What is Happening With Face Book????????: part one, the people

Over the last few months I've been paying attention to the local "Yellow Vests" Face Book page. I see it as a window into a world that I know absolutely nothing about. 

In case you don't know, the yellow vests originated in France where they were opposed to unpopular fuel taxes plus the removal of a wealth tax that the Socialists had imposed on the very wealthy. In Canada, among other things, they seem to be mostly concerned about a grab bag of issues such as immigration, any attempt to limit industry to deal with climate change, and, more recently, attempts by the government to mandate public health measures such as wearing masks in public. 

I haven't seen any scientific research that would describe exactly who these people are and what makes them tick. Moreover, I don't know how a social scientist could study them because researchers are pretty much limited to using voluntary surveys to collect their data. This means any group that is concerned about secret government conspiracies and holds science in contempt is bound to not produce useful info if you ask them to tell you something about themselves in either a face-to-face interview or a list of boxes they are asked to check off. 

But baring any sort of academic study, I will hazard a hypothesis based on what I've been reading from a wide variety of sources. Take it for what it's worth, but I think that what we are seeing is an inarticulate response to massive social changes. In times past, this would simply be something "below the surface", but because of modern social media and populist political parties it has learned to "punch above it's weight" and become more influential than it should be able.

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First, I'll ask you to try to look at the world through the eyes of some of the people I knew when I was young. I don't think that many young people realize how appallingly nasty a lot of people were even a few decades ago. Let's me explain what I'm talking about with the following examples. 

A lot of people used to be very open about their hatred of gays. To cite one extreme institutional example, in 1981 the police targeted the gays of Toronto  through "Operation Soap". This was a huge simultaneous raid on four bath houses under the old "bawdy house" law. This was a vague statute that allowed police to raid and arrest the owners and inhabitants of a building where acts of "indecency" were happening. Since gays were discriminated against in mainstream society, they had created their own subculture, part of which involved the bathhouses. In effect, the police were "creeped out" by gays, so they kicked the doors down of their private clubs, handcuffed them, threw them into jail, and, gave them a criminal record. If any of the people involved resisted, the officers could then beat and potentially kill them.

That's the way mainstream society treated gays back when I was at university. 

I can remember when Rod Stewart's song The Killing of Georgie came out and I heard a lot of vicious, nasty, homophobic things said about him. At the time I didn't think much about this (I was pretty naive and didn't even realize the song was about a gay person until I was older). But in retrospect I can only imagine what it must have been like to be a closeted gay who had to endure this blizzard of hate-filled nonsense. Take a look at Stewart's official video and try to understand how people who had grown in a society that was tremendously homophobic might have experienced it. I suspect a great many thought that this was the absolute end of the world as they knew it.

Now we are used to this sort of thing, but at the time this sort of conscious "gender bending" was absolutely terrifying to a great many folks. It still is for some people, who describe the growth of gay rights not as a move towards making society kinder and gentler, but rather as becoming "immoral".

I suspect that it's this general sense of fear and disgust that underlies the weird theory that people like Hilary Clinton and other top Democrats have created an enormous pedophile ring that kidnaps, sexually abuses, murders, and, drinks children's blood. (It's supposed to prolong a person's life. If you've never heard of this---read up on "pizzagate" and "QAnon".) If you are so strongly and emotionally repelled by the concept of gay rights, it is possible to create some sort of "fever dream" that suggests an evil, child-abusing cabal running society. 

I don't know about you, but I watch Netflix for old Star Trek series
and Turkish soap operas---.

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Another way in which society has become different in my lifetime is our racial makeup. When I was young, I never saw a black person until I was in my late teens. There was one Asian family in my village---they ran a Chinese restaurant. There was just one family of First Nations people and one of French Canadians that were at my local school. Racist jokes, use of the "N-bomb", anger against having to learn French at public school, stereotypes about First Nations, etc, sometimes came up in ordinary conversation among the adults. That wasn't very often, though. The fact is that we were pretty much an entirely white community. 

Fast forward to about fifteen years ago and my mom was showing some family Christmas photos to her neighbour---including my then partner from Bombay, my nephew's French wife of Algerian descent, my niece's black son, and, my brother's Mohawk wife and their two daughters. The comment "What the Hell is this? The United Nations?" was made. The photo reflected the fact that the racial composition of the country has changed, and my family was pretty much indifferent to the whole thing. But unfortunately, like my mom's next door neighbour, lots of people aren't very happy about the change. 

