$2/day - The Westernisation of poverty

This post is a continuation of a previous post, which was about the kinds of food poor people have access to, and choose to eat, in different parts of the world. My observations, which are not novel at all, are that the poor in less industrialised countries (such as India and Bangladesh), while eating fewer calories, eat hardier foods like lentils, grains and rice; the poor here are no where close to being overweight or obese. Rather, the poor are thin, wiry and muscular, particularly if they are involved in manual labour. This is in contrast to what the poor in industrialised nations such as the US eat - fast food, junk food and soda. The poor in the US are thus obese and overweight. Michael Pollan, in his piece for The New York Times a few years ago, wrote,

"A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.


As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat."

However, my friend Sara, who has been living in Bangladesh for the past few years and working on media, health, and poverty issues, observed, "I have started to see a change however, even in just the past few years in Bangladesh, these high in salt foods, soft drinks, chips etc. are becoming more available especially to those living on $2 a day here. I imagine that we will see a shift, and even a double burden of disease to come not only communicable diseases that you mentioned, along with malnutrition, but also obesity, heart disease and long term health risks in Bangladesh and other eastern societies."

I personally have noticed in India that over time, McDonald's food has become cheaper compared to healthier food options, particularly in places where McDonald's is located, i.e., cities like Mumbai and Delhi. Mumbai, as you might know, is one of the priciest cities in the world. Yet when McDonald's first arrived in India in the early 2000's, prices (of say, a burger there) were definitely much higher than the average price of a sandwich off of the street. But as prices of vegetables and grains have gone up over time, street food has become more expensive, while I've noticed that prices at McDonald's have actually gone down. What worries me, particularly looking at presentations like the one here, is the aggression with which companies like McDonald's want to move into India. And with the little neo-classical economics that I know, I am sure they are out to outcompete, undersell and be the cheapest food option available in places like India and Bangladesh as time goes one. What hasn't changed over time, though, is the healthfulness of such food options.

How this might play out over time I'll leave up to you.

The effectiveness of boycotting - point/counter-point

Back to boycotts. As I mentioned previously, it seems like boycotting trash means boycotting consumption, which means, in a way, boycotting popular culture and trends. It means much more than just boycotting some company because I don't like how they treat their employees. Many people have asked me whether what I am doing can make a big difference. Probably not, but I am sure that at least come people have been affected by it, hopefully positively. I wonder if you have any thoughts on how to measure "success" of this boycott. Let me know. But for now, I would like to present a point/counter-point on the effectiveness of boycotts. The match up: Geov Parrish (Seattle Weekly News) vs. Todd Putnam (a guy that wrote a response to Parrish's article on democracycellproject.net)

First up, some passages from Parrish: 

The Futility of Boycotts  

Planning to boycott Microsoft? Get in line.

The flamboyant pastor of the Eastside's enormous Antioch Bible Church, Ken Hutcherson, has announced a nationwide boycott of multiple corporations. Microsoft, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, and Nike are among the companies that signed a letter this month supporting a statewide gay-civil-rights bill, legislation that conservative Christians virulently oppose. Hutcherson says he is launching a boycott campaign targeting the letter's signers.

I'm glad that progressives aren't the only people who waste their time with this crap.

...

Boycotts can be successful. But it's very, very rare. For every success story—grapes, Nestle, South Africa—there are many thousands of failures.

...

Political activists of all stripes are often eager to find a handle with which to influence the perceived sociopathic actions of big corporations. The problem is that when you target a company as large as Microsoft or Boeing—both of which have earnings greater than most of the world's countries—even if their retail products can be boycotted easily, it's virtually impossible to imagine a circumstance in which enough people join the boycott to cause a perceptible drop in earnings. Even then, unless participants tell the company what they're doing (which most don't), sales fluctuations can and usually are attributed to a thousand other factors first.

...

Boycotts are almost always a waste of time. So, alas, are minority shareholder resolutions. Corporations are not democratic institutions, and by definition, they do not have a social conscience. They exist solely to make money for their owners or shareholders, and they spend far more polishing their image than any boycott campaign does tarnishing it.

It's fine and well to shun a product or company because of dislike for the company's policies...But don't expect to influence the company's behavior.

This is why the growing economic and political power of big global corporations is so dangerous. With government, there's not much accountability, but at least there's a little. By contrast, the number of times big companies have been held accountable by ordinary consumers for social policies can be counted on two hands. And even then, after the campaign closes up shop, the behavior often resumes.

This is why, noxious as it is, for left, right, or center the only institution powerful enough to consistently influence corporate behavior is government. That's one of the reasons corporations work so hard to influence governments.

What can ordinary consumers do? Buy local. Get involved in the political process. Create alternative institutions. By all means, use your hard-earned money to patronize big companies only when you want to support them. It'll make you feel better.

But usually, they won't feel a thing.

And now in response, Putnam.

 

Geov Parrish’s speculation that for every boycott success there are many thousands of failures is a baseless, ridiculous and an irresponsible assertion. During the 10 years that I tracked boycotts for the National Boycott News, it wasn’t one in a thousand boycotts that succeeded; it was more like one in two. Of course, in those days boycotts tended to be launched by organizations. Today with the internet in full swing, anybody can simply post their call for a boycott. And they do, by the hundreds.
 

...Geov states that boycotts are almost always a waste of time. I think it would be more accurate to say that with boycotts, what you get out of them tends to correspond to what you put into them. Nobody can really expect Microsoft to stop its donations to Republican politicians because a handful of webpages has endorsed a call to boycott Microsoft for its past donations to Bush. It obviously takes much more than that. Successful boycotts require campaigns, strategic planning, coalition-building, persistence and patience.

