===================================================================== Stuck In Traffic "Independent Comment on Current Events and Cultural Phenomena" Issue #13 - April 1996 ========================== Neither Sticks Nor Carrots Poor Bill Clinton. His Bosnian "peace keeping mission" is looking more and more tenuous all the time. What must have first appeared as a sure fire way to boost his reputation as a strong leader on foreign policy issues has been steadily degrading into a situation that some people are labeling the "Lebanon of the '90s." And as if his foreign policy record wasn't weak enough, recent military events in Cuba and China show that Clinton's foreign policy strategies simply aren't working. First, the Cuban military shoots down two civilian aircraft from the United States that were flying toward Cuba. Some reports indicate that the people flying the planes were part of an underground paramilitary movement whose goal is to overthrow the Castro regime, but one knows for sure. In any event, they were civilians in civilian aircraft in international airspace over international waters when they were shot down. There are well documented and well established procedures that every civilized country in the world has agreed to follow in these situations to avoid shooting down civilian aircraft while still maintaining an ability to apprehend civilians suspected to be engaged in illegal activity. For whatever reason, Cuba blatantly disregarded these procedures. The United States was outraged. The rest of the world condemned the shootings. The world eagerly watched for the United States' response. But nothing happened for several days while the White House "studied its options". The White House hinted that it was considering some sort of military action but never took any, which was probably a wise move. Who would the U.S. attack in retaliation? Cuban military targets? Cuban ships in international waters? Castro himself? And more to the point, Castro would probably love a military confrontation with the United States right now and no one knows just how far Castro might be willing to escalate a military conflict. And even though the United States keeps close tabs on Cuba's military strength, there's no way we could guarantee that Cuba would not be able to hit targets in the United States. Without military options at his disposal, Clinton was desperate to show some sort of leadership, Clinton finally proposed an economic embargo on Cuba. But wait, don't we _already_ have a _total_ economic embargo on Cuba? Yes, we do. But the one that the Clinton proposed and congress passed was somehow "tougher" than the current embargo. Just how it was "tougher" is not clear. But other North American governments, most notably Canada, have already complained that the new embargo law asserts extraterritoriality rights to interfere with other countries' commerce that the United States does not have. There will likely be diplomatic wrangling over the new "tougher" embargo for months to come and it's difficult for anyone to say with certainty that the United States will be able to do anything differently under the new, "tougher" embargo than under the old embargo. The net effect? Cuba got away with the shootings. Clinton's reputation as a weak and indecisive foreign policy leader was reinforced. And then there's China, the crown jewel of the Clinton Administration's foreign trade plan for the nation. For years, the Clinton administration has been negotiating with the Chinese government. Enticing them to improve their human rights record, respect international law, and reform their communist system of government with lures of trade agreements, most favored nation trading status, and the like. Now, just as Taiwan celebrates its first fully democratic elections, China has been "testing" its capability to fire missiles into Taiwan and stepped up its rhetorical claims that Taiwan is not an independent country, but a "rogue" province. Clinton has responded with a show of military strength in the area, warning China that the U.S. would likely come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked it. Suddenly, all the progress made over the past couple of years on improving relations with China has been called into question. Were the Chinese ever really serious about human rights and economic reform? Or were they just telling us what we wanted to hear so that we would give them trade concessions? One thing's for certain, if the United States does enter into a war with China over the independence of Taiwan, trade agreements will be the first diplomatic casualties of the war. So while Clinton has proved to be quicker than usual in deciding how to respond to China's threats, he has at the same time undermined everyone's confidence in the Chinese trade agreements. What company wants to make major investments in China knowing that the United States could easily find itself at war with them? Bill Clinton's fundamental problem in both of these situations is not so much that he failed to take action or did the wrong thing, but that so much of his foreign policy strategy is based on the idea that hostile governments can be led or coerced by economic incentives. In the case of Cuba, 30 years of a total economic embargo has failed to change Castro's mind about how to run a government and has failed to generate any grassroots movement for change within Cuba. In the case of China, doling out economic favors has failed to produce anything