Juggling Dynamite

The planned obsolescence profit model is long since affordable.  New extended producer-responsibility with increased taxes and prosecution of offenders must better connect products and services to the environmental and health costs inflicted.  The answer isn’t to resist change or hide the fallout of our choices, the answer is more personal responsibility and wiser resource utilization.  Apps may be free, but our bits and bytes are anything but.

What we don’t see — because it is so carefully hidden from the public eye — is the ecological impact of our social media usage and the wasteful consumption loop we’re trapped in, as we’re pushed to constantly upgrade our devices and turn simple electronics and appliances into “smart” machines. *This episode originally aired on November 13, 2020. Here is a direct audio link.

The story of how the Nature Conservancy, the world’s biggest environmental group, became a dealer of meaningless carbon offsets.  Here is a direct video link.

I’ve often mentioned that bankruptcy filings usually peak some 18 months after a recession ends.  Government support and payment deferrals have delayed bankruptcies flowing from the COVID-19 triggered depression, but the deadwood is building all the same.

The go-to maneuver has been to keep raising capital at rock bottom yields from risk-indiscriminate lenders and investors.  The chart on the lower left shows the record debt issuance sold in March and the one beside the record equity offerings sold to the public, year to date.  Needless to say, capital risk has not been appropriately discounted.

This segment is a worthwhile update.  Here is a direct video link.