Big Changes at the Guelph-Back-Grounder

I've decided to change the name of my publication from The Guelph-Back-Grounder to Hulet's Backgrounder in order to reflect a change of emphasis from local news to one that is more universal in scope. My hope in doing so is that this will help boost my readership, as that seems to have plateaued. 

In addition, I've also made a transition from using Google Blogger to Substack as my hosting platform. From my research, it seems to be a company and platform much more in keeping with my ideals. Primarily, it appears to be a business model where readership follows interest instead of being 'pushed' by an algorithm designed by an artificial intelligence program. (In other words---as near as I can tell---it has a straight-forward business model: they get a cut of subscription money instead of selling advertising and information about my readers.)  

I'm still going to be putting out the same sort of content, which you can access at this website: https://billhulet.substack.com/ . If you like what you see, I'd suggest that you sign up for a free subscription to Hulet's Backgrounder---that way articles will be emailed to you when they come out. 

&&&&

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

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty Three

“This product is designed to spoof the algorithm’s that the social media companies use to push some influencers to the forefront and drag others down to obscurity. The conundrum that faces influencers is that they won’t get famous without being seen by a lot of new faces, but the AI won’t recommend people look at their site until they are famous. In ‘the wild’, there’s a considerable amount of randomness about who does and doesn’t become famous---and a lot of it just involves who get’s noticed first.”

“This need to get in front of the pack has created a lot of the looniness we see on-line. People generally have a bias towards the sensational and get bored by nuance. Moreover the folks who become addicted to ‘doom scrolling’ tend to be emotionally excitable types who enjoy the rush of being outraged about one thing or another. Given the simple set of commands that the social media corporations give to their AIs---namely ‘get eyeballs on screens and clicks on URLs so we can sell advertising’---the most efficient response by influencers is to pump up the emotion to ‘eleven’. And emotions don’t give a damn about the truth.”

“We are trying to develop a methodology to be able to create effective social influencers on command by using Audio Ketchup and the Voice of God, but we also have to jump the hurdle of becoming famous---and there’s no easy way to do that just by modifying our content. So instead we do it by creating artificial ‘virtual populations’ that we can tell to click on specific accounts. This trains the social media AI to see the site we are promoting as being ‘an up-and-comer’. If we can create enough artificial clicks, then the AI will start recommending the site to real people. At that point we hope that the “Ketchup” and “Word of God” programs will keep them and create a following of real people that follows the needed exponential growth curve.”

Nate looked perplexed. “How exactly does this program work?”

(At this point Sally returned and handed the two men ceramic cups of very good drip coffee from the computer lunch room. She had also found fresh croissants---cheese, chocolate, and, butter. It appeared that the Elders treated their chipheads well. Jokes were told, tension was released, and eventually the host brought the meeting back on focus.)

“We’ve infected a huge numbers of people’s home and work computers with a relatively harmless virus that allows us to use a fraction of it’s computing power to connect with a given social media system. To the algorithm it looks like someone has actually logged in and read/listened-to/downloaded content. (The viruses are designed to do this during ‘down time’---when someone is off at lunch, over night, weekends, at work, etc. Whenever the screen saver goes on, the bots do their thing. They have zero impact on the functionality of the CPU and it has no malicious effect on anything.”)

“These virus-controlled computers are called ‘bots’---a short form of ‘robot’. And when a person has control of thousands of them that she can control to do her bidding, we call that a ‘bot army’.”

“It’s routine for hackers to use bot armies to initiate ‘denial of service’ attacks on websites. What happens is they order their virtual soldiers to make the same demand on a website all at once. Since servers can only handle so many commands at the same time, organizations tend to know how many connections they can expect to have at one one time---and plan accordingly. A tidal wave of too many commands happening all at once will slow down and crash a server. Many businesses, political parties, government agencies, and so on, do an enormous amount of their work on line. And if a denial of service attack shuts down their ability to gather information, process financial transactions, connect with customers, etc, it can threaten the long-term viability of the operation.”

“The Word Made Flesh does same thing, but our aim isn’t to shut down the server and cause a denial of service attack. Instead, what our bot army attempts to do is convince the algorithm of a social media service---like FaceBook or YouTube---that a given posting on their system is a lot more popular than it really is.”

“We do this because the core problem with social media is that the prime directive of its artificial intelligence is to find that fraction of postings that encourages the readership to click on the most advertising. Please note, I’m not saying that the AI is looking for the best writing, or even the most popular---I’m saying it is just looking for the posts that create the most number of clicks on advertising. Clicks are where social media companies like FaceBook makes their money. And a very popular posting that doesn’t encourage clicking doesn’t make FaceBook any bucks. A very unpopular post that creates a high percentage of clicks/viewer doesn’t work either. I’ll repeat this point for emphasis: a post that is moderately popular but creates a high percentage of clicks will beat out an extremely popular one that generates a small percentage of clicks, and, a post that is unpopular yet creates a lot of clicks by the few people who see it.”

“It just seems to be a fact that what works best in the social media ecosystem right now are hysterical posts aimed at gullible people. Unfortunately for our political system and society at large, however, the people who fit into this category are also the ones most susceptible to conspiracy theories and authoritarian politics. In effect, social media is like a town hall meeting where the village idiots---and the grifters who prey upon them---always have privileged access to the microphone and the voting booth.”

“What the Old Ones are trying to do with Audio Ketchup, The Word of God, and, The Word Made Flesh is to drown out the grifters and the village idiots and replace them with a more accurate analysis of what’s really happening in the world. The hope is that this will ‘nudge’ humanity into something that makes more sense than the current insanity.”

&&&&

Support the Guelph-Back-Grounder on Patreon or PayPal.

&&&&

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

Part One of a Conversation With Dominique O'Rourke: Are Council Members Paid Enough?

With a municipal election on the horizon, I thought I'd put some effort into trying to bring out some of the complexities involved with being a Council member. Partially this will be about the business of Council, but I also want to discuss some of the political questions too. 

Ward Six Councilor, Dominique O'Rourke. Image c/o FaceBook, cropped by Bill Hulet.

To that end, I asked Ward Six representative Dominique O'Rourke if she'd be interested in taking part in a long conversation. I was glad she agreed for two reasons. First of all, she is a very articulate person with a lot of experience in previous jobs as a public relations expert and lobbyist in both Ottawa and Queen's Park. Secondly, as will become obvious in some of our later conversations, she and I don't really see the world in exactly the same way---yet I think we were still able to have a useful conversation. I'm not one of those people who believes that journalism needs to always show "both sides", but I do think that if people never engage with folks we may disagree with we run the risk of ending up with a society where the citizenry lives in their own distinct solitudes. And this is a very bad thing.

I consider this an important point that needs to be emphasized. People who talk about 'democracy' often tend to fixate upon the mechanics of voting, decision-making, constitutions, etc. But in doing so, I think they are missing the essence. Democracy is a cultural artifact much more than it is a specific organization that delineates things like the Electorate, Executive, Legislature, and, Judiciary.

That's because when we get right down to it, there are always individuals in a flow chart, and they always have the option of ignoring convention or even the law. We can certainly see this now in the USA. People generally believe that the people who lose elections need to leave office---but it only happens if the people managing the turnover of power agree that it should. "Settled legal precedent" only means something until a majority of Judges in the Supreme Court decide it no longer does. And in Congress the majority rules---but only if the people administering the voting system decide to not allow Gerrymandering and there's no arcane rule like the fillibuster that allows a minority veto over popular legislation.

Even Canada has suffered from this problem. One example that comes to my mind was in 2010 when the Governor General allowed the prorogation of Parliament when the Conservatives only had a minority of the seats and the Liberals had arranged enough support from the other parties to form a government. In effect, a political leader who wasn't the real Prime Minister (because he had yet to get the support of the majority of sitting members) was allowed to deny someone who did have majority support from assuming the position. This was something that went totally against all Parliamentary precedent and undermined Canada's unwritten constitution. The theoretical job of the Governor General was to protect this constitution, yet Michelle Jean crumpled under pressure.

