Category Archives: Economics

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Continues)

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A couple days ago, I went to the Comcast website to ask about eliminating our cable television service (the two online chats that resulted are recorded in an earlier post).

The two “analysts” with whom I chatted, Kaye and Marites, said the same thing: If I wanted to save money by canceling cable TV while keeping our phone and internet service (as part of a so-called “Double Play” package), I’d simply need to get in touch with some other Comcast employee:

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Having gathered my strength for almost 48 hours, I called 888-739-1379 today.

As the pessimistic (i.e. realistic) part of my mind expected, it wasn’t quite as easy as Kaye or Marites promised. In fact, Matthew explained that it would not be possible to get a “Double Play” discount by speaking to him or anyone else on the phone.

According to Matthew, my only option would be to visit the Comcast website, because, in his words (and the words of Marites too!): “they have more options for promotions”. Unfortunately, the best Matthew could do was offer me the “standard” arrangement for phone and Internet service. That would reduce my basic bill by – to quote from that earlier chat with Kaye – hardly anything at all:

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It never occurred to me before that one of the benefits of a huge monopolistic corporation providing support to its customers by phone and also by website is that (1) employees who answer the phone can tell customers to use the website and (2) employees who chat on the website can tell customers to use the phone.

It really is an elegant solution to the Customer Service Problem.

Next stop: Investigate getting phone service from one of the smaller companies that do that these days, as preparation for finally cutting the cable television cord. 

By the way, I know I should tell Comcast I want to cancel everything in order to get a better deal, but I’d prefer to end our relationship completely (even though Verizon isn’t a wonderful alternative). And I know that when the time comes for us to go our separate ways, I need to tell them I’m moving to Iceland. Or that I’m dead. According to this interesting article, Comcast doesn’t have answers for situations like that:

Save Attempt is Not Applicable in the Following Scenarios:
1) Customer is moving in with an existing Comcast customer (CAE [i.e. Comcast Retention Specialist] must verify Comcast services active at new address)
2) Customer is moving to a non-Comcast area (CAE must verify by looking up zip code)
3) Account holder is deceased / incapacitated
4) Temporary / seasonal disconnect and Seasonal Suspend Plan is not available in their area
5) Natural disaster
6) Customer doesn’t know what address they’re moving to.

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Begins)

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I didn’t think it would be possible via an online chat to give Comcast less money, but decided to start there anyway.

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Twenty minutes and one reconnect later:

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com 5com 6Well, I didn’t expect anything else. But sometimes it’s good to get confirmation.

In fact, I’m very familiar with everything you can do at this site: http://customer.comcast.com. For one thing, you can add services but you can’t cancel them….

Highlighted Passages From 40 Years Ago

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The Culling of the Books has begun again. It’s the process in which old friends and acquaintances (and a few new ones) are (1) put up for sale on eBay, (2) offered to used bookstores, (3) left at the city’s book exchange shed, (4) recycled or (5) even consigned to the trash. It happens as regularly as an atomic clock ticks, but not quite so often.

Some will survive the process, only to be assessed at the next CotB. No one will be safe forever!

This is why I picked up my 1975 paperback edition of Fields, Factories and Workshops this afternoon. First published in 1898, it’s a classic statement of anarchist principles written by Peter Kropotkin, more formally known as Prince Pyotor Alexeyevich Kropotkin.

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Kropotkin was a Russian aristocrat who favored the overthrow of both capitalism and the state. He envisioned a future in which small communities, linked together by modern technology, would grow much of their own food and do much of their own manufacturing. He championed cooperation over competition and rejected the authoritarian socialism of the Bolsheviks.

This is the kind of book I was reading in the 1970’s when I started wondering why our economic system leaves so many people idle when there is so much work to be done.

But now, before deciding on this old book’s future, I’m going to share two paragraphs I highlighted back then. First, here’s Kropotkin predicting a future that now seems unlikely:

Each nation – her own agriculturist and manufacturer; each individual working in the field and in some industrial art; each individual combining scientific knowledge with the knowledge of a handicraft – such is, we affirm, the present tendency of civilized nations.

And here’s Kropotkin on the purpose of education:

Be it handicraft, science or art, the chief aim of the school is not to make a specialist from a beginner, but to teach him the elements of knowledge and the good methods of work, and, above all, to give him that general inspiration that will induce him, later on, to put in whatever he does a sincere longing for truth, to like what is beautiful, both as to form and contents, to feel the necessity of being a useful unit amidst other human units, and thus to feel his heart at unison with the rest of humanity.

