Category: Economy

News about the economy.

  • Anything as a Service – A Cure for Consumerism

    Anything as a Service – A Cure for Consumerism

    We live in the age of hyper-consumerism^. Companies are desperate to convert as much raw material as possible into anything that can be purchased. The machine has been perfected to the point where even leftover byproducts from any production cycle can be fed back into another production line to manufacture something somebody would buy. Sometimes this includes using unhealthy materials, both for us and for the environment. But it doesn’t matter as long as it turns a profit. The machine has to keep producing something, anything, just please, buy it. This is wrecking our ecosystem and is woefully unsustainable.

    Awareness regarding the bleak future we might be creating for ourselves after drowning our planet in toxic trash is increasing. However, most people still buy products built to last a very short time because there are no alternatives. And even when certain products could last longer, companies have gotten very good at fooling their followers^ that fashion doesn’t apply only to clothes, but to everything else as well. Now-a-days, many people willingly throw away perfectly operational devices just to jump on the latest model.

    But a new economic model is becoming increasingly popular – the monthly payment for a certain service, sometimes metered based on how much a person has used the service. At the moment, this is particularly successful in the digital space (media streaming, software, data and bandwidth, games). Let’s see what a generalized version of this system could mean to our economy and ecosystem in the coming decades. I call it “anything as a service”. The term is already used for software, but in this case, it is truly anything.

    The purpose of any post in the Futurology^ category is to launch a wild, boundless speculation regarding what the future holds regarding a certain concept. To get things going, here are some of the things I imagine can be happen in the near future (coming decades) with the widespread use of “anything as a service”. Feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments below. With your approval I may integrate these in the article, giving proper credit.