So contrary to what your high school civics teacher may have told you (do they still teach civics?), the safeguard of democracy is really something much more intangible than either law or institutional tradition. It is transparency that allows voters to know what is really going on. It is the free flow of opinions that allows folks to learn to see the world a new way. It is the public square that allows folks who may understand things very differently from one another the ability to talk to one another. And it also includes the integrity of people in key positions who are willing to 'do the right thing' when 'push comes to shove'. Insofar as these things disappear, we cease to be citizens and become just atomized individuals. And at that point---no matter how things appear on paper---democracy becomes not much more than an empty husk. 

So I start out with a big thank you to Councilor O'Rourke for agreeing to become part of this conversation. By engaging with me, I believe she has done her bit to strengthen democracy in Guelph.

&&&&     

I started off with a "softball" question because it was about something I suspected we agree---namely that Council members get paid too little money.

Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councilors Paid Enough? Part One

Council members in Guelph currently get paid about $47,500/year and the Mayor makes $152,500. Seeing this, the obvious first question to ask is How does this compare to other cities?

Luckily, I was able to find a 2018 report by the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario (AMCTO) that compares compensation of elected municipal officials across the province. First, here's an average of compensation ranked by population.

As you can see, Guelph Councilors make a little more than the average from other comparable cities (at least four years ago).

Now lets look at the break-down by cohort.

Again, looking at this chart, it would appear that Guelph Council is in the top 25% of income earners for cities of populations between 100,000 and 250,000. (Incidentally, the Mayor is in the top 18% also.) The point, of course, isn't how Guelph wages compare to other cities, but rather how they compare to comparable jobs in the broader economy. And I think it's accurate to say that for the amount of work a conscientious Council member should do, it's nowhere near what someone might expect for a similar position in either the private or non-profit sector.

&&&&

Wages are a funny thing, though. Ordinary people often find themselves using the word "fair", but I suspect if you talked to the average economist (or business tycoon) they'd suggest that we throw that concept out the window and instead rely upon "what THE MARKET will bear" to decide upon how much a person makes. I suppose the best illustration of this is the following map that I've often seen used as a meme on social media.      

This graphic has been repeated so many times I don't know which was the original.

The earliest citation of the above map I could find was 2013, but it still works for the point I am trying to make. In the USA sports teams---football and basketball---are tremendously important fundraising vehicles for universities. The assumption is that a coach can make or break a team, and since the teams are essential to the fiscal health of many American universities, competition to find the very best ones is often fiercer than to find great academics. And that's why the highest wages at universities often go to athletic directors instead of researchers. (Canadian universities have a very different funding model---so none of the above applies.)    

The dissonance between professor pay and coach pay in the USA is jarring, but in both the USA and Canada there is also a big distinction in payment between contract lecturers who just teach undergraduate courses and professors who also teach graduate students, sit on committees, and, do research. There are complexities to the issue that are beyond the scope of this article, but the best way to understand it is that professors at a university are expected only teach a few courses (three or four) a year. In contrast, sessional lecturers, are expected to teach three or four times as many courses in a year if they expect to make an income of something like $90,000/year. (According to Glassdoor the average annual salary for a professor in Ontario is a bit under $120,000 a year. Please remember that this is an average, not a median. I couldn't find a number for the median, and I strongly suspect that a small percentage of very well-paid 'stars' are pulling up the average.)

This is the theory. However, there are inducements baked into this system that lead to ridiculous outcomes. Even though universities often theoretically limit the number of courses a contract lecturer can teach in a semester, there can be strong inducements that push some people into teaching many more. For example, one anonymous source told me about his school theoretically limiting the number courses per semester to five, but instead people sometimes teach as many as twelve. I'm told that this crazy-ass, way-too-high workload doesn't seem to be about greed so much as fear of losing-out on future contracts, as anyone who takes a break from teaching a particular course often loses the right of first refusal to teach it the next time it's offered. (Ie: don't teach it this semester and you may never be able to teach it again.)

Again, we've left the realm of fair and are back into the world of being paid what the market decides is right. And in this case, the market has decided that getting the very best researchers is much more important than doing the very best job teaching undergraduates. And, I suspect, this is exactly the same reason why football coaches are paid more than professors in the USA. It's because a very good researcher can make a university a lot of money by bringing in research contracts from both government and corporations. 

Besides the impact of an impossible-to-sustain workload on lecturers, it is obvious that undergraduates are suffering from this system. As an undergraduate I had access to teachers that I would assume modern students could only dream of. But isn't this decline in the quality of teaching a 'market failure'---doesn't orthodox economics tell us that it will eventually self-correct?

The problem comes down supply and demand, but in a special sense. The problem is that some demand (ie: better research) is concentrated into a small number of powerful people whereas others are diffused into the hands of a large number of powerless people (ie: good undergraduate teaching). 

There are a lot of people who are qualified and would like to teach at a university. Moreover, undergraduates mostly haven't got a clue about the difference between a good course where the instructor has enough time to prepare and interact with students, and, a poor one where the sessional has to wear roller skates just to provide the bare minimum. More importantly, they really don't have much say in who gets to teach them once they've committed to a school. In contrast, there is only a small pool of corporate or government donors, who know exactly what they want, and, have ultimate control over who they do or do not support. This means that universities have a huge market incentive to cut costs on teaching and invest in research. The result is a small pool of highly-paid prestige researchers---and a faceless herd of poorly-paid, "disposable", contract lecturers who can only make a 'decent' living by putting in long, long hours.

&&&&

So what has this got to do with the salaries of City Council? I used the two examples from university to illustrate a much larger trend in society. Lots and lots of people get paid very poorly for jobs that are very important. We really noticed this in the pandemic when lots of folks who get paid not very much money were expected to risk getting a scary disease---the folks who work in extended care facilities, for example. We live in a capitalist society, and the religion of Adam Smith proclaims that we must allow the All-Mighty Invisible Hand free reign to allocate money without reference to the petty concerns of ordinary human beings. 

For those who worship at the altar of capitalism, the low wages for Council members makes sense. In every election there are always more people who want to get elected than there are slots to fill. And during elections prospective employees (candidates) never discuss wages with their potential future bosses (voters). 

&&&&

For reasons that I will get into in future posts, I'm experimenting with migrating from Blogger to Substack, and changing the name of this journal from The Guelph-Back-Grounder to Hulet's Backgrounder. I'm going to be publishing on both media for a while yet, but starting now I'm going to be sending out my alerts using a Substack link instead of a Blogger one. It's very easy to subscribe to Substack, and it's a lot less 'noisy' for readers. I think it's an improvement, but if there are issues, I'd really like to hear from you so I can fix them as they arise. 

Back to Council pay.  

&&&&

Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councillers Paid Enough Part Two

The complexity comes from the fact that the city isn't a business and Council isn't a board of directors. In fact, you could say that (contrary to the people who maintain that government should be 'run like a business') neither one should be seen as being part of the capitalist economy at all. Indeed, I'd suggest that they are functionally in opposition to the so-called 'Free Market'.

The oft-repeated observation is that we live in a society that follows The Golden Rule, which is defined as 'whomever has the most gold makes all the rules'. Indeed, that's exactly what capitalism is---rule by the class of people who own the most capital. But we aren't living in a pure capitalist society, instead the free market is supposed to be hemmed-in and controlled by democratically-decided rules that mitigate the worst excesses of the business class. 

Moreover, Guelph Council is supposed to be a representative democracy, which means that we are supposed to elect people who represent the interests and values of the majority of the citizenry. And that's where things get sticky. 

It's important for an elected official to be effective. That is to say, they need to be someone who is able to grasp the essentials of municipal governance so they can avoid becoming totally at the mercy of staff and lobbyists. That's what I think Dominique is emphasizing in our conversation. But at the same time, a Council member also needs to be a good representative of the citizens. And by that, I mean they have to be someone who can understand the needs of all the people. That's to say, the politician shouldn't be just a technocrat who understands how the system operates---she also needs to have a very visceral grasp of how the system impacts the lives of people.

