Superb Overview of True Cost of False Profits (Pun Intended),
January 4, 2007
Vincent A. Gallagher
“True Cost” has become a meme that is rapidly spreading and revealing to the public how insane and unfair many of our so-called “free trade” policies are. This book is a superb piece of informed scholarship with a strong foundation on real-world practice, and the auther is both objective and empathetic. True costs and real slaves of the global economy (who join the US prison population in slavery).
Soon Paul Hawken (see Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution) will open the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) and WikiCalc will be available. I anticipate a huge outpouring of information that allows anyone with a cell phone to scan the barcode, send it to WISER or Amazon, and get back both the “true cost” of any good in terms of carbon, water, slavery, and tax avoidance, and pointers to the nearest green and local alternative products.
Author has created a meme, essential part of a bigger picture,
January 2, 2007
Stacy Mitchell
The author of this book has gone way past good authorship–the business reporting in this book has achieved meme status and “Big Box Swindle” is now a term that leads to all sorts of interesting findings when one searches the web and the literature.
I recommend the other book listed above as part of the literature on “True Cost,” a meme that is resonating with the public much more than is “inconvenient truth.” True cost covers water (4000 liters in a T-Shirt), fuel (hundreds of gallons to move Wal-Wart toys from China), sweatshop and child labor (Wal Mart again), and tax avoidance as well as convictions for breaking various laws.
Although they do not appear in the list above, I recommend the varied books on Wal-Mart, especially the one focusing on the high cost of low price.
This author and the literature surrounding this author will shortly be matched by a point of sale ability for buyers to photograph any bar code, send it to Amazon or other sources, and get back the “True Cost” as well as comparable prices and alternative purchase suggestions.
This book could represent a turning point in the public mind, and is therefore of considerable importance to how we choose to react to its findings so that our children and grandchildren are not swindled–however, and the author would among the first to agree, it is not enough that we eradicate these unethical companies; we must also educate our future generations so that they do not lose sight of the “True Cost” of the “Big Box Swindle.”
Superb, Of Lasting Value, Next Edition Should Include Some Appendices,
December 18, 2006
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Robert Daniels review is useful. What stayed with me on this book is that we have let our urban poor down, over and over, and while they have created an underground community and a web of relationships that span the licit and illicit, they will never rise above that bare bones existence in the absence of substantial structured help.
The author draws on others to estimate that this community across the land could be responsible for at least 75 billion a year in unpaid taxes.
A few vital phrases:
“no one took (even) a few dollars for granted.”
this is a community with an intricate set of protocols for survival on the edge of the law and the edge of the economy
clergy plays a critical role as both brokers and clients for services; mothers as single heads of households are part of block committees that can negotiate complex and very specific arrangements with gangs, police, and others.
$50 in food stamps was worth (2001-2003) $75 in car repairs or $30 in beer.
The webs of relationships overcome any differences between licit and illicit. ANY form of income is respected and prized.
Informal credit a necessary social capital that replaced structured credit.
The night spaces are used by traders, regulators, and predators.
The chapter on the priests and block mothers was especially great. The author identified three blocks of preachers doing three different roles: brokering disputes in the illicit and licit local world; serving as part time work or exchange brokers for the working poor; and serving as outreach to the police and other communities, e.g. the adjacent white middle class community whose preachers could pass the word on available service jobs with specific families.
The bottom line is clear: even the most desperate, if they are resilient, can survive and find some form of happiness, but we have let them down. As I write this, Wall Street is giving out tens of billions in bonuses to its employees, the US Government is mounting the worst deficit and combined national debt in history, and the Navy and the Air Force are continuing to demand new carriers and long-range bombers while our troops on the ground lack showers, hot food, comfortable quarters, and safe vehicles–as well as an attentive responsible government (at the top–I never mean to be critical of the good people trapped in this terribly screwed up mess we call the federal government).
This is a serious useful accomplishment. Other books I recommend include ILLICIT by Moises Naim, “The Working Poor” by David Shipler, “Nickled and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, and “The Global Class War” by Jeff Faux, see my reviews of each for a quick insight into those authors' very valuable complementary views.