    • Since I mentioned fashion earlier, let’s start with a lovely example of how a company is disrupting the way people use clothes. Enter Rent the Runway^: for a monthly fee of $159, the service allows you to rent four pieces of clothing or accessories at a time and make exchanges as often as you like. The fee includes shipping both ways, dry cleaning, and insurance. Granted, that’s a hefty fee, but given that the company offers products from top designers (including clothes that retail for $1500), it is understandable. There are other clothing companies that have excellent return polices, even though there are some challenges^ that will need to be overcome.
    • What if instead of having to replace a smartphone every couple of years, or a TV once every five years, there would simply be a smartphone subscription, or a TV subscription? Pay $300 yearly and you are guaranteed the best smartphone in a given class, with a bi-yearly upgrade included (without the hassle of chaining yourself to a mobile carrier or the risk of spending hours bickering only to end up fooled by a sly salesman). Pay $200 yearly and you are guaranteed that your TV is always upgraded to the latest display standards. There will still be plenty of brands to choose from, all with their own different prices and features. Some retailers might even group several brands into the same pricing segment (not everybody cares about what brand their TV is, and if they’re not satisfied they can simply ask for another brand, with all transportation costs covered). Simplicity without harming diversity. Pricing and production philosophy will change drastically and for the better of everybody involved.
    • The main and definitive difference with this strategy is that instead of buying a particular model, you would buy into an entire line. For example, you want a smartphone with a screen of a certain size, featuring a good camera, not necessarily from a certain company. Or you want a TV that is good for gaming. Or a road-warrior notebook that is very light, has a secondary backup battery and has a mobile data subscription included. A buyer would simply add features on top of a base cost, each feature costing an additional $X per year. This will greatly simplify a customer’s decision process and it will make companies more responsible for what they manufacture, since they would lose yearly subscribers if their products aren’t good enough.
    • This will lead companies to improve their designs so that devices can have their parts easily replaced and upgraded. They will have to reuse as much as possible before throwing anything away. Eventually, the reusability standards will spread around companies and lines of products, as a way to reduce costs. If we look at the Rent the Runway example above: it encourages manufacturers to produce quality textiles, as they wouldn’t want these to be destroyed after a couple of washes, which is what happens very often to most clothes today. I have a sweater that I’m wearing since the 90s and it still looks better than some of the clothes I purchased a couple of years ago.
    • What happens when an entire generation of devices or appliances is replaced? This system would make it very simple for these devices to make it to lower price tiers, or be repurposed. For example, previous generation TVs could be used inside airports or restaurants.
    • While most of this will evolve naturally out of the need to keep a product alive for as many years as possible, some governmental regulation is also required, particularly when it comes to batteries and cables. This has become the main tool to force people to replace their electronics. Cables and adapters have always been a gold mine that companies abused in order to obtain additional profit (although it’s becoming quite ridiculous as of late). Design and water-proofing is another lie that companies use when justifying irreplaceable battery designs. Watertight watches have existed for decades and this didn’t prevent their manufacturers from allowing easy access to the device’s innards. Governments should enforce better practices in this area.
    • Another area that is in need of regulation is software. As Apple has proven, it’s not so difficult to regulate software. Did you notice the efficiency ratings on various home appliances? How about having the same ratings, but for software. If I download a text editor, I don’t expect it to take more than a second to start up, no matter how many features it has. Features can be loaded on demand, and based on their complexity, they shouldn’t be consuming ridiculous amount of resources. Anything else is simply bad coding. Poorly designed applications will be rated low on the efficiency scale (E or F). With the advent of machine learning, the process of rating software might become quite easy in the future, driven mostly by automated inspection programs.
    • How would “anything as a service” affect competition? Let’s start with an extreme but very useful example. If we look at Spotify, a music streaming service, it is quite obvious that less popular artists are having a very tough time competing with known artists, because income is based on the number of times a song is played. In turn, playtime is based on the taste in music of the majority, or even worse, on how some producers have become good at forming and exploiting what the general public likes. This situation will probably not be as bad in the case of appliances, electronics and software (unlike art, they have very specific functionalities). Even so, I believe a fix is possible for both situations.
      Again, I’ll be using Spotify as an example. The company’s Discover^ functionality is a recommendation system used to promote all and any music hosted by the service. I have already found hundreds of new artists using this feature. All “pay as you go” markets would have such a system. I believe the functionality can be improved, so that artists and products that are risking bankruptcy can be given an extra lifeline consisting of additional promotion. A human factor could also be introduced in the form of community voting and accredited judges that can save overlooked or underrated creators. Such a system will work well even for the top performers, because increased competition is often a source of great ideas.
      Another factor that can hurt competition is when a company takes advantage of its product catalog in order to force others out of business. Read about the concept of closed ecosystems (also known as walled gardens)^. This also happens within the current retail model, but it might become even more damaging for competition when a company can offer lower subscription prices to customers who purchase more of its subscriptions. This is a challenge that possibly requires regulation by an authority of some kind.
    • There is also one major positive competitive disruption that will occur when “anything as a service” takes hold. Companies that will stick to ways that are destructive towards the environment and disrespectful towards customers will pay a steep price, perhaps even face bankruptcy. If we consider companies to be similar to lifeforms^, what the “anything as a service” model will cause is nothing short of an extinction event of the old business model. And I sincerely can’t wait for that.

    The Futurology Disclaimer: I do not claim that my ideas are original. I’m sure these suggestions are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, but hopefully they’ve scratched enough to get somebody inspired to come up with more. I’m also sure many of these ideas are already being worked on by several organizations. If any of the ideas listed by anybody on this page are original and will benefit any organization, I expect credit to be given where it’s due.

    Version history:

    2018-02-11 – 1.0 – Written.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/02774-AnythingAsAService-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Anything as a Service – A Cure for Consumerism’ desc=’The machine has to keep producing something, anything, just please, buy it. This is wrecking our ecosystem and is woefully unsustainable.’]