This isn't just about race, because race and culture are deeply intertwined. That was what the residential schools were all about---they weren't primarily opposed to people with a specific skin tone. Instead, they wanted to make all First Nations people into slightly darker carbon copies of their white neighbours. That's why they were forbidden to speak their own languages, why their hair was cut, etc. Many of the problems we identify as "racist" aren't per se about the fact of skin colour so much as the cultures that people follow that aren't considered "mainstream". 

This manifests itself among people as fear that immigrants are planning to take over the country and get rid of its "traditional values" and "culture". 

I enjoy eating different types of food. I enjoy learning about different cultures. I like to learn new things about world history. I also believe that there is much room for improvement in both my country and my civilization, and that we could benefit from following the example of others. But if you are someone who believes that the English Canada that you grew up in was pretty much the best that any society could ever be, then you are going to be really creeped-out by multiculturalism. 

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I have friends in business who get absolutely frothing mad about the way "heavy handed bureaucrats have made it impossible to make a living". This ranges from the way they have to fill out their taxes, to safety rules, to the minimum wage, to environmental regulations, and, more. I'm the last person to defend the way the Canadian bureaucracy works. But I do believe that I can see a reason why there is such a problem. 

The world is a lot more complex than when I was younger. There are a lot more people. Our technologies are a lot more powerful. And, we've learned that we can catastrophically damage the environment if we aren't really careful. We've also decided that injured workers aren't completely disposable, which means that we don't allow people to do all the crazy dangerous things that working people just used to take for granted. As a result, we've passed a lot of new rules and regulations to cut down on the carnage. 

Unfortunately, this increased regulation costs money. And we have periodically elected governments who want to cut taxes, which means that the civil servants who regulate a lot of our lives have to do so with budgets that are usually frozen if not in decline. What this tends to mean is that small businesses who cannot afford to hire lawyers to help them wade through the complex regulations tend to suffer a lot more than large corporations that can simply "swallow" the costs. 

If you are someone like me who thinks he can see a reason for all of this, it is still profoundly annoying to have to wade through mountains of paperwork and wait months (if not years) for something that in recent memory could be dealt with through a face-to-face conversation and an hour of time. But for a person who guides their life by the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition and sees business people as heroic figures, this can seem like a perfidious conspiracy against freedom itself. The difference between the two of us is that I can see how much of this is either necessary or the result of decisions by political parties who are supported by the people most annoyed by the glacial speed to which it has been reduced. 

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I grew up in a community that had a LOT of churches. Generally this didn't intrude too much on my life as even though we were nominally Baptist, my family wasn't terribly religious. (I'm told the one time a minister came to visit my dad crawled out the window of his study and hid in the barn until he left.) But we did have a Dutch Reform congregation in town that were anti-vaxxers. A child born the same year as me in the next farm behind us died of tetanus from a horse bite because he was never vaccinated against lock-jaw. In high school I had several friends who got polio---again, all members of that one congregation.

People in the community were pissed. "Why", we asked, "can the old-order Amish take their horse and buggies down to the clinic and get their vaccinations, yet these dweebs in their cars and modern lifestyle think that there was something 'ungodly' about it?" I still get annoyed, myself, when I think about it. 

In the middle of this current pandemic I find it really difficult to put myself in the shoes of the people who are fighting against our public health orders. But when I have the required patience and internal clarity, I can remind myself that the world can be a pretty scary place for people who have lost their sense of personal agency. 

Of course, the really big issue is that we really don't have much control over our lives. If we get born with some sort of disability, that defines much of our life. If our parents are poor or rich, white or black, intelligent or dumb, caring or dysfunctional, etc, has a huge impact. So does where we are born: Indian reserve or nice suburb? Canada or Afghanistan? When we come into this world has a huge impact too. (If you doubt this, consider how much more expensive buying a house is now versus thirty years ago.) 

Our health is much the same thing. We can exercise, eat right, etc, and WHAM! you get cancer, a heart attack, mental illness, or, hit by a bus. It's all a question of probabilities and random chance. Most human beings have a problem with this, they want to at least maintain the illusion of control over their life. But the fact of the matter is that human life can be relatively good or bad, often for reasons beyond our control. And it always ends in death---more than sometimes nasty, random, and/or, totally unexpected. 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of very important parts of our culture that are designed to fool people into thinking that if they just work hard enough they can achieve anything that they want. 

