the selfish squandering of the world’s resources, and the ruthless race for power by power-hungry people are scary. Go on like that and our civilization is lost.

It is not the only way. There is a theory, now 2000 years old, where people voluntarily take care of each other, not hoard wealth and power, while improving the world and what people will become. We must set our goals towards what is good and work for it. Elections every few years are the stepping stones to achieving the goal if we choose it.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Oh, Little Towns.

 

Oh, Little Towns.

Around 1995, I began considering a place to retire. A co-worker mentioned the Crowsnest Pass, but I remembered it from the late sixties and it didn’t look great in those days. The friend told me it was now clean, “pure mountain air” and that fixer-upper little homes were selling for as low as $16,000. I drove over. That trip changed my life. Now I am an old-timer here. This is home.

In the beginning, it looked as if the place was declining, but so was the world economy. Every few years there is an adjustment when many poor people lose their savings and homes later to change around and start again. My real estate agent, a Swiss guy, told me he was waiting for the place to become like a European mountain town with a lot of little businesses, pretty homes, and many people vacationing away from the cities. There was a steady talk from old-timers about “heavy industry” and coal mining, but protecting the water took first consideration with governments, and mining was regulated by law, as I was told.

I didn’t know the background of the arguments yet decided that the place was a gem. It had the looks of a place that is on the verge of developing into a historic attractive self-sustained community housing some coal miners, folks seeking an old-style rural feeling, and businesses to cater to them. It had a reputation for being friendly and welcoming. On my first Christmas Eve here I saw “folks dressed up like Eskimos” heard church bells ringing, observed bright stars above snowy mountains, and placed a down payment.

When I moved here, I found out that there were many attempts to develop the towns that were often refused by the local population and their councils. Some people wanted the coal mines (heavy industry) to come back and nothing else. Others simply didn’t want the place to change but complained persistently about the small tax base and lack of money for improvements. Businesses started and died, a mall converted to a storage place, and new projects stood undeveloped for years. There were good reasons, I am sure, but I am telling what I saw.

I discovered a town in Colorado that is much like our towns. As a matter of fact, from the air, you could mistake it for the Crowsnest Pass. Its name is Crested Butte, and they call it a Zoom Boom town. It is a recent phenomenon that appeared since COVID started.

People from the big cities are looking for small, attractive, peaceful places to live in. Zoom and the internet at large make it possible to work and study from home. If the workers need some time in the city, they can rent their country homes out for a period of months or even a day like an Air B &| B. The income can finance the home. People moving in, even for a short term, often are much more well off than the old locals. Animosity is building up and we hear the old French revolution slogan “eat the rich” used.

Overall, the little towns that were looking for new residents to move in and pay local taxes, find their towns becoming too expensive to live or even rent in, and the new people may change the town’s character. Resentment is building. With the Zoom Boom, there is a fresh development and a noticeable shortage of service workers. We halted immigration for over a year. If you have working-class level employment, you may not be able to find a place that you can afford to live in. Where there was an unemployment problem now, under-employment makes things less affordable, especially for those on fixed incomes, which many old-timers are.

I realize that complaining is not the solution. I also know that blaming new people who invest in our community will not serve us, or the new people. When the province cuts money to education, healthcare, infrastructure building, municipality programs, recreation, transit, policing, and who knows what else, we must be prepared. Many are helpless to do anything. We need to figure out solutions other than waiting for the oil prices to rise and bring a windfall or new energy investors to return.

Instead of fighting for some foreign companies to mine our resources and sell them to other foreign countries, we could take initiative and help ourselves. If “heavy industry” will not work, a string of smaller businesses will do the same. We need modern-day solutions, not solutions that would have worked in the past but perhaps are outdated. If kicking a dead horse doesn’t work, a fresh horse may be a good idea.

We have historic little towns near cities with relatively wonderful services. We have good people that can serve on council and do what’s good for us. There is potential here for a lot of light industries, and businesses on the internet or on the ground. Let’s attract them, help them (Not tax them to death) improve services and go on aggressively with the beautification plans that already began. Retain and market our advantages and use the skills and experience of those moving in. They love our place and want to help.

We see a push towards reducing services in rural areas designed to herd populations to cities, leaving the countryside to large corporations. It is slow yet effective. Fewer voters in rural areas will reduce our ability to influence politics. However, for most of us, it is a way of life worth preserving. Now, with the Zoom Boom, it is our chance to rebuild our communities up to modern standards.

We may never go back underground or even mine coal again, it’s in the courts, but can influence our and our children’s future. It takes having a vision and a plan of how to achieve it. Let’s show what country people, old and new, can do.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.