Supply and Demand

            Today’s blog starts, as many of them do, with me thinking about things. In this case, supply and demand; how it’s supposed to work compared to how it has come to work.

            First, how it’s supposed to work. It’s all in the name: supply and demand. Supply is how much of something is available and demand is how many people want said something. Say, for example, a farmer in a market has ten apples to sell. If there are only five people who want apples, the farmer lowers the price to make the apples more desirable to purchase. On the other hand, if there are fifteen people who want apples, the farmer raises the price – this way, the people who don’t want the apples very much are dissuaded, the people who still want apples get them, and thee farmer makes more money for his work.

            It is a good system and makes a lot of sense. Sure, the farmer loses out a bit when lowering the price on the apples, but none of the apples go to waste and he’ll probably make a little more money by selling all the apples at a lower price than he would selling a few at a higher one. And while the people who found the higher price on the apples disappointing, it will still have been their choice not to buy one, whereas if the farmer had run out they would be likely to be more upset.

            Since the industrial age, though, this had been skewed. Just about anything can be mass-produced these days, and for a fraction of the cost. Theoretically, that means everything should be cheaper, yet the opposite is true.

            If something looks to be popular, it gets mass-produced. Far more of the item gets manufactured than could possibly be needed, just to make sure more than enough is available wherever it could be wanted. Then all the items are priced to cover the additional cost, along with a healthy profit margin, because if people want something enough, they will pay for it.

            The result is that there are many being sold for several times what they are really worth and there are still a lot left behind as waste.

            So, instead of market prices being controlled by supply and demand, they are now controlled by people seeing how much they can get and generating tons of waste.

            It seems to me that by doing better market research (and with less greed), a lot more could be provided to more people for lower costs, for everything from food to entertainment systems to vehicles.

            We have all the resources and skills to make the whole world run smoothly. Why haven’t we done it?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

What is Evil? Really?

            The other day, Colleen asked me how I define evil. My reply was that I don’t, because evil implies someone who does harm through malicious intent. I feel that most people who cause harm do so unintentionally – or, at the very least, think they have the best intentions.

            It did get me thinking, though. If I really had to define evil, how would I do it? What causes people to cause harm?

            Greed was what I came up with first. Greed for wealth or greed for power or greed for anything, really. That’s where evil, if it truly exists, is most visible. It causes people to stockpile money, harming the economy by making less money available to go around. It causes politicians to lie so they can get elected. It starts wars over land or resources. Almost all evil can be linked back to greed.

            Yet, even most of those people don’t view themselves as evil. They feel they’re doing what they must, or perhaps what everyone else is doing.

            That got my mind on the track of how people can cause so much harm and either be unaware or think it’s okay. It brought me to the essence of what motivates people: what they believe. Someone who lives on the streets and must steal to survive might view those who do not help them as evil, and would they be wrong? Is it not more evil to allow someone to starve to death than to help them survive? At the same time, the people being stolen from would view the thief as evil, and would they be wrong? After all, stealing to feed oneself without concern for those being harmed is more evil than choosing to starve to death.

            Both sides have merit, yet neither will budge from their positions. Their views and beliefs are set in stone. They each know with certainty that they are good, and the other is evil.

            So it was that I arrived at the best definition of evil I could come up with.

            All it takes to be evil is to believe you are right and that there is no possibility you are wrong.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Give and Tolerate

            I've been thinking lately that there are only two things causing all the problems in the world: greed and a lack of tolerance for people who are different. It seemed strange to me that, with so many issues in the world, there isn't one that couldn't be solved by eliminating these two things from our lives, but I've yet to find a problem that they aren't at the heart of.

            I think lack of tolerance speaks for itself. Whether it be out of fear of the different or some belief, there are far too many people in the world who want everyone to do what they do and believe what they believe. It causes wars, bullying, terrorism, political debates (as well as providing politicians with an ideal weapon for manipulation) and, more than anything, it breeds hate.

            What good does it do? I suppose, if the people who want everyone to be the same got what they wanted, it would provide security. It will never happen, of course, because the world is so diverse that the only solution would be to save the people with your ideals in a bomb shelter while you nuke the planet. Even if that happened, it wouldn't last – diversity is part of human nature; eventually those unwanted “different” qualities would bounce back.

            On the other hand, if everyone were to simply allow everyone else to believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do, where is the room for problems? Where does hate fit in? I admit that this sounds a bit like the opposite extreme – asking everyone to be the same by accepting those who are different – but all I'm asking is that everyone tolerate people different from themselves. I doesn't matter what you look like, do or believe, just so long as you allow everyone else look like, do or believe as they choose.

            Greed, on the other hand, is an even greater problem. People who crave vast amounts of power or money start wars and cause problems for everyone who just want to live their lives. Can you imagine a world without greed?

            For one thing, we’d be able to feed the world. We already can – we produce enough food, most of it just gets thrown away because those of us living in first world countries want our conveniences such as fast food and having just about anything we can imagine available for us in grocery stores.

            We’d also have less power struggles in the corporate world. Products would be made with quality as the goal rather than making as many as possible as cheaply as possible so they can be sold for as much as possible as many times as possible (because they break easily and need to be replaced). That, right there, just ended the majority of the world’s financial problems. Oh, you could argue that there would be less jobs available because not as many products would need producing, but my reply would be that the products being produced would be worth producing and as a result would take longer to make, giving more people jobs. The price of the individual item would go up, but you’d only have to buy it once. This is assuming, of course, money still exists in a greed-free world.

            Let’s not forget politics. Take the greed out of politics and what do you have? People who actually want the best for their country running the show. Think about all the possibilities! No more of these campaigns to slander the opponents, no more taxes paying for things that no one wants (such as government officials’ new summer retreats) – just people who want to do some good being in a position where they can do so.

            Obviously it is a dream to entirely eliminate greed and lack of tolerance from our world, but it would be nice if people would at least try. Let people who are different than you make you smile because you know they've found something they enjoy. Rather than focusing on making yourself happy, try to make others happy instead. I know it sounds counter-productive but here’s my math on this: if you try to make yourself happy, you have one person making you happy. If everyone tries to make everyone around them happy, then there are a lot more people trying to make you happy.

            Doesn't that sound like a happier world to live in? All you have to do is give and tolerate and teach those around you to give and tolerate. Who knows? Maybe someday all the world’s problems will go away.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.