Normal led to this...

quote by Ed Yong, writer at Atlantic

@ncartmuseum Fault Lines: Art and the Environment

I was a young post-graduate student waiting tables in a popular Italian restaurant in Fullerton California. I wasn’t ignorant of world affairs but I still maintained enough naiveté to assume that world leaders were relatively honorable (at least those elected democratically), the news was a reliable unbiased source of information, and our nation and nations of the world relied on growth and growth was good.

And due to a bolus of economics and economic theory as part of my college curriculum, free markets were the only way forward.

Obviously there are threads of truth in all of these narrowly defined beliefs but isn’t the devil always in the details?

It was during this time—the first Gulf War—that I noticed people not being completely ‘truthy’. I watched CNN playing on a TV in the restaurant bar as I moved through to pick up a cocktail order or visit with the friendly bartender, Rob. I won’t recant the inconsistencies in the reporting or the facts being bent to serve different perspectives but I will point to the fear. The world as I knew it wasn’t exactly what I thought it was.

For example, if free markets were indeed free how does one voluntarily join healthcare as a free market? Did you secretly desire that gallstone in the same way you covet your new toaster oven or sneakers? Does the asymmetric knowledge of cardiology between you and your physician really mean you are making decisions freely toward your care?

I guess as we mature and learn, the seams begin to show. We see the sausage being made in front of our eyes and with each turn of the extruder we notice something we wish had gone unseen.

This is often referred to as rivalrous dynamics. We incentivize a behavior we are trying to regulate or terminate. The easiest example is poaching. If we stop elephant poaching without addressing the underlying drivers such as poverty and blight—another animal like the rhinoceros will be targeted. If we encourage commercial fishing according to our mantra—if you teach a man to fish he will eat for a lifetime—then what happens to the nitrogenous waste and other long-term deleterious effects on small developing communities?

Honestly we don’t spend enough time discussing the impact of deforestation, pollution, decreasing biodiversity, urbanization, agri-business or that pharmaceutical company brands sell us ‘health’ while making exponential profit off of our disease.

I recently spoke to an international crowd about the critical conversations we should be having around some of the big questions. The actual presentation is behind a paywall below for a few reasons. It is free to my paid subscribers (at any level).

One, is folks paid to attend this conference.

Two, is because I was not paid.

Rolling out of Covid has been hard for big conferences. Hotels charged exponentially more for meeting spaces hoping to recoup their costs. I do exactly 2 pro-bono presentations each year. I don’t know which ones they will be. I prefer when I am offered a fee and I can ask for a charitable donation to be made instead but often there is no money on the table. There is barely a table.

I hope you find value in the conversation. It is about 30 minutes give or take because the Q&A was quite lengthy.

Thank you for watching. Questions about any tools or data shared in the video can be fielded here in the comments or over on twitter @datamongerbonny