Climate change

The first step is recognize it


The opinion that the climate change is happening, that we are causing it, that it will bring terrible consequences during the next decades and that we have to do something to prevent it is increasing.

But, as it happens in Alcoholics Anonymous, recognizing the problem is just the first step to solve the problem. 

 Climate Change Summit





During the last years, many summits and agreements about the Climate Change have been proposed, like the famous Kyoto Protocol, where many countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, but these agreements are not very ambitious and important countries like the United States have not ratified them. 

There are other iniciatives, like the Earth Hour, where we are encouraged to turn off our non-essential lights for one hour, that are basically symbolic and quite irrelevant if we want to concern about energy consumption reduction. 




Why aren't we doing anything to prevent the climate change?


Because it is not a priority. Still today, our priorities are earning more money and acquiring more products. If preventing the climate change endangers these priorities, we would stop any important iniciative against the climate change. 

And probably, the climate change will affect seriously our life-style. 

Anyone of us driving our car? Oups, not anymore. 

Taking a flight to the other side of the world to expend our holidays? Just a dream. 

Food of all around the world in the closest supermarket? That was before we had to concern in the future of the Mankind. 


Who will suggest this actions to the population? 

Who will refrain from keeping a confortable life-style to prevent climate change? specially if we can't expect others to do the same. 




And then, what will it happen with the climate change?


As usual, we won't assume the problem until we suffer its terrible consequences, not before. 

Indeed, nowadays our lifes are quite normal. The main problems we are concerned about are those economical, political or personal ones. 

At least it looks like this. During the years 2006-2010 there was a severe drought in the Middle East region. And then, the Arab spring, the Syrian Civil war and the refugees crisis. Was it the fault of the climate change? Maybe, as it is stated that it will bring periods of severe droughts in that regions. 

In the futur, if the climate change threat becomes real, many heavily populated regions will suffer lack of drink water and the production of food can be affected too, and many coastal regions can be flooded. 

As we are not good at managing the decreasing of our life standards, these situation could bring instability, conflicts and huge migrations around. 

In small amounts, maybe this is already happening.

In good company, we wouldn't need so much money

I think that we could be fine just living slightly above the subsistence level, having enough to eat, drink and having a roof that we could call "our place". 

And I think that all that is not really expensive. We wouldn't need to struggle so much to get money as we just to do nowadays, we wouldn't need to ask for loans and we wouldn't need to work so many hours. 

Simple house to live in

But we don't have enough being slightly above the subsistance level. The reason is simple: This level don't ensure us that we will be appreciated by others. 




Our social life depends highly on our purchase power


Our relationships and our plans depend highly on our purchase power, because to join some people you have to imitate their life style, and to make some plans you have to be able to afford their expenses. 

We would like to join these people and these plans and be appreciated for that. but if we don't get the needed money, we can't and we feel bad, rejected. Thats's why we sometimes feel so bad if we don't reach an specific purchase power. 




Our problem is not the purchase power, but our relationships


It looks like the problem is not getting enough money, but the real problem is not being appreciated by people. 

My idea is that, if we could be appreciated regardless of how much money we have, we could be happy with a low purchase power. 

If we could be more carefree about money. we could be happier. We wouldn't have to accept jobs that make us terribly unhappy, we wouldn't have to ask for loans and have debts to give back, and we wouldn't be strugging with workmates and other people for money or job position matters. 

We just have to try to be appreciated regardless our money.

Public budget is hard to value

New line of tramway in the city: 200 million

Reform of the city's main square: 600 million 

One kilometer of High-speed train line: 15 million

This article: priceless

 Tramway line in Barcelona

Is that expensive or is that cheap?


Seemingly, all this things are very expensive, because we are talking about millions of euros, but this is not a personal budget, but a public one, and the amount of money that has to be invested in regular public things is very different than the money that we invest in our personal lives. 