Let's add one more complexity to the pot. 

Elected officials don't just have a responsibility to the people that elected them. They also have a responsibility to folks who not only didn't elect them, but couldn't elect them. One of the problems we have in dealing with the Climate Emergency is that the people who are being asked to make changes in their lives are not the same people who will be most affected by their decision to either deal with or ignore the causes of climate change. The young and unborn will bear the brunt, yet they don't have a say. It's the same thing with the housing emergency. People who already live in a ward get to elect the Council member, yet the people most affected by the decisions she makes are the ones who don't already have a place to live. This means that to be a good Councilor, someone sometimes has to be willing to judge issues on their own merits instead of following the opinions and interests of the people who voted them into office.

The housing emergency is not just about housing, it's about everything in a person's life. If someone has such an onerous rent or mortgage that they have zero 'wiggle room' in their finances, this means that they will not be able to save money for their retirement. (House ownership isn't really a good way to save money because as long as you live you will still need to own a home. And the price you pay for the home you live in when old will up in go-up in lockstep with the home you are living in now.) It will also mean that they will have dramatically-limited life options---they may have to work at several jobs, commute long distances, post-pone or avoid having children, not be able to upgrade their skills, not be able to take risks (like starting their own business), etc. Excessive housing costs are like a giant lamprey eel that sucks the blood out of anyone who has to pay them. They destroy lives and also communities. 

Another insidious thing about excessive housing costs is that they are often invisible to anyone who isn't personally suffering. Indeed, most homeowners I meet seem to see them as nothing but a benefit when the value of their home goes up in price. (In contrast, when I hear people bragging about how much their house has gone up in value, I tend to feel it as a kick in the gut because I immediately think about how this is going to affect anyone who doesn't already own a home. I also feel the same way when people brag about their vacation trips because all I can think about is the carbon emitted by the jet flights.) When your house goes up in value, folks often become mesmerized by the dollar amounts---totally oblivious to the truth that the increase is price is life-blood stolen from other people. If we understand this, perhaps it is a good idea that Council members should be sweating over things like mortgage payments and how they are going to send their children to school. Would it perhaps it would be a good idea to pay Council members such that they have to live on the median income of the city's people?

A quick Google search led me to the City of Guelph website which said that the median household income in Guelph is a little under $78,000/household. Since O'Rourke is already making $47,500 from her Council position, if we assume that her significant other is doing at least as well, the household already looks like it is doing better than more than half of the population.

&&&&

Since I'm already talking about the taboo subject of salary, if people can afford it, I'd like readers to think about taking a subscription through Patreon or leaving a tip with PayPal . (It's also possible to subscribe through PayPal). I put a lot of work into these stories, and right now I'm receiving a grand total of $73.50/month for them (plus the odd tip, which is always appreciated and is sometimes quite substantial). I know that there are a lot of people who are much worse off than me so I'm never going to move behind a pay wall, but I also know that there are also a lot of folks who are doing much better. I get about 1500 hits a month and have so for years, so I know that there are readers. If you think what I do is worth reading, maybe it's worth supporting too---.   

&&&&

Conversations about how much a person makes are generally considered 'in bad taste'. That's because it often runs the risk of devolving into envy. (That's probably what was fueling the anecdote I mentioned about a co-worker and what the Mayor used to be paid.) But there is another side to this that is also important. 

Groups of people who make similar amounts of money have a tendency to see some aspects of the world the same way. The important things are the economic drivers. For example, people who inherit a lot of money tend to take a dim view of inheritance taxes. 

In the case of the middle-class, people's two biggest capital assets tend to be their homes and education. I noticed this years ago when it became clear to me that the two things almost guaranteed to drive even the most left-wing liberals into becoming reactionaries were a perceived threat to the value of their house or the quality of their children's education. 

Poor people are different. The most important capital asset that they usually have are their family and friends. The importance comes from the fact that they are an important safety net during hard times. As my significant other says "a friend is someone who will allow you to sleep on their couch if your home burns down". 

These two worldviews are behind what each group fears when housing changes. Middle-class folks are terrified by the thought of intensification, because they fear it will lead to lowered property values. The poor are terrified by gentrification partly because it may price them out of the neighbourhood but also because the fear it will break up the community network they rely upon to navigate the particularly rough patches they expect to come along.

&&&& 

I raise the issue about how one's life experience impacts their understanding of housing crisis more to explain than to prescribe. As O'Rourke points out, keeping the pay low is not going to guarantee that only poor people will run for office. Indeed, it may discourage many folks who've managed to claw their way out of poverty from taking the plunge. And the very well-off will have no problem at all taking on the job as a hobby. 

As a general rule I tend to follow the idea that if you seek equality you should pull low people up rather than try to push high people down. Starvation doesn't justify malnutrition. And just because there are people who are being pushed into dire poverty by low wages doesn't justify exploiting hard-working professionals by paying them far less than they could make in the private sector. 

Personal history doesn't really define a person anyway. History is filled with individuals who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths yet who did an enormous amount of good for poor folks (FDR?). There are also lots of examples of people had lived in extreme poverty but who's reign was a catastrophe for the underprivileged (Adolph Hitler?). Education, values and personality matter just as much as work and life experience.

&&&&

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

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty Two

The next stop for Sally and Nate was the tailor’s shop where there was a final test fitting. After that, they went to the technology “boiler room” hidden in the building that used to house a bakery.

There really wasn’t anything for the two of them to do there, but the thin bearded man sat the two of them down in his office and spend a couple hours outlining what his team had been working on and how it fit into Nate and Sally’s work.

“We showed you how the ‘audio ketchup’ program worked last time you were here. Now I want to tell you about two other programs we’ve developed. The first one actually writes scripts based upon artificial intelligence analysis of existing successful influencer websites. We call it “the Word of God” because we’re all smart Alecs here, and, because---well, you’ll understand when you start reading them.”

Nate was startled. “I’ve done a lot of reading on AI and I find it hard to believe that you have a program that can write convincing scripts---”.

“That’s right. The AI doesn’t write the script, it ‘polishes’ our submissions to it and offers the odd suggestion. And the thing to remember is that an artificial intelligence is anything but ‘intelligent’. It’s not a human being who writes something out based on her beliefs and objectives. Instead, it is an enormous, brute force pattern recognition system. It looks at huge amounts of existing, proven-to-be-successful scripts (by ‘scripts’, I mean transcripts of shows we’ve downloaded off the Web), and comes up with patterns that wouldn’t be recognized by a human being. On the basis of that, we ask the program to write new scripts based on some specific theme. Usually that means we submit a list of ‘hot button’ words and the program ‘free associates’ around them.”

“The result is generally a ‘word salad’ that doesn’t really mean very much. But we use it as a starting point and then pull out individual phrases or sentences that we think sound ‘meaningful’ and resubmit this to the program to try again, with the saved bits as the starting point. We find that if we do this over and over again, we usually end up with something we can use.”

Nate pursed his lips. “So you’re actually using human intelligence to direct a process where the computer is following patterns?”

“Yes, exactly. Hmm. Let me give you an analogy. The existing AI program is spawning so-called ‘influencers’ based on the prime directive that the social media company has built into it. Mainly, that’s increase the clicks that increases the revenue for the company. Natural selection has tended to choose people who support conspiracy theories. That’s natural selection.”

“But if you’ve read Darwin, you’ll know that he spent a lot of time studying different breeds of fancy pigeons. These are created by breeders using the process known as ‘artificial selection’. That’s when a breeder decides that he wants a specific trait and then chooses which parents to breed with one another to create a new variety. That’s what we are attempting to do with the Word of God---we’re artificially selecting for scripts that will exert a specific type of influence on society, instead of just whatever will create the most money for a company selling advertising.”

At the same time, the AI is also learning to add together the patterns it finds on the transcripts to the ‘feedback’ we give it. Your trainer told me that you are a bright guy. You’ve zeroed in this not being a true AI and instead recognized that it’s really a pattern recognition tool that we use to help write a specific type of directed reasoning.”