My only dismay is that this book is missing the icing. I would have loved to see some figures, maps, charts that visualized the substance. The comparison of the value of food stamps to car repair to beer is priceless. Most of these people barely made $750 a month. I sense that the author was exhausted by this effort and slowed to a walk as the book came to completion–should it be re-issued, and I expect it will be as I consider it to be scholarship of lasting value, I would like to see some really excellent charts, extrapolations, and visualizations.
A really fine piece of work, well worth reading along with the other books mentioned above.
Although the author draws most heavily on his own broadcast remarks, and does not provide an annotated bibliography for further study, Amazon reviews by many others could serve to this end–just search for the topic and read the reviews of the book for a broader study.
Lou Dobbs may well have swung the 2006 election with his series on Broken Government and Jack Cafferty's robust commentaries, and thank God he did.
The book ends with key documents–the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitutional Amendments.
Summing it all up: take back the power by voting and demanding that Washington represent the people instead of corporations; fair trade not free trade; end illegal immigration (and I would add, demand English as a common language); self-insure as a Nation with respect to health care.
Lou Dobbs would have my vote if he ever ran for President. Now if we can just get him to add a 15 minute “national intelligence review” to the CNN line-up or web site….all the topics he deals with are right on target, but missing is the larger picture: America faces ten high-level global threats, America has no strategy and no coherent policies across twelve policy areas from Agriculture and Debt to Security and Water, and America has no plan for helping the eight challengers (Brazil through Venezuela) avoid our enormous mistakes, mistakes the planet cannot afford (we consume one third of the energy and create one third of the waste if not more).
Of all the books I have read, this is the one that I hope everyone buys, reads, and discusses before the 2008 primaries and general election.
There is also hope. Jim Turner, #2 Naderite, tells me he is seeing signals that 100 million Americans who opted ou8t of partisan politics and jumped back in with both feet in 2008. Below are the books that those people are reading:
There are many more. I have gotten fed up with Amazon's refusing to provide a means for reviewers to sort their reviews, so I am posting, at Earth Intelligence Network, a sortable searchable Word table that covers all of my reading across the ten threats, twelve policies, eight challengers, and other areas. This will dramatically improve the efficiency for anyone seeking to leverage the free reviews that I offer for any given topic. We need to come back angry, non-violent, and INFORMED. Amazon, for all its flaws, is the People's Schoolhouse, and a big part of why public intelligence is a reality, not an oxymoron like “central intelligence.”
Should be Re-Issued, a Seminal Publication Relevant to Governance
October 3, 2006
Kirkpatrick Sale
I am finding that books written in the 1970's and 1980's a making a comeback and people realize that certain of those authors were a quarter century ahead of their times. Richard Falk is one, Kirkpatrick Sale is the other. This book could usefully be read with Leopold Kohr's “The Breakdown of Nations,” Joel Garreau's “Nine Nations of North America,” and Philip Alcott's “The Health of Nations,” on why sovereignty and the Treaty of Westphalia should be overturned in favor of more localized governance with more universal rights and protections.
The bottom line in this book is crytal clear half-way through the book: at a specific point of scale, variable depending on natural resources, technical and cultural sophistication, etc, an individual's share of earned income goes MORE toward “power” goods and services of common concrn than to their own benefit. It is at this point that “the state” has outgrown its utility and becomes a burden on the individual taxpayer.
It merits comment in this context that there are 27 seccessionist movements in the United States of America, and at least 3 in Canada. As we look at the idiocy of the elective war on Iraq, and the very real prospect that the German Pope has cut a neo-fascist deal with the Karl Roves and Otto Reichs of this world–all descendants of Nazi war criminals admitted to the US under espionage cover, we have to contemplate the possibility that our big states are *out of control* and need to be chopped back to more “human scale.” This is a Nobel Prize kind of book, quite extraordinary.
One Extra Star for Cool Idea That is Also Uplifting
October 3, 2006
Kevin O'Keefe
If you are an Amazon buyer you are probably not average, and Amazon reviewers even less so. I was compelled to buy this book simply on the premise that it would be interesting to learn what “average” was. I was NOT expecting an uplifting book that inspired reflection about what it means to be a good man, a good citizen, a good husband and father, and that is what this book is.