  • Printing Money Is Sexy

    Printing Money Is Sexy

    I love the Internet at times like this. Here’s a beautiful answer to a series of pictures that the elite has shamelessly published online. I never really expect empathy from the likes of those that control financial systems, but this way of launching a “money product” is particularly disgusting. Financial honchos have staged a nonchalant photoshoot as if they were fundraising for orphanages. The online response has been hilarious (while in the same time highlighting the sadness of the situation we’re in):

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/youll-never-be-as-happy-as-treasury-secretary-steven?utm_term=.gowjv7XXn#.hgopq3aaw^

    One of the best comments: “Mnunchin’s wife looks like these bills are part of her master plan to take over Gotham City”

    What more there is to comment really? Those that understand will understand. Those that do not, will understand later (hopefully before it is too late). The people happily putting their signatures on those bills are the people that casually wear clothes worth the yearly food budget of countless people crushed over in disadvantaged countries by the industries and mining companies that provide child-labor goodies to the “developed” world. I put “developed” in quotes there because having the biggest guns does not have anything to do with having the wisdom and kindness necessary to advance a species to the next evolutionary step^.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/02568-PrintingMoneyIsSexy-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Printing Money Is Sexy’ desc=’Financial honchos have staged a nonchalant photoshoot as if they were fundraising for orphanages.’]

  • Petrol Money Poison

    Petrol Money Poison

    One of the most unfortunate things that can happen to human beings is social disconnection. Depression often causes this. But in today’s article I’ll focus on wealth. A root cause of social disconnection due to wealth is when an unprepared individual attains great wealth. In this situation “unprepared” means not ready to emotionally and rationally adapt to a sudden change of situation. The moral compass of such individuals is vulnerable. In time, many of them end up behaving in ways that would seem unacceptable if they could ask their own younger selves.

    Social disconnection also occurs in children born in a situation where vast wealth has already disconnected the entire immediate social group (friends & family) from the way “normal” people live. By “normal people” I mean the statistical average for the standard of living when looking at the entire planet. Children born in socially disconnected families (and this includes royalty) grow and develop using completely different life standards. They don’t even get to opt out of this until much later and sometimes never, something that will in the future probably be considered akin to abuse through deprivation of opportunity (similar to what children in poor, unstable families experience with parents that have a history of substance abuse).

    In this post, I’m focusing on a certain social group: petrol-rich citizens from the Middle East. Here’s what that triggered me to write this piece, an article that tells about how Qatar’s billionaires have migrated to the richest areas of the most expensive city (property-wise) in Europe:

    https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/23432-qatari-quarter-emerges-in-london-s-posh-mayfair-neighborhood^

    And here’s another interesting article^, which covers the recent Saudi crackdown on (supposedly) corrupt princes and business-men. Of important note here is the fact that the media has focused on arrested prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s opulent lifestyle. He owns, for example, a yacht worth about $200 million. But here’s the kicker: the prince that is supposedly “draining the swamp” owns a $500 million^ yacht. As is often the case, the rules are oh-so flexible when it comes to what is a justified expense.

    The resource curse^, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources (like fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.

    Have mercy upon those that have drank the petrol money poison and are wasting away caught in the worst trap of all: the ego trap.

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  • Does Cryptocurrency Have a Future?

    Does Cryptocurrency Have a Future?

    The cryptocurrency craze is on! Social media websites have been swarmed by advertisers hoping to entice people to jump on the Bitcoin wagon or tempting them to invest in any of the ICOs (initial coin offerings) popping up almost on a weekly basis for various competing cryptocurrencies. It’s almost hysterical.

    The Bitcoin has grown by more than 1400% in about a year. That’s a staggering development no matter who you ask. Many analysts warn that the bubble will soon burst^, but they’ve been saying this^ for months and the Bitcoin is still growing.

    There are a lot of Bitcoin pessimists out there, including people that worked with blockchain technology for a long time. It’s interesting to read what this senior Bitcoin software engineer^ was saying back in January. I wonder if he still has the same opinion now when the currency has climbed this much.

    I would love nothing better than to see the current financial system shaken to the core and forced to evolve. Competition is great. We’ve been abused long enough by banks using centuries-old practices and mentalities, working like packs of ruthless sharks instead of collaborators in the world we build for our children.

    Increasing in value the way it does, the Bitcoin’s upcoming crash seems more inevitable with every psychological threshold it passes. And given the network’s already known weaknesses (such as long transaction confirmation times) not if but when this correction occurs, it risks bringing a lot of people to tears. Or, as an analyst put it: “it’s going to be pandemonium”.