“The reason why we’ve brought you in for this meeting is that we need you involved in this ‘back and forth’ with the Word of God program”

Nate was startled. “Why me? I’m no expert on any of this stuff.”

“No, you’re not. But you won’t be the only person involved. And you need to be familiar with the process. The role we’re grooming you for in all of this requires that the script be compatible with the way you see the world and your own personality quirks.”

“Who exactly am I going to be working with, S---?”

Sally jumped in at this point, “Now remember---no names here. We have to protect the organization at all costs.”

Nate was abashed, “Oh, right. I forgot.”

The thin man smiled. “It’s OK. None of us really started out on this path by choice. But circumstances have led us to believe that this weird life we lead is the best way we can minimize the climate crisis---and whatever else is threatening the human race.” He grimaced thinking about why he’d devoted so much of his life to this weird project. “Suffice it for now that the Old Ones have an expert on this sort of thing that will help us come up with scripts. Once we have something we can use, we’ll get you to read them, run the result through the Audio Ketchup program so you sound incredibly persuasive to gullible people. And that now brings me to the third program we’ve developed.”

(At this point Sally got up from the table and announced that she had heard this all before, so she was going to make some coffee for herself. If anyone else would like some, she asked them to place their orders and she’d bring them back. Both Nate and the thin man both asked for some and she left the room.)

&&&&

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

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty-One

Angus O’Flaherty was having a bad day.

The Republican-controlled state electoral commission had set up the voting districts in his state so that even though a small majority of state-wide votes usually went Democratic, there was always one Democrat Senator and one Republican---instead of two Dems. They did this by lumping all the safely-Republican districts into the ones that voted one year, and all the strongly-held Democrat districts into the next election. This meant that the Republican always won by a slight majority whereas the Democrats always got a super-majority. 

This meant that the key to winning elections was to get the Republican nomination, and Angus had built a primary vote coalition by adding together white nationalists, garden-variety racists, libertarians, small-government types, and evangelical Christians into a base that was large enough to dominate in nomination races. This was easier to do than naive people might think---since only about 25% (maximum) ever bothered to vote in the primaries.

O’Flaherty had put in decades to build-up his machine and it had re-elected him like clockwork for term after term. That’s why he had come to dominate the Senate Republicans and eventually the entire party. But now it was giving him hiccups. One of the nuttier leaders that had supported him over the years was starting to make a fuss, and he needed to tamp things down before they got out of control.

Pastor Ernesto Diaz didn’t have a formal title other than that of being the self-appointed head of the “Righteous Nation Ministry” or RNM. But he’d build a significant following both on-line and in bricks-and-mortar independent evangelical churchs all over O’Flaherty’s state. And the two groups had a real synergy. The boobs on line were too spread out to generally vote-in a politician in any specific district, but they were generous donors to Diaz’s ‘ministry’. And the money they gave allowed Ernesto to organize outreach campaigns that were able to unify all the independent churches that Diaz had been able to connect with. And the time and even money that he was able to commit to these small congregtions allowed him to organize them as well-oiled, very disciplined, local voting machines. The candidates that Diaz endorsed won nomination races!

But Diaz was a kook who believed that America was always meant to be Christian nation and that the government had a duty to force all atheists and adherents to another religion (plus, truth-be-told, liberal Christians too) into the status of second-class citizens. That meant mandatory Christian prayer at school, laws based on the Ten Commandments, abortion being totally illegal, refusal to accommodate any other religious observance, an end to gay rights, no more “women’s rights” legislation, etc.

In the past this hadn’t been much of a problem for O’Flaherty, because he’d always been able to keep enough distance from these folks that he never got tarred with this radical crap. That was because the base that Diaz brought in were disciplined enough to accept the notion that they had to hidden in order for their influence to work. They were patient people because they were generally outcasts in their own communities. Moreover, their own theology helped because it taught that they were a part of small “elect” or “remnant” of the faithful who were stuck in a irredeemably “fallen” world.

The problem came from the on-line community that Diaz was milking for funds. These people weren’t organized into disciplined, geographically-situated congregations. Instead, they were free-floating individuals who migrated to whatever group scratched their own particular itches. And Diaz had recently begun to learn how to motivate these folks for action. And that was a big problem!

&&&&

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

Cult Smashers: Part Thirty

Nate came back to the car about one hour later.

Nate started to talk, but Sally put up a finger to show he should remember the awareness exercise she’d taught him to try to make an automatic habit. She finished reading the paragraph she was on, placed the bookmark, closed the book, and, put it in her handbag. Then she centred herself, took three deep breaths while he did the same thing. At that point she asked the obvious question: “Well, how did it go?”

“Hmmm. It’s certainly an adrenaline rush to pull a stunt like this. So I can see the addictive stimulus-response that said hooks some people into the lifestyle. I did the mental ‘enthusiasm pump’ you taught me to do. Once that had started, I was able to focus my attention completely at the person in front of me---again as you taught me. Then I manifested the ‘confidence-speak’ attitude that allowed me to persuasively lie to the person in front of me.”

Sally interrupted “But was it a lie? Or did your confidence-speak convince you of the truth too? At least at that particular moment.”

“Right. That’s a more accurate way to express how I felt. Whether or not what I was saying was true---it was emotionally true to me.”

“How did you frame your con?”

“When I found out it was a laptop, I decided not to lay it on too thick. I just mentioned that there was nothing wrong with it, it had never been used, I’d bought it as a gift and then found out that my sister had just purchased one just like it. I wanted to act a little nervous about returning such a big ticket item without the paperwork.”

“The woman at the counter said ‘no problem’. But when she took my membership card and tried to read it, it wouldn’t work. She looked at the card, rubbed the barcode, tried again, and when that didn’t work, entered the numbers manually. When this didn’t do the job, she asked a co-worker over to see if he could get it going. He couldn’t, and mentioned that there wasn’t any problem with the terminal. They both said they’d never seen or heard of this type of error before.”

“Bye-the-way, do you know how the card manages to look totally valid on the company website but says that there’s a temporary systems problem with my account?”

Sally snorted, “Don’t ask me. The Old Ones have some pretty gnarly chipheads, though. I suspect that they not only made a fake card but also hacked into the membership data base on the CostCo server.”

“Anyway, at that point I started to act like I was in a real rush. I complained that I was on my lunch break and I had just enough time to get the refund and leave. Moreover, I said that I’d never had a problem with the card before and I really needed the money right that moment or else I wouldn’t be able to get my sister a present in time for her birthday.”

“The woman behind the terminal repeated that she’d never seen this happen before. She asked if I could come back later. But I looked her in the eye and just said ‘I told you I have a time problem. What are you going to do to help me out of this spot?’, I also said that Costco says on it’s website that they don’t care about the receipts, so I didn’t bother to bring them---although I could dig them up if I have to---but I had had such a good experience with the company over the years that it never occurred to me that there would be a problem’. I also looked at my wrist watch, looked concerned, and, started subtly fidgeting.”

“Good. I’m glad you remembered to add in the body language.”

“When she started making noises about a supervisor, I repeated that I was under a tight deadline, I asked her to take the item out of the box. I told her I wasn’t trying to rip anyone off. She could see it was an item that Costco sells and it was obviously immaculate. The original packing material was all there. And I hadn’t even used it---the security tapes were all still in place so it was good enough to put back on the shelf right now. I just didn’t need it and wanted the money so I could get something else for sis.”

“How completely did you believe in what you were saying? Did you have a specific person in mind when you talked about your sister?”

Nate smiled. “Yes I did. Happy birthday, Sally.”

“At that point she asked if I’d be happy with a gift card instead of a reimbursement on my credit card. She asked if my sister had a Costco membership. I said ‘yes’ and she suggested that she would ‘bend the rules a bit’ and give me a gift card worth the full price. She’d keep my membership card, they’d figure out what the problem was, and, then mail it back to me. That way I could get back to work and my sister could choose whatever she really wanted or needed.”

“At that point I sighed and thanked her. She gave me the gift card, kept my membership, and, I came back out here.”