from the Chinese except the tamest lip service toward to notions of basic human rights or democratic self-government. Trade in goods and services with the United States can neither be used as a stick to beat on our opponents with nor a carrot to lead them down the right path. Bill Clinton should stop trying. It just makes him look more like a fool. ======================= "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels." --Goya ============================================== The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming! It seems that every couple of years, there is a rash of news stories about factory automation. We are treated to hordes of news stories about how factory workers are being replaced by robots by this company or that company. We see Japanese factories that are so automated that they don't even have lights installed in them because the robots don't need them. American car companies proudly show off their robotic assembly lines in their car commercials. We hear about vision systems being designed for robots. We see stories about how much more agile, how much faster, and how much more accurate robots are. These news stories are invariably accompanied with dire warnings about how the boom in robotics spells doom for unskilled workers. We are left with the question, "How will unskilled workers be able to support their families?" I believe that this panic mongering is totally unfounded. Robots are still quite limited to the types of tasks they can do. Despite all the hype, robots are far from being general purpose machines. They are designed to do only one very specialized, mostly repetitive task. It's impossible for them to do anything outside of that vary narrowly defined task. It is true that robots are becoming more accurate, faster, cheaper, and more flexible. And jobs that are literally repetitive motions and _nothing_ else will eventually be mechanized as robots become more agile. But so what? Those jobs have a very high "burn out" rate and high turn over. No one really wants those jobs anyway, especially at low wage rates. But does that mean there will be millions of out of work, unskilled people roaming the streets? I don't think so. Not any time soon at least. Most jobs that we think of as "unskilled" nonetheless require a human touch, or at least are sufficiently engaging that an unskilled, but conscientious worker can and would do a better job than any machine could. I'm thinking primarily about a services type industries. Would you want a robot for a receptionist? Would you rather a robot or an enthusiastic person asking you, "would you like fries with that?" Furthermore, I think you have to have a pretty static notion about the concept of a job to think that machines will take over and replace essentially unskilled labor. Job duties are always changing. There are always unexpected events that must be dealt with. There are always opportunities to demonstrate creativity, no matter how humble the job. An unskilled, caring crew member at McDonald's acquires additional value and "skill" simply by accumulating experience regarding the best ways to run the restaurant over time. I'm not sure that machinery has reached this level of sophistication yet. I think there are lots of jobs that are sort of borderline between being "unskilled" and "skilled." Take for example, a clerk in an auto-parts store. Basically his job his helping customers identify a part they need and then retrieving the part from the store's warehouse if it's in stock. That much of the job could be automated. You could probably even automate placing a special order for a part that's not in stock. But a _good_ clerk will do much more than that for his/her customers. A good clerk will know about all the competitors in the area and will be willing to help a customer track down parts if his particular store does not have them. A good clerk will know about alternative options for finding parts in the surrounding area. Where are the good junk yards? Who gives the best deals? A good clerk will develop "inside connections" at the company's warehouse and will be able to get special orders quicker than the official company policy says is possible. If the hypothetical clerk learns all these things over his tenure at the store, who can say he is not skilled? Who can say he is not educated? A good clerk at an auto parts store will transcend his humble position and become an "auto parts broker." I don't think a machine has yet been invented that can replace a caring, conscientious worker who has a good work ethic, no matter how "unskilled" he or she may be. ========================= The Politics of Hog Waste June 21st, 1995. Onslow County in the eastern part of North Carolina. 