Play by the rules? How about the ones against using steroids? 
This comes from an entire page of "inspirational quotes".
Used under the "Fair Dealing" provision of the Copyright Act.

The problem with this idea, of course, is that it's errant nonsense. But unfortunately, we have huge swathes of the population that believe that this is literally true. It's what the whole Conservative movement in North America and our economic system is based upon. But it's also what a great many people increasingly reject.

Consider, if you will, the Black Lives Matter protests. How can you believe that if you just work hard you can achieve anything while at the same time understanding that if you meet the wrong police officer on the wrong day, you will just end up getting killed? How can you teach your children that if they work hard they can do anything---but that when they buy a candy bar in a corner store they should always ask for a bag because that way they can prove they didn't shoplift it if they get accused? (If memory serves, I remember hearing a local black person tell me that this was part of "the talk" that he gave one of his children.)

Underlying this delusional mythology is the great, grand daddy of delusional thinking: religious faith. 

A lot of people have been told that there is life after death, and that if they just believe in God strongly enough, they will end up in paradise. Some of them also believe that this faith will also provide them with happy, wealthy lives on this earth too. (This last bit is called "the prosperity gospel".) These are both ridiculously twisted misunderstandings of a point of view that could make some sense, yet they have---unfortunately---been heavily promoted in modern society. And as such, they help a large fraction of the population become totally unprepared to live their lives with any semblance of serenity or wisdom.

First, let's start off with the original idea.   

The problem with knowing that we all die, often in an extremely unpleasant way, is that if we fixate on it, it could cast a pall on every moment of our life. And who wants that? So paradoxically, if you really want to live a good life you need to, on some level, think that you are going to live forever. But if you actually believed that there would be a tendency to keep putting off today in favour of tomorrow---which would create a whole new set of problems. That means that at the same time you need to act as if today is the last day of your life. 

Run this paradox through popular religious culture (And don't forget that until very recently people would be treated very harshly for publicly being at odds with Christian orthodoxy) and you end up with the idea that when we die we go to paradise as long as we really, really, really believe in God. 

The issue for the people of my childhood who refused vaccinations was that their church hierarchy told their congregation that part of the "really, really, really believing in God" was not being vaccinated. 

Remember that "prosperity gospel" thing? Well, one of the pillars of capitalist society is the idea of the "invisible hand" which says that if people really believe in the free market all the individual choices that each consumer and business person makes will equal out and create the best of all possible worlds. Add this idea to the "faith thing" from a confused sort of pop spirituality, and you get the idea that if you really, really, really believe in the invisible hand it will make you rich and your country "Great!" or "Great Again!" 

The problem for people who believe in this nonsense is that it paints you into a corner. You aren't supposed to have any doubts or investigate any evidence that might undermine this worldview. Unfortunately, they really, really, really want to believe all this stuff but they can also see evidence to the contrary. So to prove how much they really, really, really believe they will make a big fuss about how completely wrong the evidence really is. (The psychologist Bob Altemeyer who spent his career studying conservative leaders and their supporters wrote that he's found out that a surprising percentage of the most vocal supporters of fundamentalist Christianity actually will admit that they don't really believe in God or life after death. They just say so to be part of the "group think".)

Along comes COVID-19. Whether or not we shut down society, ask everyone to wear masks, and, eventually tell everyone to get vaccinated all comes down to science. The virus couldn't care less about the spiritual values that you've built your life around---it just "is". And just like death, poverty, and, injustice it requires some sort of spiritual "work around" for the people who have never reconciled themselves to the fact that life isn't fair and that they are going to die. So they flail around looking for evidence either that the virus is a conspiracy or that it just isn't all that bad. And Face Book is quite happy to supply all the nonsense they are willing to consume.

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There's more to this story than just the way a minor segment of our society thinks. There's also the question of how they are being whipped into a frenzy by shysters, mega-corporations, and, questionable political organizations. But this is article is already long enough. I'll have to continue the story some other time. Until then---.

Moreover I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

James Gordon, Part Five: How Are Musicians Going to Survive?

In this last post based on my two interviews with Councilor James Gordon, I change tack and ask him about what it's like to be a musician in the 21st century. The pandemic certainly hasn't helped, but musicians---like journalists and authors---have been in free fall for decades as the Internet and the neo-Liberal consensus plays havoc with all the old ways in which people used to make a living.