Sally relaxed into her seat. “So if you had a stolen laptop and a very special counterfeit Costco membership card, you just fenced it at the retail rate instead of having to sell it for half price or less through Kijiji or a pawn broker. You can either use the gift card yourself, or, sell it at only a little less than face price to someone else. Actually it’s a really safe grift---especially as a ‘one off’. But it did test you and I imagine it was pretty scary none-the-less.”

Nate nodded in quick agreement.

“Consider that your first ride on a bike---with training wheels, no traffic, and, me running alongside you in case you started to wobble badly. You did OK. Next time you’ll have a little more confidence.”

&&&&

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

The Gasoline Tax Scam

Recently the Conservative government decided to help ease Ontario's problem with inflation by temporarily cutting the gasoline tax by 5.7 cents per liter. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about this with readers.

&&&&

First of all, let's look at how much gasoline costs have risen. Here's a bar graph that shows average Canadian gasoline price per liter that comes from the Trading Economics website. It's about par for the course that I could find in the mainstream media. 

The first thing to pay attention to is a subtle way the graph has been drawn in order to mislead readers. Take a look at the August 2021 bar. (It has the number "1.1" on top of it.) Now look at the June 2022 bar. (The last one, with 1.6 next to it.) Using a ruler to measure the bars on the screen in front of me, I see the former bar as being 150 millimeters tall and the latter as 900mm. Looking at their relative size suggests to the unconscious mind that in June 2022 gas cost six times as it did in August 2021. The fact of the matter, however, is that it only costs 45% more. This is an example in support of the idea that "there are lies, damn lies, and, statistics".

I've gone through statistics Canada data and created my own bar graph that will hopefully convey a more accurate picture of what's going on. 

The first thing to notice between my graph and the other is that my bars are representative of the total price of petroleum distillate whereas the ones from the other graph are designed to "sex up" the story, hopefully get it repeated on FaceBook, leading to more clicks on ads, and, therefore more profitable. (Don't forget, mainstream news is a business, geared towards making money, and, it does so by being entertaining---which includes stoking anger and fear---instead of informative.)

Beyond using a non-misleading bar size, I've increased the sample size from one year to ten. The idea is that it's important to put the present price increases into a larger context. Let me walk readers through my graph to illustrate this point.

Each bar in both graphs represent a month's average gasoline price. If you look at the first graph, you will see that it ends at June of 2022 and the one I made from Statistics Canada data goes to May 2022. The lowest price for the first chart is ten bars back from the end. Counting nine bars back from the end of my chart will take the view to the same place (it's bar number 77). If you go back another 12 months, you will find the lowest gasoline price in the last ten years (that's bar 65 or April 2020 when it was at $79.1/liter).  

The larger sample size illustrates that markets tend to bounce around. Sometimes things cost more, sometimes less. Right now the market is trying to correct itself from the pandemic (which isn't really even over yet) at the same time that the world's largest oil producer is under an embargo because it invaded it's neighbour. Surprise, surprise, right now the cost of gasoline is going up!

Once we've gained a little more perspective on the price increase, let's think about how much of an impact that 5.7 cents/liter gas tax has on the overall cost. If gasoline now costs as much as $2.00/liter, removing the tax is only 2.85% of the total cost. I might be a grump, but if something goes up by 45% removing a tax that only ads 2.85% to the price doesn't really help all that much.

&&&&

The next issue to think about is what inflation means for people. To understand this point, we need to understand the difference between "elastic" and "inelastic" demand. Elastic demands are ones that people can do without entirely or which can be satisfied by some sort of alternative produce. 

With regard to food costs, if the price of potato chips and soda pop goes up, people can just do without. If lettuce gets too expensive, you might find that cabbage is still affordable so you make coleslaw instead of Caesar salad.

Inelastic demand is the part of your consumption footprint that it's hard to do without. Both housing and transportation fit the bill---we have to have a place to live and the vast majority of Canadians live where they cannot walk or bike to wherever they need to be. And even if you wanted to find a cheaper place to live or way to get around, doing both requires a fair amount of long-term planning and may simply not be an immediate option no matter how much you would want them to be. 

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean that it's impossible. And this is especially true with regard to gasoline prices. It just requires a little forethought and long-term thinking. 

This is especially important with regard to transportation, because for the last few decades two contradictory trends have been working their way through the auto industry---ones that have a direct impact on the cost of gasoline. 

First of all, the energy efficiency of smaller cars has increased dramatically. Take a look at the first of three graphs I'm copying from a Conversation article. 

If you're having trouble seeing the numbers, click on the picture.

As you can see, between 2005 and 2013 there was a pretty substantial reduction in the liters of gasoline used to drive 100 kilometers (something like from 10 to 8, or 20%---that's the equivalent of a 20% reduction in the price of gasoline!) but this stalled and then started to go back up in 2015. What this means is that over the long haul, personal transportation is an elastic demand---you can cut the amount of gasoline you have to buy by choosing increasingly efficient types of vehicles. (I will ad the caveat however, that this only applies to people who have enough disposable income to pick and choose their ride. Poor people have to drive whatever second-hand car they can afford---which often means a gas-guzzler.)

Remember the "back-sliding" in fuel efficiency in the above graph that started in 2013? If you look at the next graph, you can see what caused it. (Hint, it had little to do with poor folks driving rust buckets.)

Even though trucks (which includes pickups, SUVs, and, vans in automotive discussions) have gotten more efficient than they used to be, they are inherently less efficient than cars. That means if a significant fraction of the population stop buying compact cars and switch to trucks, they are going to end up paying more at the filling station. And the difference between the two is going to be a LOT MORE than the 5.7 cents/liter tax the province levies.

So why have Canadians decided to buy gas-guzzling trucks instead of fuel-efficient compact cars? The simple answer is because they can afford it. The following graph shows the relationship between the cost of gasoline and the efficiency of the vehicles people drive. It's obvious that if the price of gasoline goes down, lots of people stop considering mileage when they purchase a vehicle, and, vice-versa. 

 

But that's just one part of the reason why people buy trucks. There's also a psychological issue at play. 

&&&&

Writing these articles takes a lot of time and effort. But I know that some people enjoy reading them enough to buy a subscription or toss something in the tip jar. If you can afford it, why not join them?  Paypal and Patreon make it easy to do. (Thanks Anthony for being so awesome!) And now you can also follow me on Substack---just look for Hulet's Backgrounder. 

&&&&

I grew up on a farm. We always had a pickup truck. My first paid gig as a kid involved growing sweet corn which my father took in the pickup to sell to a local grocery store. We used it to ship pigs to the slaughter house, move sand and gravel, the cement mixer and other tools, rubble, garbage, lumber, etc. It got dings, it got manure on it, it got scratched going down gravel roads and pushing through the bush on trails. It got muddy or dusty when I drove it out onto fields loaded with fertilizer. It worked just as hard as we did. But when we went to visit family or do something else non-work related, we drove the Chevy Chevelle (I know, that was a "muscle car" instead of a compact, but we bought it second-hand and my older brother was involved in the purchase.)

I am absolutely amazed at the extremely expensive, "tricked-out" pickups I see on the streets of Guelph. These aren't working trucks---they're fashion statements. Last week I saw one of these things drive over the onions in my boulevard garden because the driver was so far above ground that he lost track of where his wheels were. The beast looked something like the truck below.

The jpg file is actually labelled Cool Truck-Sexy Truck. (Give me a break!)

Not only did the vanity prop that crushed my chives and walking onions look like it had never done a day's work in it's life, it is also an inherently dangerous thing to drive. That's because---among other things---raising a truck like this pushes up the center of gravity (roll-overs on turns), lowers the ability of drivers to see around them (hence my crushed garden), and, towers over the "crumple zones" that are designed to protect other drivers in car crashes. And they get terrible gas mileage too.

So why exactly are people driving these ugly monstrosities? I cannot believe that it is for any other reason than because it projects the image of "masculinity" for people who can't think of anything more intelligent to waste their money on. This was driven home to me a few years ago when I saw a truck that had a set of fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch.

