Just Feel a Compelling Need for a F**king Rant!

Just went out for a few groceries along my favorite routes: along the Danforth from Donlands to Chester, and found out that one of its pivotal businesses is about to close. It will be replaced by a Rexall drug store which will be one of three large chain drug stores in a four block stretch.

Sun Valley Foods has been in the neighborhood for the past three decades. It is a family run business that caters to the local community and I (and many, many others) have found it to be a true pleasure to shop at -- a delightful staff, quality food and reasonable prices.

But they are unable to compete with what is increasingly a duopoly that controls the Ontario grocery business. Despite the fact that the store was packed every day of the week it could no longer maintain profit margins. So rather than taking the subway to an excellent grocery store that buys and sells locally, we will be more and more compelled to drive to a megachain, park in their untaxed parking lot and buy whatever shit, trucked in from whatever third world hellhole, that they decide to serve up. And a shopping district that is one of the best in the city will lose one of its anchor businesses. Inevitably, other businesses will begin to be shuttered.

And this is the real tragedy. A vibrant, alive and pedestrian and cycle oriented streetscape will begin to become just one more corridor for moving cars from suburb to downtown. The spillover value that businesses such as this provide is never recognized until it is gone. Though the jobs are important, it is so much more than jobs.

And it seems to me that as citizens, if we truly give a shit about this, we have to begin to live differently. First, we can spend differently. We can refuse to shop at the major chains no matter how enticing or convenient. And when we stop for a coffee while out shopping we can not make it a Starbucks but instead stop in at a locally owned cafe (or bar, heaven forbid in these puritan times). In other words, rather than blathering on about a hundred mile diet and such nonsense, we can live a life of two or three mile shopping, sans car and at locally owned businesses.

We can also start taxing parking lots as developed land and start pricing gasoline at its social cost, all externalities in, so that we recognize, where it hurts, that driving and parking aren't free and that they impose huge costs. In short, we can start pricing the collective aspects of our lives as if we actually care about liveable urban environments. Or I guess we could simply give up and move to fucking Scarborough.

Revolutionary Subsidiarity

From Matt Taibbi, a tale of the David of local government taking on the Goliath of the financial sector through the use of powers of eminent domain.

This particular idea is a response to a uniquely American problem -- vast numbers of underwater mortgages. But the idea surely has almost unlimited potential: local governments, responsive to the needs of the people rather than corporate power and drawing on capacities unique to them, taking on issues that higher levels of government cannot or will not because they are beholden to those powers.

Moyers and Hedges Interview

This week's guest on Bill Moyers' show was Chris Hedges. Hedges has had a very high profile over the last year or so and has taken on a sort of guru-like status. Still, he has some very important points to make and his latest book, the graphic novel Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt tells an incredibly poignant story of those most left behind in a wealthy society.

Moreover, Moyers is more able than most to zero in on the faith foundation of Hedges work. Here is the interview in its entirety:

Just Saying . . .

I was messing around with charting software this morning looking at the S&P500 over various time periods, trying to get a feel for where this nowhere market might be going. Here is one I found particularly interesting:

This chart shows the broad based index from the mid-seventies until now in monthly increments. For those of a technical bent, two things stand out here. The first is that two simple moving averages, a 200 period, or about seventeen years, and a shorter 50 period, or about four years, have converged and are about to cross. Such a cross usually signals a long term decline.

The second is an emerging pattern in the price data, which is referred to in the literature as a head and shoulder pattern of a high, at the end of the dot com boom, followed by a somewhat higher high, in this case in leading up to the latest debacle and then a somewhat lower high, in this case the peaks of the previous two years. This too is often indicative of a pending long term decline. What is particularly interesting is that both of these are emerging together and are confirmed by falling volume, which is shown in the second pane of the chart.

It would be the height of folly to base predictions on charting such as this, but together with obvious deep structural problems such as the impending demise of the euro zone, historic levels of inequality and unprecedented levels of public, corporate and personal debt fueled by unprecedented interest rates, the long-term outlook is beginning to look frighteningly uncertain.

Indeed, I have believed for some time that much of the developed world is following the Japanese example with a generational lag. If this is the case, then we may be entering a very long period of deflationary decline -- a sort of semi-permanent state of stagnation, with obviously disturbing social and political implications.

Loss of the Commons, Commodification and Powerlesssness

This excerpt from Illich's work popped up on my RSS feed yesterday. It was a reminder that so much that we lament has roots much deeper than we imagine.


The loss of the commons, for instance, whether through enclosures at the dawn of the industrial revolution or through the capture of vernacular practices and ways of life by technology or professional privilege commodifies that which was once freely available and so forces more and more of our lives into the confines of markets with all of the inequalities and suffering that this implies.


But Illich's great contribution was to recognize that this loss of common space, competencies and tools means much more. It alienates us from nature and from each other. It destroys community by rendering all relations between now commodified individuals competitive, often viciously so, and makes plunder of the environment, now a mere commodity as well, inevitable. And in doing so, he shows us, it leaves us powerless and thus dependent on those who would exploit us. 


Illich's arguments are almost always difficult. And they can be frustratingly vague and open ended. He painted on a very large canvas and sometimes seems impatient with those who don't grasp this larger picture. But I would suggest that several decades after his most groundbreaking work, he has more to tell us now then when he first spoke. Though much of his writing is out of print, it has found new life on the internet. Though there are many sites that host his work, this is a particularly useful one.

Crisis? What Crisis?

In a demonstration of breathtaking denial, RIM CEO Heins Thorsten joined CBC Metro Morning's Matt Galloway to explain that RIM, far from being at death's door, is undergoing a "major transition," continues to be a "world leader" and with the release of its new platform (if it ever happens) will regain a dominant position in the smartphone market.

This from a company that has lost 95% of its market value, can no longer execute on new products and maintains its customer base by deeply discounting its hardware, particularly in the third world where other products remain prohibitively expensive.

To my untrained eye, this appears to simply be a breathtaking denial. The beautiful Norwegian Blue parrot is dead. It is not resting. And it is not pining for the fiords.