Yes, it would have benefitted from maps as well as a statistical table and a calendar of the search, and I would normally have given it four stars for lacking those “visualization & closure” elements, but I simply cannot get over the fact that this book made me feel good about America and good about the standard run of the mill American.
The idiocy and mendacity of our leaders aside, this is a great Nation, and I have tears in my eyes as I conclude the book, where the man chosen by the author as the average American, informed on the 4th of July, properly concludes that it is a great honor. Honor indeed. This is a superb book.
Extraordinary, Serious, Worth Every Penny and Every Minute,
August 23, 2006
Harry Belafonte
As the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, I have started to discover what I call “serious DVDs” (and have a list by that name). This is the latest serious DVD to make the grade with me.
Based on interviews with leading authorities on peace, democracy, and the subversion of democracy, this is an extraordinary documentary. Here are some of the highlights:
1) Standard prior to 9/11 for intercepting a hijacked airplane was four minutes. Under Dick Cheney that morning, managing a nation-wide exercise, it extended to one hour and twenty minutes, and the only plane successfully knocked down was knocked down by citizens armed with cell phone, not military aircraft subverted by Dick Cheney.
2) Human rights for the US are a fraud. The US supports Saudi Arabia, Egypt, over 40 dictators, and only uses human rights as subterfuge for deceiving its own citizens.
3) US is hypocritical on democracies, and one speaker makes the telling point, if Bush was willing to steal the Florida election and subvert democracy in Florida and the USA, why should anyone believe him on wanting to put democracy into Iraq?
4) The Bush-Cheney Administration is the problem, but they became the problem because the US media, owned by corporations in league with the Bush Administration, decided not to do its duty of truth finding and truth telling.
5) America's proudest tradition is that of freedom of speech, or freedom to speak out. That is gone now among most of the population. Dissent has been repressed if not criminalized, and a false sense of emergency and patriotism used to stifle legitimate dissent.
6) Lost in the middle of the documentary is the thought that people can make a difference, and by simply standing up if not speaking out, they can empower and protect those who are true patriots willing to question authority.
7) The movie points out that 90% of the causalities in all US-driven wars are civilians, and this alone is cause to dissent from elective wars.
8) The movie featured disabled US veterans from Iraq testifying that those who protest the elective war justified on a fabric of lies, are the true patriots, the true representatives of the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
9) Over-all the documentary is a TREMENDOUS catalog of anti-war and pro-peace demonstrations that took place across America, but were never reported by the captive mainstream media.
10) Al Sharpton shines in one part of the film.
11) On screen are listed hundreds of US incursions and military actions against as many countries, most without any declaration of war or sanction from Congress.
12) Among the passing points toward the end of the film: United Nations may be dead for failing to prevent US invasion of Iraq; US elite is definitely flexing its muscles and may be in great fear of an international “controlling authority” on war crimes and predatory capitalism' 9-11 was a “god-send” that allowed the Bush-Cheney Administration to use 9-11 as a “license to kill;” Iraq is not the issue, the issue is the split between the unilateral militarism of the USA and its “new Europe” dictator friends, and the more worldly balanced “old Europe” trying to avoid conflict.
13) Overall the documentary concludes that the Bush II programs are quite harmful to the public interest, and that the US has been unique in fearing Saddam Hussein when no other country in the world did so (see my review of “The One Percent Doctrine.”
14) The books ends on two very thoughtful notes: that the common people do not want war because their best hope is to get back alive, while the elites promote war as a way of profiteering from war; and second, that we are teaching the world that they NEED weapons of mass destruction as a threat against a USA run amok.
15) The documentary made excellent use of the music and lyrics of AVE MARIA, to the point that I have ordered the best DVD available, and now consider AVE MARIA to be the anti-war and pro-peace musical rendition of the century.
This is a serious documentary, well worth buying and well worth watching. A solid effort.
Should be Re-Issued, a Seminal Publication Relevant to Governance
One Extra Star for Cool Idea That is Also Uplifting