The advert that went with this photo said these "truck nuts" cost $70.

What is going on here? I suspect that it's because a fraction of the population use trucks in the forlorn hope that some of the luster of the "macho red-neck lifestyle" will rub off on them. If you think I'm pushing things too far, consider the following advert.

(Having spent at least part of my life doing the sort of things associated with these "truck tropes", I feel that it should go without saying that this is nostalgic nonsense. There's nothing "cool" about dangerous, hard, physical labour. It doesn't pay all that well and leads to osteoarthritis.)

&&&&

There's another aspect to this tax cut that I think needs to be shouted from the rooftops, but which I've never heard anyone mention in the mainstream press. There's an opportunity cost to any tax cut. 

Opportunity costs are what economists call any the things you can no longer do because you made a decision to do something else. So if you decide to take the kids to Disney Land and this costs $2000, that means you can't put that money into a fund to support them if they want to go to university. In the same way, if the government of Ontario decides to cut the gas tax for half the year, this means that they won't have that money to put into hiring more nurses for our hospital emergency departments.

Ontario has a tradition of using gasoline tax revenue to fund public transit. In the 2021-2022 year, for example, Guelph received $3,247,990 from the province that was announced as coming from our gasoline taxes. (There was a one-time 'top up' from general revenue this year because of the decline in gas tax revenue due to the pandemic---but this wasn't to increase the amount paid, just to maintain it in the face of a shortfall because people were driving a lot less than usual that year.) In total, gas taxes funded provincial transit that year to the tune of $375.6 million.

This has been going on for a while. In the 2019-2020 year Guelph Transit received $3,150,233, and all the province's cities received $321.5 Million in 2014 and $332.9 million in 2015 . Please note, I am not saying that the provincial government is going to cut the amount of money it puts into public transit, only that it will have to cut what it funds somewhere. (If it just borrows the money, that too is another cut. That's because the current Ontario debt is around $400 billion, and the interest charges that the government had to pay on it in 2020 was $13.3 billion---the fourth largest item in the budget. And remember that the interest rates were very, very low in 2020. They are now going up, which will make that number grow---even if the province were to immediately stop all borrowing. This means that unless the govt stops cutting taxes and begins to increase them, it has to cut programs in order to service the debt.)

&&&&

I understand and sympathize with some poor schmuck who is trying to make a few bucks making deliveries for Amazon or one of the food delivery services. That's why I rarely use either. But I have zip, zero, nadda concern about people whining because it's costing them more to run their SUV, jacked-up pick-up truck, or, Winnebago. These are people who have heard and read about the risk we are all running of heading into a runaway climate catastrophe, who have enough disposable income to choose unnecessarily expensive vehicles, and, yet still choose to buy stupidly wasteful ones. These people made their choices, which suggest they were indifferent to the impact of those choices on other people, and, are now paying the price for their insensitive, crass decisions. Karma's a bitch---learn from it.    

What I find despicable (yup that's the right word) is that the Conservatives have decided that in the face of the real problems that poor people (ie: the poor slobs driving worn-out cars to deliver Uber Eats because they can't get a better gig) are having, they didn't come up with a targeted program to help these genuinely distressed people. Instead, they just threw away badly needed government revenue because of the symbolic effect it will have on the middle and upper income members of the province. I say symbolic, because it is so small that it will have pretty much no positive impact on any of them.

That's what happens when you elect a combination of people who make their decisions either on the basis of ideologically-based ignorance or opportunistic politics. Could someone tell me why there are so many people in this province who support these boobs?

&&&&

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

Vacation Break

Howdy readers. 

In a recent post I mentioned that people who have a problem maintaining a good work/life balance tend to conflate vacation with travel. It recently occurred to me that it's been a while since I took some time off from this blog. To that end, I'm going to take a couple weeks off from publishing stories. Because I need to keep the conveyor belt moving, I'll still be doing a few 'behind the scenes' tasks---but other than that, I'll be taking a 'stay-cation'. 

See yah later---.

 

Cult Smashers: Part Twenty Nine

Sally told Nate that she had a day-long field trip planned for them with several stops. Once they got on the highway and could safely talk, she explained what the first stop was going to be.

“You’ve been working pretty hard the past two weeks on what we learned during our field trip to see the mentalist. Today I want to test one of the lessons in ‘real world conditions’. To that end, I’m going to see how well you can use ‘confidence speak’ to ‘buffalo’ someone.”

Sally paused to change lanes.

“I’ve got an expensive laptop in the trunk that was purchased at Costco and a fake membership card plus more fake ID in my pocket. I want you to go into the store with both and convince the person at the returns kiosk to give you a refund. The membership card won’t work, but it will look like a problem with your membership on the mainframe computer, not like it is a counterfeit.”

Nate sat bolt upright in his seat. “You want me to try to get a refund on an item that might be stolen using a fradulent card?”

Sally smiled, “Well, it’s not stolen---I have the receipts on me in case they call the cops. And the card is such a good fake that no one is going to give you a hard time over it once I produce the receipts. Moreover, the laptop is in perfect condition---which means nothing is going to happen if you get into the worst case situation.”

“But having said that, I’m asking you to go through the motions of being a thief who is selling stolen goods. I’ll explain why after the fact.”

By this point she had taken the turn off and was heading towards the parking lot. She shortly parked the car and popped the trunk. She pulled out one of those plastic card holders from a pocket in her vest and handed it to Nate. “There’s the Membership card plus a driver’s license and one of those prepaid credit cards. You can use them as back-up ID. The box in the trunk has the computer. (You’d best take a look at it before you go into the store.) I’ll be waiting here for you when you get back.”

Nate was a bit nervous at this point. “But what if things go sideways?”

“You have my cell phone number.”

She pulled a paperback out of her purse. “Now get cracking. We have other things to do today.”

&&&&

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

What is Travel? A Review of Stuart A Ross's _Lost in Latin America_

I've always been a bit "out of step" with both my friends and most of my generation when it comes to travel. It's almost an article of faith among them that travel broadens. I don't think I've ever believed this. Instead I tend to believe in another credo: some people travel farther walking around the block than others do when going to the other side of the world. The difference between the two is what I think people should think about when they brag about how much jet fuel they've burnt in the modern race to create runaway climate change.  

&&&&

I'm going to anchor this op ed around a review of Stuart A Ross's Lost in Latin America. It's a short little book that has the virtue of being a somewhat unvarnished account of what it was like to be one of those "travel to X on a shoestring" people in the 1970s. It's exactly the sort of book that future historians and sociologists will use as a primary resource for trying to understand what it was like to be a privileged North American traveling in the Global South---something of a Samuel Pepys of the 1970s hippy travel culture.  

 

Ross is a therapist by profession (his short biography states that he was "chief psychologist at the Homewood Health Centre for 28 years") and among the basic, factual description of his travels, he is careful to share concise descriptions of his mental states as he remembers them.

Traveling alone can be lonely, but boredom can be worse. One has a lot of free time with slow travel. Waiting for boats, buses, train schedules, visa offices, etc. And here in Puntarenas, sitting in my dumpy little flat, I was a prime example. Traveling had slowed to a standstill. The 'distraction' of motion had turned into too much time to reflect. As for traveling, what happens when visiting museums, art galleries, historic sights and incredible scenery becomes the norm? The bigger question is what is my life's purpose? With so many things for a young man to do, how does he ever choose? 

Lost in Latin America, p-73

Pay attention to the above quote, as I think Ross alludes to two issues that I think are deeply important to understanding the appeal of travel. 

&&&&

 

I recently signed up with Substack, which is a publishing service for independent journalists like yours truly. I'm offering my posts for free right now, but if you have a subscription, maybe you'd like to read my posts there instead of off the Blogger website. I'll be posting my articles there, but as of now, not the weekend literary supplement. (That may change in the future.) On this site I'm not listed as "The Guelph-Back-Grounder", but rather as "Hulet's Backgrounder"---more about the name change later.

As always, if you like what I write and can afford it, why not subscribe through Pay Pal or Patreon? 