A new train line, a new school and a new motorway is not cheap, but necessary, and that's why public administrations build them for us but, if we are not managing this budget, how can we know that the prices are right?


 


How to have an opinion about public expenses?


If my major says that the new tramway costs 200 million euros, honestly I don't know if this is expensive or cheap. Why? Because it is a budget that I am not used to with and I don't know about tramway lines cost.

First of all, we don't how much money is available to be expended by public administration. Do you know how much money your country collect from taxes every year? I don't

Second, unlike our personal budget, we don't manage this budget, so we are not familiar with it. If we go to the supermarket, we know what is cheap and what is not, because know how much we can expend and we are constantly comparing prices. 

If we want to know if the tramway line is cheap, expensive or simply affordable or not, we need to learn what is the amount of money that public administration collects, which are the main areas to be invested in (health, education, security, facilities, etc) and the money generally invested. 

We may get familiar with the public budget as we are with our personal budget, and we could improve our opinion about public expenses. 

Summarize it to me, please

Nowadays, we have a so huge amount of information at our disposal that we can't afford it, we get unfocused searching and reading different stuff from thousands of websides. 

I can spend several afternoons just searching and reading stuff online; list of search results, social media publications, digital newspapers, tutorials for any kind of question, online forums or Wikipedia articles, those where you can go from link to link until the end of the world. 

Usually, I start reading these things but I leave them because they are too long and I am not finding the information that I need. Browsing on Internet can be a quite frustrating action. 

This couple needs a summary of all this information

Why summarizing is so important?

Nowadays, there is a huge amount of information, products and suggestions to pay attention to. If we want others to pay attention to us, we need to be impressive in just few seconds, the seconds they will take before get bored or uninterested in us. 

If we want to get the attention of others, we have to learn how to summarize our message. Make short and, at the same time, impressive. If we are not able to do it, probably we will be ignored. 

If you publish contents, search the shortest and most impressive way to explain what you want to explain. 

Tragedy of the commons

We let resources be exhausted, although that's not good

The tragedy of the commons happens when a group of people let a limited and shared resource be exhausted, although no one is interested in this to happen. 

None of them want the resource to be exhausted, but all of them want to enjoy it, and they guess that, if they don't use it, the others would do so, and the resource would be exhausted anyway, without being able to enjoy it. 

In these circumstances, there's no incentive to keep the common resources, because it will be exhausted anyway, enjoy it or not by us. If it will be exhausted, why don't enjoy it?




Examples

There are classical examples, like grazing, fertile lands o fishing, and more modern examples, like greenhouse gases.

An atmosphere with a convenient rate of greenhouse gases, that keeps a steady climate, is the resource that we have to keep, and the emission of greenhouse gases to satisfy our needs is the use of it. 

The climate change is a case of tragedy of the commons because, even if we know that this is bad for us, we don't want to stop keeping our lifestyle in order to prevent this. There are oficial summits, but no important agreements are emerging from them, bacause no body wants to stop emiting greenhouse gases. 

Other examples

The available wage of the workers to buy products is a shared resource by businessmen, which they can sell their products and obtaining profit with. 

Cutting wages and jobs exhaust this resource, bacause workers have less money to buy things, and sells and profit decrease, although businessmen save labour costs. 

Businessmen assume that, but they prefer saving costs because they guess that the other businessmen will do so, and they just will pay higher wages and the sells will decrease anyway.

In the opposite hand, the resource are available jobs and wages, that are shared by workers. If low cost products are bought, businessmen can't pay high wages.

Anyone can guess that, if one buys low cost products, businessmen are forced to cut costs, among them wages and jobs, but they could prefer to do so because, even if they bought expensive products, wages will decrease anyway because other people will buy cheaper products.

How to remunerate appropiately the zero marginal cost activities

Zero marginal cost. A great chance and a great challenge


Nowadays, thanks particulary to the Information Technologies, lots of zero marginal cost products and services exist. Zero marginal cost means that we can offer this product or service to new client without aditional cost. 