25 million gallons of raw sewage is accidently spilled into the New River. On the same day, in Sampson county, another spill dumps another 1 million gallons of raw sewage into river tributaries. State environmental officials scurry around investigating and, by the end of the summer, they have documented spills and leaks of raw sewage in North Carolina totalling 35 million gallons, triple the size of the spill of the Exxon-Valdez. How could this happen? Who's at fault? Aren't there laws against this sort of thing? You might think that answering these questions is simply a matter of following the trail of muck up stream until you found its source. But you would be wrong. The vast majority of the $35 million gallons of raw sewage was spilled from "family farms" and almost all of it was hog sewage. And that has made all the difference. Hog farming has become big business in North Carolina over the past couple of decades. Agricultural scientists and politicians have long sought ways to vitalize the poor economic regions of in the eastern part of the state and wean farmers off their key cash crop of tobacco. They've tried to lure big industrial concerns to the area with only limited success. They've tried to get farmers to grow other crops with only a little more success due to the poor quality, sandy soil in the region. But raising hogs has worked. North Carolina has literally revolutionized the hog farming industry with high-tech, high density contract hog farming. High density contract farming has been around for a while in other farm industries, most notably chicken farming. But one North Carolinian by the name of Wendell Holmes Murphy, whom our local News & Observer derisively refers to as "Boss Hog", adapted this farming technique to hog farming and made himself rich. Other companies quickly followed his model, setting up hog farms all over eastern North Carolina (now known as "The Hog Belt"). Currently, about 7 million hogs per year are produced on North Carolina hog farms and they industry is still growing fast. The economic boon so many politicians had been looking for was here. In the old days of the family farm, you built a hog pen at the back of your lot somewhere and kept a couple of dozen hogs in it. You fed them feed you bought from your local mill supplemented with scraps and refuse from your dinner table or local grocery stores. When the hogs were fully grown, you loaded them on a truck and took them off to market to be sold and slaughtered. The problem is that it takes several years to raise a hog. If your hogs catch cholera and the government quarantines your farm, you've lost your multiyear investment in the hogs. And even if you are able to get the hogs to market, there's no guarantee that you will be able to sell the hogs at a profit since hog prices are quite volatile and it's difficult to know years ahead of time what the prices will be. So a farmer doesn't really know how many hogs he can afford to be raising. Contract farming reduces the small family farmers' risks because the farmer doesn't actually own the hogs he's raising. Instead, he signs a contract with a corporate hog wholesaler like Prestige, Carroll's Foods, Smithfield, and Murphy Family Farms, in which he agrees to raise a certain number of corporately owned hogs on behalf of the corporation in exchange for a fixed fee per hog. The great thing about this system is that the farmer knows ahead of time just how much money he's going to receive for the hogs. The corporations assume the risks of buying and selling hogs in the commodities markets. That's what they're good at and how they make their money. The contract farmer is responsible for the capital investment in his farming buildings, machinery, and land; but these are factors that are relatively fixed, fairly easily predicted, and within the farmers' control. And even though these farms are typically owned by an individual family, they are no longer a "small, family farms" They are big operations. You can't just build a hog pen on the back of your lot anymore and put a couple of hogs in it. You have to build "hog confinement barns" which can cost in the neighborhood of $300,000 dollars but are capable or raising thousands of hogs at a time. But farmers are flocking to this new system of farming because there are big bucks to be made. A careful, efficient farmer can make pay off the mortgage on his hog barns in 10-15 years and still make about $10.00 per hour during that period. After the mortgage is paid off on his barns, he stands to make big money. Of course nothing is guaranteed in any business, but the risks are well within the norm for any small business. Oh, and by the way. There's just one more tiny important detail about the contract farmer's role in this system. According to state law, since he is the one in charge of the actual hog farming operation, he is also responsible for environmental safety concerns. It's amazing how often the economic interests of the state fall in line with the economic interests of business. It's easy when they are represented by the same people, as is the case with North Carolina's hog industry. Not only is the hog industry one of the biggest contributors to political campaigns in the state, the politicians themselves are often also hog farmers. Lauch Faircloth is a hog farmer by trade. Jim Hunt, North Carolina's Governor, is the biggest recipient of contributions from North Carolina's largest hog company. The chair of our State House environmental committee is going into the hog raising business. The chair of the state senate's committee on the environment and agriculture is the pork industry's biggest recipient of campaign contributions. But no where is the collusion between the hog industry and the government more obvious than the career of the man of who is most responsible for North Carolina's hog farming revolution, Mr. Wendell Holmes Murphy, founder of Murphy Family Farms and former state legislator for 10 years. During his tenure as a state legislator, and at the same time he was growing his hog raising business, Mr. Murphy sponsored, lobbied and supported a steady stream of laws designed to help the farming industry. Equipment related to raising stock on a farm