Cloudwalking Owl · Streaming Service Question

James is right to be concerned about the pernicious effect of streaming services on the music business. I did some research and it appears that "the deck" is heavily stacked against people like him getting much money. 

The first issue that comes up is that there seems to be a lot of complexity involved that---whether it is necessary or not---is bound to confuse a lot of musicians. Readers need to understand that there are various different revenue streams. According to what I've read, there are the following complexities.

First, there's the distinction between royalties paid as performer versus composer. 

Secondly, there's a distinction between streaming music as live performance versus recorded music---exactly what category does streaming music fall into? It is sorta like live music in that it comes through a specific venue and you don't have a tangible item---like a sound file or album---that you can put into a device and listen to away from the streaming service. But, on the other hand, once you've paid your fee, you can play it whenever you want, as many times you want.

Third, Web-based streaming services are international. That means that there are different regulations governing things like taxation and royalty splits. Moreover, each different geographic region where the streaming service operates is governed by a local regulating body, which has it's own particular character. A key part of this is most of these regulatory bodies take a cut of the royalties in order to pay for the job of regulating how this money is split up and sent back to the individual artist. 

A further complication arises with regard to whether or not the artist is working as an independent who self-publishes their work, or, whether they have signed a contract with a distributor who controls where the music gets published. (That's how James ended up with a song complaining about Spotify being published on the service.) Depending on the relative sophistication (and relational power) of the artist when they signed their contract with their distributor, the amount of money they receive varies. And, as James mentioned, there is obviously a difference between the sort of deal that a "mega star" gets versus a "middle range" musician like James, and, someone who is just on the first rung of the ladder.

 

Added to this is the further complication that many streaming services have two different streams: a paid one and one based on advertising. It appears that some streaming businesses pay different rates to musicians depending on whether their work is mostly listened to through a paid subscription versus a "free" advertising based one. 

What this means for the individual artist like James is that it has to be damned hard to understand exactly what he is being paid per song. There are charts that get published comparing the different rates per service, but casual readers have to understand that the numbers are gross approximations based upon a variety of different assumptions. Having said all of that, according to the chart below, Councilor Gordon grosses .318 cents (on average) per song download on Spotify. Subtract the cut that the publisher takes, and you can see why he is "singing the blues" over royalties.

 

Individual track pay out, from the Sound Charts Blog.
Used under the Fair Dealing provision.
I've also tried to "sharpen" the numbers and letters using GIMP.
You might want to click on the image to get a clearer picture. 

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Cloudwalking Owl · Musician Collective Effort

James mentions Miranda Mulholland, who has a section of her personal blog devoted to her work advocating on behalf of fellow musicians. 

Miranda Mulholland, original photo by Steffen Paulus.
From her website gallery section, cropped by Bill Hulet.

Among other things, she offers a flowchart for musicians who are attempting to navigate the complex Canadian laws that govern royalties and how they collect them. I think it might be useful for people to take a look at it to get an idea of the issues involved.

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I have three things to add to this that I think people should remember. 

The first one is that big business has a tremendous ability to squeeze money out of individuals through chicanery. I'd like to offer an analogy from the film industry. Did you know, for example, that the original Star Wars movies never made a profit? It's true. You see if it made a profit, then various actors and other people involved with it would be able to make a percentage of it. Alas, it has always been a money loser. Take a look at the following You Tube story to show you the sad story.

Another thing that I think people should understand is how tremendously pervasive streaming music has become. In a 2018 Verge article the following pie chart broke down US music sales according to technology. As you can see, streaming services have captured 75% of the music industry. Most of the people who pay for streaming services or use one based on advertising have been convinced that they've already paid for the music that they listen to and it is going to be very difficult to convince them that they need to pay even more for tunes. This is going to be especially difficult as most of them are stuck doing crappy "gig economy" jobs while the top 20% siphoned off most of the wealth and refused to let anyone build affordable housing for them.

Finally, it's important to understand how wildly the number of competing musicians has grown over my short lifetime. When I was young, I pretty much only listened to CHUM FM and could only buy records at a department store, like Woolworth's. Things have changed dramatically.