Finally, to quote from the editor’s introduction:

Fields, Factories and Workshops is one of those great prophetic works of the nineteenth century whose hour is yet to come…His book is really a thesis … on the economic consequences of the humanization of work.

Smarter Works Better Than Tougher – Stairway Postscript

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The French phrase “l’esprit de l’escalier” refers to that unpleasant moment when you realize what you should have said. According to the usual source, Denis Diderot originated the expression:

During a dinner at the home of the statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, “a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument leveled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again [when he reaches] the bottom of the stairs” (“l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier Ă  ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tĂŞte et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier“).

Hence, the wit (not the spirit) of the stairs.

The phrase doesn’t quite apply to what happened this afternoon, but it’s close enough. I was driving to the grocery store when I realized what I should have included in my previous post. I should have mentioned Greece’s ongoing financial crisis. Sensible people understand that Greece will never be able to pay back everything it owes, partly because the economic austerity demanded by its creditors has slowed the Greek economy, making Greece poorer and even less able to pay off its debts. Even the International Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s creditors, understands this. The Greeks need debt relief, like the Germans received after World War 2.

The Germans, however, believe they and the other creditors need to get tougher with Greece. More austerity and more pain will eventually convince the Greeks to get their fiscal house in order or drive Greece out of the eurozone, leading to who knows what consequences for the Greeks, Europe and the rest of the world. In this case, the Germans, like the Republicans, prefer tougher over smarter.

But how was I going to get Germany’s bad behavior into a post about the Republicans? (Believe it or not, I’ve got literary standards.) Then it hit me, probably when I was making a right turn. Remember that rabid speech given by arch-right winger, modern-day fascist Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention? The late Molly Ivins said “it probably sounded better in the original German”.

See, it fits together after all. It’s what I should have said.

Who Knew the Pope Would Turn Out To Be a Christian?

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And a Christian who believes in science!

Pope Francis is upsetting a lot of people, including the fools and knaves seeking the Republican nomination (you know, the make-believe Christians who won’t admit nine people were murdered by a racist in Charleston because that would imply racism is still a problem in America).

The Pope issued a message to the world this week. From The Guardian:

Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si’, is the most astonishing and perhaps the most ambitious papal document of the past 100 years, since it is addressed not just to Catholics, or Christians, but to everyone on earth….

We need nature, he says, and we need each other….The care of nature and the care of the poor are aspects of the same ethical commandment, and if we neglect either one we cannot find peace….

Starting from that premise, he launches a ferocious attack on what he sees as the false and treacherous appetites of capitalism and on the consumerist view of human nature. For Francis, there is a vital distinction between human needs, which are limited but non-negotiable, and appetites, which are potentially unlimited, and which can always be traded for other satisfactions without ever quite giving us what we most deeply want. The poor, he says, have their needs denied, while the rich have their appetites indulged. The environmental crisis links these two aspects of the problem.

… The document is absolutely unequivocal in backing the overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is a clear and present danger. It blasts the use of fossil fuels and demands that these be phased out in favour of renewable energy. But it is also explicitly opposed to the idea that we can rely on purely technological solutions to ecological problems….There will never be a technological fix for the problem of unrestrained appetite, the pope claims, because this is a moral problem, which demands a moral solution, a turn towards sobriety and self-restraint and away from the intoxications of consumerism.

The New York Times offers this summary (followed by selected paragraphs from the encyclical with explanatory comments):

Pope Francis has written the first papal encyclical focused solely on the environment, attempting to reframe care of the earth as a moral and spiritual concern, and not just a matter of politics, science and economics. In the document, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home,” he argues that the environment is in crisis … He emphasizes that the poor are most affected by damage from what he describes as economic systems that favor the wealthy, and political systems that lack the courage to look beyond short-term rewards….Its 184 pages are an urgent, accessible call to action, making a case that all is interconnected, including the solutions to the grave environmental crisis.

Perhaps we will do nothing about climate change until it’s too late. Last year was the warmest since records have been kept. This year is on track to be even warmer. But the climate isn’t changing fast enough to generate concerted global action. Short of a message from on high (from much higher than the sky), there may be nothing that will act as a sufficient catalyst. For now, however, Pope Francis has done his part.

Here are the first paragraphs of Laudato Si’:

1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.

2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Nothing in this world is indifferent to us.

The entire text is here.