is exempt from sales tax. Gasoline used in transporting livestock and livestock feed is exempt from sales tax. Ingredients purchased for feed for hog and poultry production are exempt from the 12 cent/ton inspection fee. Feed and other supplies used in raising livestock is exempted from county property taxes. "Bona fide" farms, including hog farms, cannot be regulated by a county under it's zoning authority. This prevents counties from dealing with issues like odors from the farms, annexation, etc. Farmers, including hog farmers, are exempt from labor laws, minimum wage laws, and vehicle weight restriction laws. Are these favors good for Mr. Murphy's economic interests? Are these exemptions good for the hog industry? Are these exemptions good for farmers in general? Are these exemptions good for the economy of the state? One can reasonably answer "Yes" to all these questions. Lifting the burdensome taxation and regulation of the state is always a benefit. (One wonders why we don't lift these regulations for _all_ industries) And according to North Carolina law, it's entirely "ethical" for a legislator to lobby for legislation that would be favorable to his economic interests as long as they can say that his economic interest does not cloud his judgement. What about protecting the environment? What about those 35 million gallons raw hog sewage spilled into North Carolina waters? Because of the way the law is structured in North Carolina, the owner of the hog _farm_ is responsible for the environmental impact of his operation, not the owner of the actual _hog_ itself. Though I don't know the history of how this came to be, I think it's safe to assume that this is not by accident. The farm owners are held responsible for the hog waste specifically because they are the one who can least afford it. Next to his mortgage payments and his stock feed expenses, getting rid of all that hog waste is the most expensive and difficult problem a hog farmer faces. And we're talking about lots of hog waste. The average hog produces twice as much waste as the average human. So North Carolina's 7 million hog population produces roughly the same amount of raw sewage that the city of New York does. If the hog farmer had to process all that sewage in waste treatment centers just like cities have to do with human sewage, it would be a huge addition to his expenses. So the state government/hog industry has been kind to the "small, family farmer." Instead of requiring farmers to process the hog sewage and make is safe before discharging it, the state just lets hog farmers spray the sewage on the ground. This is actually a cheap, efficient, environmentally friendly way of getting rid of the sewage. The ground absorbs the sewage and bacteria break down the sewage into harmless nutrients that are good for the soil and crops. The main problem is the unpleasant smell. But this is usually done out in rural areas where it's not so much of an issue. The problem is that too much of a good thing can also be bad. And this is the case with the high density hog farms. The land can absorb only so much sewage at a time and if you spray it on too often or too heavily, nitrates begin to build up in the soil and eventually start to contaminate the local water supply. And if you spray hog sewage on the ground during wet and rainy weather, the ground can't absorb it and it seeps directly into the water table before the ground can neutralize the sewage. For these reasons, the state requires hog farmers to build hog waste "lagoons" these are open air pits dug into the ground that hold the hog sewage until it is a safe or convenient time to spray the sewage. Holding the sewage in these lagoons also gives bacteria time to break down the harmful sewage before it's discharged. Some states require that hog waste lagoons be lined with clay liners so that they don't leak into the surrounding ground. North Carolina doesn't. Again because that would be a burdensome expense on the poor, "small, family farmers." In theory, the lagoons are self sealing. And in practice they are self sealing most of the time, although there have been cases discovered where old lagoons develop slow leaks over time. The state carefully regulates how many hogs a farmer may raise on his land based on the farmer's capacity to process the hog waste, i.e., the size of his hog waste lagoons. And excess capacity for the hog lagoons is always factored in to account for unusually long spells of wet rainy weather when the farmer can't spray the sewage. What the state apparently does not take into account for is the fact that hog farmers are human beings, just like everyone else and are therefore prone to delaying unpleasant tasks like dealing with hog waste. As a result, some farmers let their lagoons get too full before emptying them. If they get too full and then there is an unusually long wet spell, they get dangerously full. This is exactly what happened last spring. Some farmers had lagoons that were too full to begin with and then we had an extremely wet and rainy spring. Some of the lagoons got so full that their dikes collapsed, flooding the surrounding area with millions of gallons of sewage. OK. A farmer gets lazy. His lagoons get dangerously full. They burst through their containing dikes, and dump raw sewage into streams. What's the state going to do? Fine him? Sue him? First of all the damage is already done. But more to the point, what good does it do to sue a family farmer? He's