That's a great chance to spread our product worldwide without expending money making it and sending it to the client. The product is already made and it can be sent for free though Internet. We can sell more and expend less. 

There are products, like music, cinema, writings or software that can be copied as many times as we want without aditional cost or effort. Compact discs, DVD's, traditional newspapers and books are no longer essential the make this products arrive to the client, neither the transportation means and the stores where buy them. 

Music store, a nearly extinct place

But also big challenges are related to zero marginal cost products. Besides the loss of jobs related with the fabrication, transportation and sale of this products, that before were not zero marginal cost products, the authors of these products have seen how they lost the control of the distribution of their works. Once this products are available, anyone can copy them and offer them to anyone else, without the author's consent. Piracy has been a very extended topic during the last years. Many music, cinema or books have been consumed absolutely for free. 



New remuneration ways are needed


Some years ago, we bought videotapes and compact discs because it was the only way to listen music and watch films. Now we can access to this product though Internet in a cheaper way. The payment ways has to change too. 

The consumer don't want or can't pay so much, and he don't want to pay for every song or every film he buys, he is lazy to do online payments. 

The right solution could be an annual subscription, not very expensive (around 5-10 euros) that gives access to all the products offered during that year. This low cost and the massive spread of this service could make a business profitable if we get lots of clients, who can be attracted by our low costs. 

Paying around 100 euros every year for annual subscriptions is perfecly affordable to anyone, and it allows us to award good professionals, who can continue creating new and better products.  

Job hunting is not a job, but entrepreneurship

If you have ever searched a job for a long time, probably you have already hearded that job hunting is itself a job. It requires many time, effort discipline and following a schedule. 

During the last years, I have spent time both searching jobs and entrepreneuring and, according to that experience, I can add new information about this topic. 

I think that job hunting looks more like entrepreneurship than a regular job

What are the similarities between job hunting and entrepreneurship?


- No boss

When we search a job or we entrepreneur we don't have a boss or mentor who tells us what we have to do. Everything we do comes from our own iniciative. 

We don't really have schedules and we don't have a place to go everyday, we do our tasks whenever and wherever we want or we find convenient, and we focus on what we think is important. 


- Need to sale

In most of the regular jobs, but those that are comercial positions, we don't have to convince anyone to buy anything. 

When we search a job, our main goal is convincing someone to buy our product, in this case our work. 

The entrepreneur needs to sell its product to clients too, besides developing his product. 


- No sales, no food

In a regular job, you meet the schedule and the tasks and you get your salary. When you search a job or you are entrepreneuring, if you don't get sales, you don't get income, no matter the effort or time spent. 





To sum up


Job hunting and entrepreneurship are really similar. They need specific skills and habits that are not required for many jobs. 

Job hunting has been really hard during the last years, almost as hard as entrepreneurship is, and it does not look like it will improve soon. 

Anyone needs to get the required skills to manage oneself, sell its product and get new contacts, even if considering just getting a job, because it is not easy and simple to get one. 

Meritocracy

What is meritocrazy?

It is a social organization that grants the highest acknowledgement, status and awards to those who do things better and provide society with better results. 

Is it usual?

Meritocrazy is less usual than we could expect. 

Every person wants to achieve the highest acknowledgement, status and award for himself and his relatives, regardless if they deserve it or not. 

That means that we are not really interested in awarding those who really deserve it. Even more, we could think that these people is a threat to us, and we could consider sabotaging them and taking their deserved award. 

In which circumstances do we award those who do things better?

Nevertheless, there are circumstances where there is no other choice than awarding the best ones. 

We need to award and acknowledge the best ones when we have a hard competition with other organitzations or when our situation is really critically. In this situations, we eager to win the competition or to solve our critical problems. Only the best ones can help us. 