I don't subscribe to a streaming service now, but I do listen to on-line radio and You Tube. I love the fact that the mass market has split up to the point where I can listen to damn near anything I want. This has included things that I would never, ever be able to hear when I was young. It turns out that I like a lot of strange stuff including European techno, traditional Chinese---even central Asian throat singing.

I consider this a very good thing. The problem is, however, that because the market has absolutely shattered into a million pieces, it is just that much harder for any individual musician to become a professional. Even if everyone was like me and dutifully sought out some way to pay at least some of these performers for the music we really like listening to, the odds are that some of the people like James Gordon and Miranda Mulholland---who could make a "middle-of-the-road" living as musicians before things changed---are no longer able to do so. 

Cloudwalking Owl · Patronage System To Pay Musicians

One example of a country that treats musicians with a little more respect is Ireland, which gives a tax exemption to it's artists. Here's a short government video that explains the system.

I don't really know how the government would be able to help support "creators" without being forced to choose "real artists" from "mere poseurs" and "tax cheats"---I'll let the economists and lawyers figure that out. But it occurs to me that there might be a way that the government would be able to give some sort of tax break to people who choose to be "patrons" of the arts. There might be some sort of system where everyone gets a certain amount of their tax money that they can channel to the artist of their choice which they can simply write into a form when it is time to pay their taxes. And, as I've said many times on this blog, the Guaranteed Annual Income could go a long way towards helping people like James and Miranda. 

We live in times of economic transition and I think that we should all be willing to experiment to see if we can find new ways of doing things.

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James mentions patronage. Well, that's a good idea. If you like these articles and you can afford it, why not support the author by making a monthly subscription? (Thanks for being so awesome Diana!) It's easy to do using Patreon or Pay Pal.

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The take away from this conversation is that the old model funding for the arts is broken. Collectively, the following ideas present themselves to my mind.

1. Musicians could form a strong union that would allow them to fight for a bigger part of the streaming music pie.
2. Musicians could form their own co-operative streaming service that would pay better rates.
3. The government could use the tax code to help musicians through either directly cutting taxes for them---as in Ireland, or, by creating tax incentives to increase the number of people willing to become their financial patrons.

Individually, people can do things right now if they have the means.

1. People who listen to music can wake up and realize that streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and, You Tube don't actually pay an adequate amount of money to musicians. This means that if you listen to a particular person or group a lot---and you can afford it---you really should either by supporting them through a patronage system like Patreon or buying their music through a download store. (Do people still sell CDs?)
2. If you like performances, you can go to their shows and buy some "merchandise". (Personally, I don't like performances because the ear-splitting volume hurts my ears. But I understand some people actually enjoy the experience of going deaf.)

Music has been part of the human condition for a very long time. It has survived lots of ups and downs. It will survive both streaming services and the COVID pandemic. But I think it's important that anyone who is self-conscious, concerned, and, well-off should consider doing what they can to help individual artists directly and the whole industry collectively. 

It's been a long ride and I would hate to see the guy with the guitar case kicked off the bus. Just to give you an idea of how long the trip has been, take a look at the following Peter Pringle video. It is his attempt to recreate a performance of the oldest known existing piece of human music---the Epic of Gilgamesh---as performed using the instrument and language of the time. 

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Moreover, I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

An August Cop Out

I traditionally take some time off in August. Generally I use it to visit friends---but the pandemic has put an end to that sort of thing for a while. But I still think I need to "wind down" a bit as putting out this blog seems to be marching towards becoming more and more of a full time job. 

I've been researching three stories. I thought that one might be a "quick and dirty" post for this week. But all three seem to have turned into pretty significant "deep digs". As a result, I'm not going to be able to put anything out this week---at least not anything I'd like my name associated with.

Hopefully next week I'll have something to publish.

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Moreover, I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!  

Children's Enthusiasm for Sale! Buy it up quick!

I've spent a fair amount of time pondering the WE charity "scandal" that the news is fixating on. I don't really know what happened with regards to Trudeau and the attempt to give WE a contract to administer a program designed to put money into the hands of young people who's employment prospects seem pretty bleak this summer. After long reflection I've come to the conclusion that just about everyone is getting the story wrong. Let me explain---. 

My biggest stumbling block was trying to figure out what WE actually does. It's not easy. I looked at a lot of promotional videos and official websites, but I couldn't figure out what was going on. Eventually, I came across the video below which seems to be the closest thing I could find to an explanation.

It's a bit long, but worth the effort of watching. As near as I can tell, here are the key elements of the charity.