    As it crashes, the Bitcoin will drag along with it the rest of the cryptocurrency market whose growth, to be honest, is even more ridiculous than that of the Bitcoin. Just look at this insane list of one hundred different cryptocurrencies, most of which are not even more than a year or two out in the “market”:

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/19/100-cryptocurrencies-described-in-4-words-or-less/^

    The Bitcoin may survive any number of crashes and even the dents in reputation that come with such an erratic evolution. What the Bitcoin will not survive, however, is a heavy-handed regulatory crackdown that may happen if the rich & powerful 1% see it as a threat to the financial status-quo. China is already taking steps towards regulation^ and the fact that countries such as North Korea rely on Bitcoin to sponsor shady deals might bring cryptocurrencies in general under serious scrutiny. The enemies of an independent financial system are waiting for their moment to destroy this initiative.

    But then again, there’s other, more devious ways to tarnish the reputation of cryptocurrencies for years to come. For example, a disastrous cryptocurrency crash that will send investors scurrying back to their comfort zones of old. Oh, how banks would love that! I wouldn’t be surprised to see banks one day investing and the next day dumping their Bitcoins faster than most people can escape the collapsing hell. It’s the little guys that usually get squashed during a market crash.

    On an entirely different note, what about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining? Yes, there is such a thing. In a previous version of this article, I was wondering if this is a worthy question. Just weeks later, this excellent article^ showed up. BitCoin is the worst offender when it comes to wasted energy. During late 2017, mining BitCoin amounted to the output generated by anywhere from 1 to 3 nuclear reactors. All this for a currency that is backed by little more than public sentiment.

    How much will cryptocurrency mining waste in the coming years? There are better things to do with our energy supplies than investing in digital currency. I want and believe in an alternative to the current financial system, but the costs at which it comes might be too great. Fortunately, alternatives to BitCoin are less wasteful, but investing too much of our resources in this digital coin rush seems reckless and even disrespectful towards our ecosystem.

    Update 2017-12-14: A bit over two weeks after publishing this article, the BitCoin fever is still in full swing, with the currency having gained another massive ~20% on top of its already huge price point – all within a single week. Here’s what Reuters had to say about it:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-markets-bitcoin-risks-insight/bitcoin-fever-exposes-crypto-market-frailties-idUSKBN1E724X^

    The risks are higher than ever. If I’d own BitCoin, I’d sell at least 75% right now.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/02551-DoesCryptocurrencyHaveAFuture-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Does Cryptocurrency Have a Future?’ desc=’The cryptocurrency craze is on! The Bitcoin has grown by more than 1200% in about a year.’]

  • The High Cost of Cheap Fuel

    The High Cost of Cheap Fuel

    The plummeting price of fossil fuel has made certain industries quite profitable due to decreasing production and delivery costs. It also marginally helped car owners in certain parts of the world, even though the actual fuel price has not decreased as much as crude price. That is due to the fact that the cost of transforming crude to fuel (refinement, transportation) has not changed that much.

    Unfortunately our reliance on fossil fuels may end up being much more costly in the long run than any short term gains. Here’s an article that explains why the situation is the way it is while also highlighting one of the worst effects of the worldwide drop in oil prices: collapsing oil-depending economies whose fall hurts millions of people:

    http://www.bikebandit.com/blog/post/the-high-cost-of-cheap-gas^

    The damage to the ecosystem is not that hard to quantify either. The sudden release (in geological terms) of all this energy that nature has stockpiled for millions of years^ is destabilizing the delicate balance of the atmosphere and oceans. The planet will rebalance itself, but the 99% of the Earth’s population that doesn’t afford shelter from the extreme weather conditions coming our way will pay a steep price for the shortsighted goals blindly followed by corporate leaders. United States’ withdrawal from the Paris accord^ encourages these dangerous practices and may set a very regrettable precedent.

