Ethics – Page 154 – Public Intelligence Blog

This is why the U.S. has second rate internet. Third rate compared to countries like Korea. This is a classic monopolist move to block competition and keep prices high and service poor. Only citizen action is going to stop this. You need to get involved. It's just that simple, we all need to get involved. Only 57,1% of Americans voted in the last Presidential and that was one of the largest percentages in ! years. That means in our best years over 42% of those eligible don't vote.

How Big Telecom Smothers City-run Broadband
ALLAN HOLMES – The Center for Public Integrity

Janice Bowling, a 67-year-old grandmother and Republican state senator from rural Tennessee, thought it only made sense that the city of Tullahoma be able to offer its local high-speed Internet service to areas beyond the city limits.

. . . . . . .

She viewed the network, which offers speeds about 80 times faster than AT&T and 10 times faster than Charter in Tullahoma according to advertised services, as a utility, like electricity, that all Tennesseans need.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Municipalities versus Telecomms on Internet Speed”

2014/09/052014/09/05

Berto Jongman: Naomi Klein on Capitalism versus Climate Change — a “People’s Shock” Coming? Robert Steele Disagrees — Precipitants of Revolution Missing

11 Society, Civil Society, Crowd-Sourcing, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Governance, Liberation Technology, Officers Call

“Worth a look.”

Naomi Klein to Degrowth Conference: Climate Change Can Deliver ‘People's Shock'

Status quo is not an option if we are to rein in runaway emissions, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate author says in address to conference

“You're having the core conversation of our time.”

That was the message delivered on Tuesday by author Naomi Klein to participants of a conference whose focus is on “concrete steps towards a society beyond the imperative of growth.”

Klein's opening address to the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, which kicked off Tuesday in the German city of Leipzig, made perfect sense, as the themes of her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, overlap those of the conference — that addressing the climate crisis is incompatible with the current growth-focused economy.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Naomi Klein on Capitalism versus Climate Change — a “People's Shock” Coming? Robert Steele Disagrees — Precipitants of Revolution Missing”

2014/09/05

Yoda: Peer-to-Peer Energy — Distributed, Open, Ethical

03 Economy, 05 Energy, Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics

An Airbnb or Uber for the Electricity Grid?

How DERs prepare the power sector to evolve into a sharing economy platform

As Thomas Friedman reported in the New York Times, the shared economy is booming, with companies like Uber and Airbnb continuing to disrupt the incumbent taxi service and hotel sectors. The Ubers and Airbnbs of the world tap the huge value of underutilized assets and create millions of dollars of value for users in the process. Shared economy companies unbundle existing assets and enable value exchange out of those assets, with close to zero marginal capital cost since the users themselves own the actual physical assets, whether a car or a home. Could the electricity grid be next to go the way of a sharing economy?

For more than a century, the electric grid has relied almost exclusively on centralized infrastructure, such as large power plants and long-distance transmissions lines. But distributed energy resources (DERs)—and the customers buying, installing, and using them—are changing the economic landscape for the power sector. Energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation such as rooftop solar, distributed storage such as batteries, smart thermostats, and more are poised to become the front lines of a sharing economy revolution for the grid. Shared economy solutions will help to increase asset utilization rates and improve consumer and overall system economics, just as they have for other sectors.

Read full article.

2014/09/052014/09/05

SchwartzReport: BP Gulf Spill “Gross Negligence” – $18 Billion Fine? Does Corporate Accountability Begin Now?

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 12 Water, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement

Here is some excellent news about the Gulf oil spill. A major court decision has seriously placed the blame and responsibility where it belongs. And the court also made it clear what it thinks about BP, Transocean, and Halliburton ethics and behavior.

‘Worst Case' BP Ruling on Gulf Spill Means Billions More in Penalties
MARGARET CRONIN FISK, LAUREL BRUBAKER CALKINS and JEF FEELEY – Bloomberg

BP Plc acted with gross negligence in setting off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a federal judge ruled, handing down a long-awaited decision that may force the energy company to pay billions of dollars more for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: BP Gulf Spill “Gross Negligence” – $18 Billion Fine? Does Corporate Accountability Begin Now?”

2014/08/292014/08/29

SchwartzReport: Market Basket — Board Fires Progressive CEO, Boomers Go on Strike to Reinstate — Mutuality Economics from the Bottom-Up

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics

This is a lovely story of how capitalism could be run. It illustrates very clearly the difference between the vampire capitalism that dominates our economy, and the compassionate capitalism we could have.

Market Basket: The Return of Boomer Activism
LAUREN STILLER RIKLEEN – Forbes

Workers at the Market Basket supermarket chain just successfully undertook a high-risk job action with potentially historic repercussions. But this was more than just a fight for leadership control. It was also a story about boomers standing up for workplace values.

. . . . . . .

Arthur T. ran Market Basket with a straightforward and progressive management philosophy: treat its 25,000 employees (and customers) with respect and attention; promote from within; provide great pay and retirement benefits and continually invest in your staff. As a result, he developed an extraordinarily devoted workforce of people who grew up at the company and remained for decades and took great pride in making the stores so successful.

Over time, though, Arthur T.’s pension programs and above-market salaries were criticized by the board, who felt such generosity depressed shareholder dividends. On June 23, the board ultimately voted to remove Arthur T. as president.

The Employees Push to Bring Back Their Boss

That’s when the chain’s employees – many of them boomers – rose up in revolt. Some went on strike; others played key roles in protests including rallies attended by thousands.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Market Basket — Board Fires Progressive CEO, Boomers Go on Strike to Reinstate — Mutuality Economics from the Bottom-Up”

2014/08/28

Berto Jongman: Investigative Journalism — A History and a Renaissance…

Ethics, Media

Tomgram: Anya Schiffrin, Who Knew We Were Living in the Golden Age of Investigative Journalism?

EXTRACT

The mass layoffs of older journalists around the world has had one benefit: there are plenty of experienced hands ready to train the next generation and provide institutional memory at innovative ventures. Some of these oldtimers, who aren’t busy teaching (or taking public relations jobs — but that’s a story for another time), are busy founding and running nonprofits dedicated to doing hard-driving, investigative reporting. These include: 100 Reporters, Global Journalism Investigative Network, Forum for African Investigative Reporters, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Investigative News Network, SCOOP, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. All of these organizations are benefitting from experienced editors and reporters downsized from traditional media outlets and committed to helping the next generation — and learning from them, too.

BOOKS Recommended:

Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World

The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the new Sunni Uprising

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

FICTION: Warburg in Rome

2014/08/28

Jean Lievens: Sharing Industry Insurance Challenges

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics

How the sharing industry gets insurance

Sharing may sound utopian. But the sharing industry has a dark side and its name is insurance.

“Probably one of the hardest things we had to do in order to start our company was to get the insurance,” says Seth Peterson, co-founder and CEO of AllYouCanArcade.com, an arcade game rental business. Peterson says he had to call more than 100 insurance agents before he found one willing to work with him.

“Eventually what I did was I started to get my insurance license,” he says, “because I thought if no one is going to underwrite this, I’ll underwrite this myself.”

Peterson says the brokers he talked to were okay with the arcade game part of his business: “Then we would say, ‘Well, actually, though, we have these independent contractors who work for us, who fill demand across the entire United States.' And that was the point where they just freaked out.”

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Sharing Industry Insurance Challenges”