Contrary to Geov’s assertion, that more than a dozen boycotts he listed had “absolutely no effect”, in fact, some of the cited companies (McDonalds, Shell, Starbucks, Mitsubishi) gave in and met boycotters’ demands, while others on Geov’s list suffered notable economic repercussions...

By the early 1990s, about half of all boycotts eventually succeeded at getting the primary changes they were demanding from the targeted corporations. For serious boycott campaigns, I doubt this ratio has changed much.

Boycott failures can’t simply be blamed on the tactic of boycotting, but rather, other factors such as message clarity and simplicity, the level of public interest or sympathy, creative and effective publicity, media coverage, and the availability of comparable substitute products are all critical factors in determining the success or failure of a boycott.

Also, boycotts have proven an excellent way to help educate and involve the public about issues –particularly because people are slow to inform themselves about issues where they have no impact. Instead of sounding like whiners, boycotters top off their complaint with action –not buying a product, which in itself can feel empowering and thereby lead to an increased level of personal involvement.

As corporations have grown evermore enormous the strategy for boycotting them has also evolved. Instead of being fixated on the company’s bloated bottom-line, sophisticated boycotts target the all-important corporate image as a means of exerting leverage. These days, most smart corporations settle long before they begin to feel the pinch in sales. They simply look to see which way the trend seems to be moving, and if it looks as if over time their image might suffer from a particular campaign, they take steps to settle before much harm can be done. Protracted boycott standoffs against Nestle and Coors in the 1980s did such lasting damage to the companies’ images that now most companies don’t wait until their image begins to get tarnished. After only 2 years, Heinz sat down with boycott organizers to discuss how it could avoid becoming forever labeled the “dolphin-killing” company, and quickly implemented measures and verification to make its Star-Kist brand tuna –and all other Heinz foods-- the first major brand to be certified as “dolphin safe.” As a result, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee, feeling vulnerable, quickly followed suit.

Heinz had guessed the change to dolphin-safe would cost them a nickel on each can of tuna. But even when their polling indicated that the public was only willing to pay two cents more for a “dolphin-safe” brand, they saw the trend moving in that direction and took proactive steps to stop any more negative publicity.

...I utterly disagree with his view that the government is the best and proper arena for dealing with issues of corporate behavior. Boycotts have historically served as an important tactic when political options proved fruitless or were nonexistent. The numbers of boycotts exploded in the 1980s during the Reagan years, when there was no way to get government to address corporate behavior. Growing frustration and cynicism with government led groups to go directly to the public to address social issues and corporate misbehavior. (During that same period, boycotts began succeeding in greater numbers and in less time than ever before.) In the years since, government has only grown less responsive.

Ironically, I’ve found that when you complain to corporations about their behavior, in addition to extolling their many virtues they typically tell you that they are not the appropriate target for such concerns, and to instead contact your government representatives.

...
In an often-cited survey of business leaders, boycotts ranked at the top as a major headache for a corporation; even a greater concern than class action lawsuits.

The greatest drawback of boycotting is pervasive myth that it is ineffective. By badmouthing boycotts, Geov has done the corporations’ work for them.

 

Time capsule

Sherri, Laura, Laura, Katherine and I were talking trash (I like the sound of that) last night at Crazy Wisdom Tea Room, when Sherri mentioned how people, scientists/researchers I assume, once took a core of a landfill, similar to how ice cores are taken to study paleoclimate. She mentioned that they found a phone book from forty years ago, that was remarkable still a phone book; it had not degraded, decomposed, or anything of that nature. (If you want to know how McDonald's Happy Meals don't go bad or decompose, check this out - Sally Davies photographed a Happy Meal everyday for six months, with very little about the "meal" changing...) This got us talking about legacies we would like to leave behind. This is a post I have been thinking about for a while - trash as a time capsule.

I would assume that most of us want to be remembered, at least for a generation or two, for being good people, for being positive influences on our families and communities, or at least for not being, for lack of a better word, bad. We want to be remembered for being there when people needed us, for being a good listener, for being responsible, thoughtful and kind. Indeed, there are social and legal pressures for us to be this way, if we want to live in "civilisation." Word spreads about people's karma; our criminal records just don't seem to go away. Our credit scores follow us whether we like it or not, and so it is better for us to pay off credit card debt on time. We don't want our name sullied with accusations of misconduct, driving under the influence, or indecency. We are held accountable and responsible for our actions, and we "suffer" the consequences of our actions. Now say we were held accountable for the environmental harm we've caused, or more tangible yet, the trash we've produced...

Imagine if we had to write our names, hometowns, and dates on each piece of trash we produce. As we know, most of our trash doesn't decompose over human and multi-generational time-scales, especially in landfills, as Sherri can attest to. Imagine if fifty years from now, people dug up your trash, and saw what trash you produced, and made judgements about how you chose to spend your money, time and effort. Imagine if they made judgements about you as a person, responsible or otherwise. Why did she have to buy that knick-knack from the dollar store that came in a lot of packaging? Didn't she know that Styrofoam is harmful to the environment, both its production and its after life?

How can we be held responsible or accountable for our actions? Indeed, it is the unaccountability that is cause of environmental and social harms. Clearly, if there are rules for behaviour, rules of engagement, people try not to break them, because there are consequences. You pay a fine, you get sent to jail, you are shamed in your community and family. Carbon dioxide molecules don't have the names of those that caused their formation attached to them, and neither does our trash.

What would you like to be remembered for?