 

&&&&

The first point is where he writes The 'distraction' of motion had turned into too much time to reflect. The is a paradox here. How can someone be 'distracted' at the same time as having 'too much time to reflect'? The answer is to ask what one is distracted from and what they are reflecting on.

Decades ago I sat on the Board of a local NGO and took on the task of looking into the well-being of the full-time staff that worked there. As part of this, I started looking into the issues around 'burn-out'. The statistics were dire. A much, much higher percentage of NGO management suffer from burn out than in the private sector. To that end, I looked into the research on what were indicators of whether or not your employees were suffering from it. 

One of the biggest 'red lights' was how people spent their vacation time. If someone always traveled when they had time off, it was an indication that they hadn't developed an adequate 'work/life' balance. It meant, in a nutshell, that the only way these people could mentally separate themselves from the job was by physically separating themselves from the workplace----and the greater the distance, the better.

The second element that Ross is talking about, the 'too much time to reflect', is something I know all too well. One of the reasons why I hate travel is because I don't like sitting on my ass for long, long periods of time with nothing useful to do. This isn't to say that I cannot do it. In fact, I probably have a much, much higher tolerance for this sort of thing than almost anyone else I know. (That's probably because I've spent so much time doing formal meditation.)

I learned about this traveling back and forth to Saint Louis Missouri on Amtrak, Greyhound, and, Mega Bus. It routinely took more than 24 hours to do this---sometimes a lot more. For example, when I took the Train from Toronto there was a regular 14 hour layover in Buffalo---at a tiny train station in the middle of an industrial area with almost zero amenities nearby. Another trip I ended up being locked into the London Greyhound station when it shut down overnight because I had nowhere else to stay while I waited for my connection.

And the travel itself was sometimes appalling. One trip---in January---someone sprayed some perfume on the bus and the driver was so angry about having to smell it that she opened up the air flow wide open and everyone on the bus froze for the entire journey from Chicago to Detroit---even though we were all in our heavy winter coats. 

 

Another time Greyhound changed a route for a bus I was on without telling me, which resulted in my not making my connection. When I asked for another ticket so I could get home, the woman at the counter said that all the buses were filled up for the next couple days. 

 

(This is a case where I ended up leaning on my middle-class privilege. Instead of sitting on a bench for two days, I got a partial refund plus a ticket to the border. Then I called Via Rail and got a train home. I also rented a hotel room in Windsor for the evening. A poor person would have spent the days in the Chicago station.) 

 

I also learned that once you crossed the border the nice Canadian buses were exchanged for worn-out American ones that were a lot less comfortable. By the end I was traveling with one of those circular, inflatable cushions that pregnant women often use because my butt hurt so much after extended periods of time on worn-out bus seats. 

I could mention a lot more, but the point is that if you are poor (or traveling like a poor person---which Stuart Ross was doing in his book), you have a lot of opportunities for introspection. But even if you are well off, anyone who can't fly on their own personal executive jet is bound to have to spend a lot of time waiting in lines or sitting on their butts waiting to have the opportunity to sit on their butts for a many hours more.

Why do people like to travel if it is like this? I would suggest that beyond being separated from an all-encompassing job, this 'enforced boredom' is the only time that a great many people have to engage in introspection. I'm not saying that people who travel consciously understand this, but rather that there is an instinctual drive towards introspection that manifests itself in people's willingness to continue to travel---even though they would go absolutely berserk if someone told them that they had to undergo all this waiting as part of their ordinary, everyday life.

&&&&

There's another part to travel that bears talking about. There's the randomization. When people travel they often find themselves in the situation of having to think fast to respond to a totally unexpected situation. In Ross's book, he is following a guide book that recommends a trip down the river by boat to a place called "Porta Plata". Without sufficient Spanish to really understand what is going on, he takes passage on a boat and finds out that it has gone past his destination without stopping. When he starts freaking out to the boat's captain by repeating the words "Porta Plata" over and over again, he is dropped off on the bank of the river with a finger pointing upstream.

A fellow walks out of the bush carrying a gun and wearing a couple bandoliers of ammunition. Fortunately for Ross, he turns out to be a helpful local who provides him with supper and a place to stay for the night and then walks him up a jungle trail towards Porta Plata and then leaves him. Before going, he points to a smaller jungle trail and utters those magic words "Porta Plata". 

The early evening was approaching with me expecting to have found something by now. Lost, helpless, terrified. Jungle noises building to a peak with my anxiety. Claustrophobia, thick as the tangled vines I was pushing through, stumbling ahead without clarity. A metaphor for my current life, as well as my only option. Nowhere to hang a hammock. Too wet for a fire. Too dangerous to lay down for a sleepless night. The remaining daylight dimmed to darkness. I felt lost. Rather than stopping, I chose to keep going, praying I was still on the path and that I would survive.

Lost in Latin America, p-53

At that point, Ross hears the call of a rooster----which means that there is at least a subsistence farm nearby and heads towards the sound. Eventually he stumbles into a clearing while in total darkness. Exhausted, he pitches his hammock and mosquito net between two conveniently-placed poles that he finds by touch, and goes into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, he finds that he's been sleeping in the Porta Planta farmer's market and one of the local vendors wants Ross to take down his hammock so he can set up his stall.

Everyone who's done any traveling has had this sort of experience. In one way or another you will find yourself having to make a very quick decision to deal with a situation that you didn't expect to happen. And when you are in the grips of it, you will think that the stakes are extremely important. I think that paradoxically this is also one of the appeals of traveling. 

There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill

There is something in human beings that likes being thrilled by danger. That's why people ride roller coasters. 

&&&&

Moreover, there's a social element to this too. Not only is there an adrenaline rush in trying to make your connection or find a work-around, there's also a secondary mellow that comes from talking about it with your friends afterwards. This is such a common phenomenon that it has an English phrase to describe it: dining out. The idea is that someone who has had an extraordinary adventure is in high demand at dinner parties because the host and other guests want to hear the story.

This is such a common experience that Phillip K. Dick wrote a short story titled We Can Remember It For You Wholesale on the premise (it has also been made into two different movies titled Total Recall). The idea is that if the only reason people go on trips is to remember experiences that you can later relate to your family and friends, why actually go on a trip when you can just download the memories of someone else? That way you can dine out on the experience---but not have to worry about actually being stuck in the middle of a jungle to feed the mosquitoes and worry about ever getting back to civilization. 

But this isn't just about having a story to relate over coffee at a dinner party. Modern society is so complex that it requires an enormous amount of regimentation to even work at all. (That's why whenever something unexpected happens---like a plague year or the war in Ukraine---the economy goes through spasms of things like inflation or labour shortages.) The problem for people is that we just aren't constructed to live the same old life day after day. Being a hunter/gatherer is about doing a lot of very different things according to the time of the year and the specific circumstances of any given moment. We are hard-wired to deal with the odd 'out of the blue' event---large predators, wild weather, etc. If life is too predictable, the part of our psyches that evolved to deal with such things seems to get itchy and needs to be exercised. For a lot of people, I suspect that this is what travel is all about---whether they know it or not. 

&&&&

If you've been following me up to this point, I'll recapitulate. To my mind there are four key parts to the 'travel experience':

1. Getting away from whatever usually dominates your consciousness
2. Long periods of time with nothing to do, which forces introspection
   
3. The odd scary, unplanned event that forces people to act instinctively
4. Gaining social prestige that grants status at social events (ie: 'dining out')
   

This brings me back to the saying some people travel farther walking around the block than others do when going to the other side of the world. What I understand this to mean is the items I've listed above can be achieved without actually physical travel. Moreover, the corollary is also true---it is possible to travel without experiencing each of them---and many people actually do so. 

The second point is relatively easy to illustrate. If you are able and willing to pay a lot of money, you can minimize points 2 and 3. If money's no object, you can travel by the fastest way possible which goes from express flights all the way up to private jet. In addition, you can avoid boredom/introspection by spending the extra money for things like privileged boarding arrangements and first class/VIP seating. This includes things like lots more room to spread out and work, plus entertainment like being able to watch movies while burning lots of jet fuel. In effect, with enough money you can change your travel time into working at a desk, sitting on a sofa watching tv, or, even sleeping in a bed.