Building the Membership

WE works by getting young people to work extremely hard at building it's membership. It does this by making the price of engagement extremely low. Being involved with WE doesn't require any understanding of the importance of economics and politics to the existence of poverty. Nor does it require the sort of significant commitment that most social justice organizations demand as the price of actually changing the world. It's vision of economic development has been "dumbed down" as much as absolutely possible---it really does look like economic development as envisioned by a 12 year old child. 

One part of the model involves personalizing charity by focusing on specific individuals instead of systemic problems. This is a proven way of dramatically increasing donations from individuals---which was the secret behind the old "Foster Parent Plan" campaigns that encouraged people to donate "a dollar a day" to save one individual child. In the case of WE, it does this by working with groups of people---the "WE villages"---instead of abstract economic policy or political issues.

Organizing "WE days" 

As near as I can tell, these are vacuous musical events where people make powerful statements in favour of "change" and "working together". This gives the kiddies a bit of a treat while at the same time ensuring that no parents or corporate sponsors hear anything that might make them feel uncomfortable. 

Here's a video clip from a "WE day" in Toronto. Take a moment to think about what this guy is saying. I think it can be summed up as "you can make a difference if you work together with others". Well, duh. Anyone---from Mohandas Gandhi to Adolph Hitler---could have said exactly the same thing and actually meant it. The point is "how much of a difference?" and "what should you be doing?" And how you answer those two questions tends to divide people along ideological, political, religious, etc, lines. The thing to remember about WE is that it gets access to school children and can fill giant arenas specifically because it never says or does anything that would threaten the existing social order or make people in authority the slightest bit uncomfortable. 

There's a long history of people getting access to school children in order to go through the motions of public mobilization while removing any content that could conceivably be seen as controversial. When I was in high school, for example, we were taken to a school "assembly" where we were subjected to a "soft rock" ensemble called "Up With People". I managed to find their dumb theme song on YouTube, so here it is:

 

Selling Crap and Advertising Other People's Crap

If you can fill arenas with naive children, there are businesses that would do almost anything to get a chance to sell stuff to them. ME to WE gets some "fair trade chocolate" and "friendship bracelets" made at their WE villages, but I suspect that these are just "the nose of the camel" that allows them to build relationships with corporate sponsors. Some of them sell these WE trinkets in exchange for being able to advertise with WE. 

You can get their chocolate here---why not get something else while you're there?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that ME to WE sells coffee too. 

You can purchase it here (why not get a croissant too?)

If you want to buy a bracelet, why not get it at one of these places?

Of course, you need to buy a ticket first at some of these places. If not, they 
also have other neat stuff to buy too.

Heck, why even bother with seeking out ME to WE chocolate, coffee, and friendship bracelets? There are corporate sponsors who have their own products that ME to WE endorses. 

Buy their stuff---I'm sure that it helps in one way or another!

As the website says 

Make an impact with our partners: shop everyday products that give back. We’re proud to partner with incredible brands to empower people to make a difference through their everyday purchases. From lifestyle products to gifts, when you see our logo on a product in-store or online you’ll know you’re making an impact.

I shouldn't have to say this, but giving money to a charity in order to get advertising really isn't "charity"---it's buying advertising. And once you start selling advertising, where does it end? If you don't pay too much attention to the track record of the company---it's just corporate camouflage. And how much money does a business have to "give" to a charity before it gets access to the database of givers or volunteers? How much do you think a huge database of naive, "do-gooders" might be worth to a corporation? Or a political party? Once a charity gets used to corporate sponsorship how dependent would it become? I suspect that the proper analogy would probably be "like a junkie and his regular hit of heroin". Do junkies pay much attention to where their fix comes from?
 