    And if the destruction of societies and ecosystems is not enough reason for developed countries to think twice about burning these fossil fuels so fast and greedily, how about money lost due to the exaggerated focus on private transportation? Traffic jams are very expensive:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/02/20/los-angeles-new-york-and-san-francisco-most-congested-us-cities/98133702/^

    But who knows, I’m not ruling out the possibility of this industrial spurt spawning a scientific solution to the coming predicament. It’s a risky bet to make. I’ll always wish for the best while preparing for whatever I find likely to happen next.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/01993-TheHighCostOfCheapFuel-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’The High Cost of Cheap Fuel’ desc=’The plummeting price of fossil fuel has made certain industries quite profitable due to decreasing production and delivery costs.’]

  • Happy Consumerist New Year! Featuring, Bottled Water

    Happy Consumerist New Year! Featuring, Bottled Water

    Fresh on the heels of my Christmas & Consumerism article^, here’s something else to whet your thirst (pun intended):

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/06/liquid-assets-how–business-bottled-water-went-mad^

    I’ve always been amazed by the bottled water industry – and not in a good way. This wonderful article sums up pretty much everything I ever wanted to know or say about bottled water. Very well written, documented and presented.

    For me, it would be hard to maintain objectivity when it comes to this topic, but the author managed to pull it off quite well, kudos for that. There are very few things that can highlight the abuse of consumers as well as bottled water.

    Like I highlighted in my article about consumerism, our misshapen implementation of capitalism is built upon keeping customers in the dark. Articles such as the one I just recommended have the potential to bring meaningful change in consumers. So what if just a few people read it? What’s important is that the word is out there.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/01358-HappyConsumeristNewYearBottledWater-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Happy Consumerist New Year! Featuring, Bottled Water’ desc=’I’ve always been amazed by the bottled water industry – and not in a good way. This wonderful article sums up pretty much everything I ever wanted to know or say about bottled water.’]

  • Super-Sized Agriculture

    Super-Sized Agriculture

    On the topic of “we are what we eat”, here’s a fascinating photographic essay:

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/big-food-photo-essay.html^

    Regardless of what you think about “in balance with nature”, the images are quite staggering. This is one of those situations when a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Industrialized agriculture has definitely reached some impressive heights (or lows, depending on who you ask).

    There are a lot of humans to feed on this Earth, that’s a given. However, my personal opinion is that such pictures speak at length about the way we’re abusing the ecosystem. I don’t think our agriculture is particularly impressive on the engineering side. My amazement stems from the sheer size of it all and the way it’s been optimized through the centuries. The problem is that we’re still being cruel towards creatures of all kinds.

    I choose to remain optimistic though. I put my trust in the fact that ecosystems are self-balancing things. There are many signs that we’ve started on our way to find a healthier relationship with nature. In many regions, people are having fewer children than they had hundreds of years ago when there were all sorts of risks waiting to decimate a community. Hopefully, in time, these horrendous industrial farms will disappear and we’ll see something like permaculture^ becoming widespread. Until then, at least we can try to buy organic foods^.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/01346-SuperSizedAgriculture-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Super-Sized Agriculture’ desc=’On the topic of "we are what we eat", here's a fascinating photographic essay.’]

  • Kazakhstan vs North Korea

    Kazakhstan vs North Korea

    Some time ago, I came about this interesting article, which compares the two countries. It’s an interesting point of view that shows how Kazakhstan managed to prosper after giving up its nuclear arsenal whereas North Korea is in economic ruin:

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/22/north-korea-and-kazakhstan-a-study-in-nuclear-cont/^

    But for all their differences, unfortunately, there are many parallels that can be drawn between the two countries. I’d congratulate Kazakhstan if I didn’t know that the country is ruled by an authoritarian government that has a rather poor human rights record. It’s a far cry from North Korea but still…

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  • Why the Panama Papers Are a Big Deal

    Why the Panama Papers Are a Big Deal

    Last week, the first results of a masterpiece in investigative journalism, civic attitude and international collaboration started to show up. Lots of people owning great fortunes ran into the misfortune of having not only their hidden wealth, but also their tax-avoiding ways exposed to the world at large, thanks to a massive document leak.