already deeply in debt with his hog barn mortgage and so there is no way the state is going to collect enough money to pay for the clean up. You can put him in jail as punishment. You could confiscate his farm. But the only thing you can do with a seized hog farm is sell it to another hog farmer. In an ideal world, you would expect that the people who make a profit from the hog industry are also the people that bear the liability and responsibility for the damages and risks of the venture. Every citizen of the state is required by law to dispose of his own waste in a environmentally responsible way by subscribing to his town's sewer service. Many cities and towns across the nation even require you to clean up your pets' waste and dispose of it properly. But this is not an ideal world. The people responsible for writing and passing legislation are also the same people who benefit, either directly or indirectly, from the hog industry. So the one thing we _haven't_ heard proposed amid all the recent hog waste scandals are proposals that the hog _owners_ should legally be responsible for the risks and liabilities associated with hog waste. Instead we hear more and more proposals from the legislature about how the state needs more power to regulate farm owners to make sure they don't screw up in the future. The state needs more money to spend on monitoring the hog waste lagoons. The state needs more money to study the environmental impact of sewage seepage. It's not hard to understand why the politicians are proposing a larger role for the government in monitoring the hog farmers' activities as a solution. Is it good for their economic interests? Yes, since the hog owners won't bear the costs. Is it good for the farmers? Yes to a degree. The likely result of closer state monitoring will mean that they have to spend more time on waste treatment issues, but their business investment in their hog barns will remain mostly intact. Is it good for the economy of the region? Yes. The basic economics of the industry will remain unchanged. Is it good for the taxpayers in the state? No! Because they will be the ones who have to pay for the expanded state budget. But wait. Convince them that this is good sound investment in the protection of our environment and people will agree that it's good for them as well. And that's exactly the way our state legislature has approached the hog spill disasters. According to the legislators, this is not a problem of legal liability being misplaced, it is an environmental problem that can only be addressed by increasing the state's budget to protect the environment. Remember, the state says that a legislators' actions are "ethical" if his economic interests in a matter do not interfere with his judgement. If he can propose a solution in which everyone feels like they have benefitted, how can anyone blame him for unethical behavior? Whether you blame this shameful situation on big business or on big government is mostly a matter of your personal political biases and arguing about it doesn't get you any closer to a plan that will prevent these disasters from happening in the future. Both are to blame. The only solution is to return the responsibility and liability for the hog waste back to the hog owners where it belongs. ================ Artists' Credits (Obviously, the graphic art is not available in the ascii e-mail edition of Stuck In Traffic, Nonetheless, I want to give credit to the artists whose work appears in the print edition.) Craig Moser: page 2 Craig Moser continues to make a strong showing in the Ottawa zine scene since his first issue of Gunk mini comics made in 1993. In addition, he puts out two other zines under his Ennui Project label: Sneer, a personal zine, and Tom Murphy LameAss Funnies. Address: 36 Empress Ave, Ottawa, ON, K1R 7E8, CANADA email:am795@freenet.carleton.ca trades more than welcome ====================== About Stuck In Traffic Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to independently evaluating current events and cultural phenomena. Why "Stuck In Traffic"? Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now ocurring, the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...." Contact Information: All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers preferably via E-mail (powers@interpath.com) or by mail (2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511). Copyright Notice: Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy Powers. Permission is granted to redistribute and republish Stuck In Traffic for non-commercial purposes as long as it is redistributed as a whole, in its entirety, including this copyright notice. For permission to republish an individual article, contact the author. E-mail Subscriptions: E-mail subscriptions to the ASCII text edition of Stuck In Traffic are free. Send your subscription request to either address listed above. Print Subscriptions: Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available for $10/year. Make checks payable to Calvin Stacy Powers and send to the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $2. Archives: Postscript and ASCII text editions of Stuck In Traffic are archived on the internet by etext.org at the following URL: gopher://gopher.etext.org/11/Zines/StuckInTraffic Trades: If you publish a `zine and would like to trade issues or ad-space, send your zine or ad to either address above. =====================================================================