Burning Jet Fuel: Tourism Volunteer, or, Regular

The WE charity encourages people to travel to their WE villages. Here's an example of a ME to WE trip to their project in India:

1. Late evening arrival into Delhi and then transfer to your hotel for the night. Meet your ME to WE guide.
2. Enjoy breakfast at the hotel before your flight to Udaipur. After arrival, head to Araveli Cottages and Tented Camp to settle in for the week. Learn about the local communities and WE Charity’s work in the region.
3. Wake up with a morning yoga class and learn some Hindi before your community welcome. Start your volunteer building project.
4. Spend the morning with the women of the community to understand their roles in rural India. After lunch, try your hand at Mewari painting and continue working on your development project.
5. Continue working on your development project. In the early evening, dust off your dancing shoes for some Bollywood dancing.
6. Spend the morning on your development project. After a delicious lunch, relax at Araveli or join a cricket or volleyball game.
7. Finish your work on your development project in the morning. In the afternoon, spend time with the community to learn more about their daily lives.
8. Enjoy a camel ride toward the Kumbhalgarh Fort, the world’s second-longest wall, housing years of rich history. In the afternoon, celebrate your time with the community at a farewell ceremony.
9. Depart Araveli for Udaipur. Enjoy a morning of sightseeing in Udaipur before flying back to Delhi. Relax in a day room before transferring to the airport for your flight home.

This package price for one person starts at $3995 USD (that's $5,275.00 Canadian). Among the "Mewari painting", "Bollywood dancing", "camel riding", etc, you will be working on a "development project". From what I've seen, this usually involves something like laying bricks or banging nails---which I'm sure some local could probably do a lot better if some bucks were thrown his or her way. And this is what really irks me about this thing. If you threw the entire $5,000 that this junket costs at whatever the charity is supposed to be doing, I think that you'd be helping a LOT more people---depending on the project (which of course is another one of my pet peeves). 

If corporate giving is advertised, it isn't giving---it's advertising. The same thing applies to "voluntourism"---it's just rich people going on trips. And don't forget all that jet fuel being burned! Helping people by accelerating climate change that will probably destroy them isn't helping---it's actually being part of the problem. Moreover, traveling overseas so you can visit "quaint" and "picturesque" "traditional cultures" isn't really all that removed from traditional colonialism. Indeed, it strikes me as being extremely similar to the way aristocrats in the 18th century used to dress up like shepherds and hold picnics on pastures in order to hearken back to the "simpler" "pastoral" life of the rustics. (You know, the poor slobs who busted their asses so the local Lord could live in luxury.)  

In case you were wondering, this is a Mewari painting.
Public Domain image, c/o Wikimedia Commons.

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How much good does WE actually do? I'm not about to wade into the minutia of how it accounts for the money raised and spent. But I think we can get an inkling from the following You Tube video. Since the Kielburgers are such extreme "hard sell" pitchmen, I would suggest that the numbers cited in this video are possibly exaggerated. But even if they are accurate, it's important to put the claims that they are making into the context of world poverty and the other means that people have developed to deal with it.

Take a look at the following graph which I've got from Wikipedia but originally comes from Our World in Data.

That's a significant decline in the world's most poor people between 1990 and 2015, that's from 1.9 billion to 730 million, or, from 36% to 9.9% (don't forget that the world's population has dramatically increased over the same period of time---which influences the percentages). 

I'm not about to do any more than hazard a couple guesses about why there has been such a huge decline in the worst of the world's poverty during my lifetime, so take what follows for what it's worth. I think most orthodox economists would say that this has come about because of significant economic growth in many third world nations (think about China, Korea, India, Brazil, etc). A lot of that would be driven by dramatic increases in trade between nations as more and more trade deals have been signed around the world. Personally, I'd also like to point out that this trend began shortly after the old colonial empires fell apart after the end of World War II. Of course, technological progress is probably very important too.

I'm not trying to make any ultimate statement about the nature of poverty or the future of the world economy other than just to point out that world poverty is an absolutely immense problem and ending it is very complex. The Kielburger brothers and WE charity's efforts are effectively dwarfed by the effects of government policy---such as free trade deals. This means that if you really want to have a big impact on poverty you need to get involved in politics or some sort of specific "choke point" where a relatively small amount of money can have an out-sized impact. (For example, the Bill and Melinda Gate's Foundation's attempt to eradicate Malaria.)  General welfare programs aimed at small villages of people, in contrast, are like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun.  

What they are, however, are very easy to explain to people and extremely inoffensive. There's nothing about the Kielburger approach to poverty that is going to offend teachers, parents, or, corporate interests. And it isn't going to bore youngsters who don't want to wade through complex issues like economics, trade deals, and so on. In a sense, this is a case of the "street light effect".  That's when people mistakenly choose a solution not for it's intrinsic efficacy but because of the ease with which it can be done.

This is an ancient "Mutt and Jeff" cartoon based on the street light effect.
I am assuming that it is public domain because of it's extreme age.

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Moreover I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!