Football is highly meritocratic. You won't be in the best team unless you were the best

A clear example is professional football, where the bests have the best positions and get the highest ackowledgement and award. We will not find relatives of important people in any professional team squad (unless they really deserve). If you don't have the best, you will be defeated and your fans will leave you. A team without fans is pointless. 

What can we trust?

We can’t get many fully trustworthy information about things or topics we are interested in but, as far as we should act and take decisions, we need to trust something, because our acts and decisions are necessarily based in specific information or beliefs. 

We are full of doubts, what we need to take decisions anyway

Why information is not fully trustworthy?

Excess of information, due to Information Technologies and excess of propaganda.

Internet has allowed us to publish any information online and leave it available to anyone who can browse on the net. That means that a big amount of information is available right now, including this post. It sounds amazing, but all this information can't be find out and checked by us. Make a search in the browser, you will find thousands or millions of references. 

People who is providing us with information is interested in making us believe someting that is good for them, but not necessarily for us. So, companies are interested in selling  their products to us, and probably they are not so interested in selling the right products for us. Politicians can be interested in our vote and our support more than the right management for us. 

Can we trust this people if we can guess they are not fully interested in provide us with good information?

What can we do?

We need to trust something to take decisions. We need to buy things, we need the choose studies or we need to invest our savings. No matter the right or the wrong information we have to do it, we need it. 

Probably, we don't trust completely the information we have to take any of these decisions. We are not sure about this product quality, we are not sure about this career opportunities or we are not sure about this investment profitability. 

Probably, the seller wants to sell you this product anyway, the university wants you to study there anyway and the bank wants you to buy this investment product anyway. All them are interested anyway. 

In this cases, we can check a group of alternatives that are offered to us, choose the most interesting one and try it. We can win or we can learn something, but doing nothing just to avoid being wrong is not the right option. Neither you win nor you learn. 

Is it entrepreneurship so good for us?

Entrepreneurship is fashionable

Entrepreneurship has been fashionable during the last years. During this time, many people has considered entrepreneurship as a solution to overcome unemployment problems, as many people lost their jobs and were not able to get a new one again. 

As many people say, entrepreneurship can create new economic activities, new and better products and services and new jobs where existing businesses and public administration can't. Instead of being reactive employees, who have a job created by someone else, entrepreneurs are looking for new opportunities to create new added value that no one else is trying. This new added value can be converted into new knowledge and technology, that can allow to our economy increase its competitiveness. 

The prove of this explanation could be found in the young IT companies, that have appeared recently out of nowhere and now are powerful and part of our lives. Hence we have Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other important companies.

Google headquarters in Silicon Valley. Maybe you have reached this posts using its browser

More entrepreneurship, poorer

Entrepreneurship is fine according to the reasons exposed above, but we can't think that it can solve magically our unemployment, public and private debt and wages devaluation  problems. Entrepreneurship should be vocational, not a desperate solution for unemployed people. 

Hence an interesting statistic. The richer is a country, the less entrepreneurship rate has, and the poorer it is, the more entrepreneurship has. The United States, the country where the IT companies mentioned above are from, has a entrepreneurship ratio of 7,5%, while Bangladesh, a poor country known by its really bad work conditions, has a ratio of 75%. 

That means that just 7,5% of the total active population of the United States is entrepreneur. One could think that many americans are founders of any of those young and dynamic IT companies, but the most of them are employees. 


Start a business if you have a dream, not a need
 
I believe in entrepreneurship. It can help one to be more proactive and act according to his values, interests and talent. I think that entrepreneurship is more inclusive than labour market, because the important fact is the product or service we offer more than our personal features, like age, gender or ethnicity. 

Nevertheless, I think that entrepreneurship principles can bring prosperity to a country only if those who consider to start a business are motivated for the dream to launch their own project, that can detect a latent need and bring an improvement to the society.

It won't bring prosperity if people do it to survive, exhausting all their savings and offering products and services that many others are offering.