    The Panama Papers consist of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies. The documents were made available to the Süddeutsche Zeitung beginning in early 2015 by an anonymous source, an unremunerated whistle-blower using the pseudonym “John Doe”. We will probably hear about the Panama Papers^ quite often in the weeks to come.

    Heads already started to roll. The highest profile resignation so far is that of Iceland’s prime minister:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/world/europe/panama-papers-iceland.html^

    And of course, it is just lovely when the leader of a superpower declares that this is a plot by another superpower. Nothing says “I’m guilty” louder than this:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/world/europe/vladimir-putin-panama-papers-american-plot.html^

    It’s not the first time we’ve seen such leaks, but this is one of the largest yet. Stashing money in tax havens is an ancient practice of the super-rich. It’s known how and why it is done. However, the Panama Papers go a long way towards illuminating the details of these affairs – we have numbers, names of people, dates and connections.

    Of course, it’s all legal, but it’s the wrong kind of legal; the cowardly kind – the kind that says “my fortune has too many zeros to afford paying taxes in my country” or “I don’t want you to know how filthy rich I am, because then you’ll start suspecting that I’m a politician on the payroll of corporations, a puppet that will do their bidding and sell my people’s country to them”.

    Indeed, the Panama Papers are a big deal and I think it would be great if you start reading more about this subject. Find people from your country that are involved in the scandal and raise awareness about this. I believe that these discoveries will help us on our way towards economic and political reform.

    I wanted to say that “perhaps some of these wealthy tax-dodgers will learn from this scandal and change their ways”. Then, I observed the sad joke hidden in that phrase. Of course they’ll change their ways: they’ll find other ways to hide their wealth instead of using it to improve our world and to ensure a better future for our followers.

    Still, I’m ever the optimist, so I harbor the hope that the truths we uncover go towards advancing our society’s self-knowledge and therefore lead towards evolutionary steps forwards. In time, these people will realize that it is far more satisfying to invest in our future rather than stressing out to hide their insubstantial wealth, numbers in a computer.

    Updated on May 9, 2016: the Panama Papers are now searchable online. Here’s how to navigate them^. And this is where you can find them^.

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  • A Few Words About the Wonderful Mining Industry

    A Few Words About the Wonderful Mining Industry

    When the balance sheet looks bad, what’s a good executive to do? Cut worker benefits, of course! A bankrupt coal mining company just agreed to give millions of dollars in bonuses to its managers, as a reward for their clever financial strategy. I’d be more sarcastic if it wasn’t so damn tragic.

    Here’s the article that breaks the story:

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/16/3749331/coal-company-executive-payments/^

    It’s not the first time when these mining conglomerates are meat-grinding their own employees. From disastrous oil spills^ to catastrophic dam breaks^, down to transforming pristine nature into apocalyptic landscapes^, there are but a few crimes against the ecosystem that mining companies haven’t committed yet – don’t ask for a list.

    When are we going to wake up to the fact that our current economic model is not only unsustainable, but downright murderous? Mining companies are the scourge of the Earth. I suppose they have the excuse that they’re just following orders – it’s our society that “needs” their goods. The truly disgusting thing is that while all this is going on, politicians pad their bank accounts and judges look the other way.

    It’s quite hard to be balanced when analyzing this subject, almost impossible to be diplomatic. I am aware that we should be understanding towards investors and other interested parties. But when a CEO is paid 8 million dollars, it’s very difficult to argue in favor of cutting health and disability benefits for the company’s workers. There’s only one name such practices can be given: slavery.

    Unless we urge our governments to intervene, this situation will only get worse, because these corporations with bully mentality will only become more daring with every passing year. If they do this to their workers, it’s easy to extrapolate and realize that they’re applying the same budget cuts when it comes to maintenance and safety protocols. No wonder we’re hit by one environmental catastrophe after another.

    [ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/00372-AboutTheWonderfulMiningIndustry-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’A Few Words About the Wonderful Mining Industry’ desc=’When the balance sheet looks bad, what's a good executive to do? Cut worker benefits, of course! A bankrupt coal mining company just agreed to give millions of dollars in bonuses to its managers, as a reward for their clever financial strategy.’]