As for getting adrenaline jolts because of unexpected events, if you have enough money you can hire 'minders' to make sure that your experience is flawless. You can stay in first rate hotels that are booked in advance. And you can stay in gated resorts where the 'riff raff' are never allowed in---and the only random locals you will meet are servants.

As for 'dining out' on your experience, once you get rich enough that ceases to be an issue. No matter how boring you might be, the fact that you are rich will bring more than enough fawning attention from people who want some of your money.

Even among the more well-off, however, there are folks who really do want the 'full' travel experience. But I would argue that even these people's needs can be serviced without burning a gram of petroleum distillate.

&&&&

Let's look at the first item on my list: "getting away". This really is another way of saying that people need to balance what they do for a living and everything else in their life. This can be better achieved by deciding to set limits about how much work is going to intrude into your life---and sticking to them. To be fair, there are a lot of careers where it is expected that you will not have a life/work balance. But people should be more ready to fight to diminish these expectations on the part of employers. (One friend of mine in the computer industry told me about being so angry about this that he threatened his boss by telling him that he knew where he lived and if things didn't change at the office, he'd be sorry---not my preferred option, but it seemed to work for him.) And if it simply isn't possible to get the management to be reasonable, then I'd suggest that you shouldn't be working in that environment. We only have one life to live and wasting most of it for prestige or money is a fool's bargain.  

(Anyone who is forced by poverty to work at whatever they can get isn't going to be spending a lot of time traveling, so this issue just isn't going to arise in the first place.)

Even if you have a high stress job that eats your consciousness without intruding too much in the hours of the day, it is possible to find something that will 'take you away' from it. Many people devote themselves to hobbies, passions, nature, politics, charities, etc, as a 'respite' from the idiocy they have to endure as a means of making money. But in these cases too, there needs to be some sort of willingness on the part of employers to leave workers the time and energy after work to be able to do something productive. (I've had jobs that were so tiring that on the way home I'd get some take out, eat, fall asleep listening to the radio, and, wake up in time to make the next day's lunch and then go to bed. I'm lucky---this was just a summer 'vacation' gig while a student.)

As for the need for introspection, I'd suggest that this can be dealt with through a regular meditation practice. This needn't be a heavy-duty practice of Zen meditation. It can be exercise---something like yoga, taijiquan, running, pilates, etc. It could also be not much more than undertaking some sort of repetitive work that most folks would call "boring". (I did a lot of thinking as a child while hoeing in the garden and ploughing fields.) A little 'boring work' can be a good thing to center yourself. The problems arise when our workplaces are organized to separate jobs into slots of 'knowledge workers' and 'drones'---with the former getting all the stress and latter all the boredom. (When I'm writing and hit a bit of writer's block, I often do some housework or go out and pick a bucket of weeds in the garden.)

As for trying to get the thrill of the unplanned in your life, I've had so many "thrilling/terrifying/horrifying" experiences in my life that I tend to lack much interest in adding to the list. But it is possible to dramatically increase the 'spice' in life without burning tons of jet fuel. 

I once came across a strange little book once that described an experiment that a retired factory manager in India pursued. When retired, he decided to live like a street Sadhu or holy beggar in India. He decided that he would take a vow to view everything that happened to him as 'a command by God'. For example, if no one gave him any food on a particular day, it meant that God wanted him to fast. One of his things was to get onto trains without a ticket and when the conductor came by, he'd either stay on the train or get off as the conductor demanded. As a result he traveled all over India---but without any idea of where he'd end up. He did this for a year and then decided to going back to living the life of an ordinary well-to-do retiree. But he said he found the experience quite interesting, although he wouldn't recommend it for just anyone.   

This is a Sadhu from India.

I've also read about a American Zen Master, Bernie Glassman, who used to take people on urban retreats where they'd have to wear grubby clothes and beg for their food in urban US cities. 

I tried much the same thing in Guelph once. Oddly enough, all I had to do was simply tell myself to say "yes" to whatever came my way and within a few days I found myself going through a series of minor adventures. The one that sticks in my memory was a woman who drove up to me when I was walking down the sidewalk and who asked me if I wanted to shovel her driveway. I said "sure" and jumped in her car. She drove we way out in the boonies, only to see that someone else had already cleared her parking space. At that point she said that she didn't need me after all. She didn't want to leave me with nothing, so she gave me a ticket for a free bowling game (?), and, drove off to do something else. (I had a fun-filled hour or so walking to the nearest bus stop in the cold and snow.) 

I think the point of all of this is that modern people have developed a lot of defense mechanisms that keep other people out of our space. We've internalized them to the point where we aren't even aware of what we are doing. If you doubt me, I'd ask readers to do two things. First, get out of your car and walk around the downtown. I had a friend who gave up her car late in life and moved downtown. She said she was flabbergasted about how many beggars she saw. She never noticed them as a driver. (You won't see them at shopping malls because the security shoos them away.) Second, instead of just walking by and averting your gaze, make a habit of looking each and every beggar in the face. If you really want to follow Alice down the rabbit hole, why not actually give a significant amount of money to the person (ie: between $5 and $20) and ask them how they ended up on the street?

People have to make their own decisions about what their comfort level is with regard to their own personal space, but it really isn't that hard to have local 'adventures' without having to travel to Kookamunga first. It's a question of your headspace---not your physical location.   

&&&&

I'm not really opposed to travel per se. Perhaps in a future world there will be electric airplanes or Star Trek transporters, but in the face of the Climate Emergency it just seems ridiculous to me for people to help make things worse for such a frivolous reason. This seems especially so nowadays when things like universal literacy and the Web have given us all access to the literature and culture of the entire human race.

Having said that, I would like to add one more point. By the end of Ross's book he also seems to have been rethinking the entire travel thing.

What had I learned so far in my travels? On the one hand, wherever I stayed for a few days, I appreciated how cool it was to wake up, go out and sit at a sidewalk cafe, sipping coffee, watching the world pass by, immersed in a foreign culture. After studying the city map and several days exploring, I could stride confidently down the street, knowing a few shortcuts back to the hotel, my momentary home. These first few months had their frustrations---finding myself disoriented looking for a bus station, hotel or restaurant, pretending to understand what people saying while comprehending about 10 per cent of what they said. I had learned to be more compassionate. When I get back to Canada I thought, I'm going to help any lost-looking traveler I meet and be patient if their command of the English language is as limited as my Spanish.  

Lost in Latin America, pp 98-99

When I read Ross's line 

---I appreciated how cool it was to wake up, go out and sit at a sidewalk cafe, sipping coffee, watching the world pass by, immersed in a foreign culture.

I had to mentally ask him "but were you really 'immersed in a foreign culture'", or did you just fool yourself into thinking you were? Tourism suffers from something like the uncertainty principle. The more people go to a place to immerse themselves in a foreign culture, the less foreign it will become as it adapts itself to cater to tourists. I'm reminded of the common anti-Vietnam war poster I saw as a kid. 

I'm not suggesting Ross was trying to kill anyone, but when more and more tourists show up anywhere, the economy, culture, etc, inevitably change---which often means that whatever people like about the place is often destroyed forever.

And if you read the book, it becomes pretty clear that most of the the people that he spent time talking to weren't the locals---it was the other tourists he met in the hostels. As he freely admits in the above quote, he didn't know enough Spanish to understand more than 10% of what locals said to him. And the bits where he really seems to have long conversations were with other tourists. And these (often stoned) rap sessions don't really appear to have been anything that couldn't have happened in Canada.

&&&&

To sum things up, the book is a useful window into what it was like to travel in Latin America during the height of the "counter culture" of the late sixties and early seventies. It's well written and seems to be a fairly honest account of one man's experience. If you are someone who would like to know what it was like to 'travel X on a shoe-string', I'd recommend it. Reading the book will certainly be a lot easier on the planet than trying to recreate the experience.

&&&&

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