Our markets show our values
It says more about our values than about the value of oil that some countries have amassed unimaginably vast reserves of cash by selling their oil – among them Saudi Arabia (10 June). Yet, although they seldom are candidly avowed, there are differences between natural riches and bank deposits or volatile investments. For one thing, history has shown financial markets to be akin to casinos. Their artifices and contrivances make it far easier to see capital vanish without leaving tangible residues than to trade and burn up fossil fuel.
It would be self-deluding and neglectful of history to believe that capital reserves could be manipulated as facilely and cleverly as natural resources have been traded. In planning a future economy less exclusively dependent on oil than it has been, Saudi Arabia may do well to consider the views expressed by Aditya Chakrabortty, in particular that “more and more states have remade their social and political institutions into pale copies of the market”.
Jack Aslanian
Oakland, California, US
• I was intrigued to read that the US was complaining about China’s “excess industrial capacity” (World roundup, 10 June). Maintaining excess production capacity was one of the key strategies US companies such as Caterpillar use to break strikes since the 1980s.
The pessimist in me sees Chinese pragmatism. China is using excess industrial capacity to accomplish a few goals: pre-empt labour disruptions by increasing worker insecurity, reduce the potential for one company to accumulate too much political influence, and maintain competitiveness among regions. It may also be a means to mask some of the impacts of the recession.
The optimist in me wants to think that China sees a global economic boom in the near future. Or perhaps the maintenance of industrial capacity should be seen as something we seem to have forgotten in the west. Our focus on quarterly profits is based on a short-sighted love of efficiency rather than effectiveness.
The effect of maintaining a full staff during recessions shows loyalty to the employees and, if used well, may reduce worker insecurity. And when the recession eventually ends, having full staffing leaves one in a better position to provide services and products and possibly win market share. Why not all of the above?
Dave Scott
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Journalists aren’t gods
The headline to Simon Jenkins’ 17 June piece (Scientists aren’t gods. They deserve the same scrutiny as anyone else) invites the same retort about journalists. Money certainly guides the directions of scientific research and scientists need to be paid like anyone else. They also need to believe in the importance of their findings, and are often under intense pressure to hype them.
At the same time science does have criteria of veracity, including the system of scrutiny of peer review. Can we say the same about what journalists do to scientists’ press releases, or what they say about current affairs, where they can’t use the excuse that it is too technical for them to understand?
Thomas Smith
Saint Louis, France
Pacifism is not passivity
Giles Fraser recognises the logic of the UK Taxes for Peace bill (17 June) in claiming that the right of conscientious objection to military service should be extended by allowing pacifists to divert that part of their taxes that currently finances the armed forces. The money could go instead to boost the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, a government fund that promotes peace-building.
Unfortunately, Fraser then goes on to confuse pacifism with passivity, as if the choice were only between using military force to protect others and, on the other hand, doing nothing. In saying he would be “prepared to fight and kill to protect the innocent”, he shows he has the verbal dexterity to wriggle round the sixth commandment and Jesus’s teaching on loving one’s enemies. But the pacifist would argue that money should be spent on preventing wars rather than fighting them, with all the consequent innocent suffering.
Pacifism is the active promotion of peace that aims to destroy enemies by turning them into friends or, at least, neighbours who are prepared to coexist with us. Of course, this is a highly unpopular strategy as we live in a culture where it is assumed that conflict can be resolved only by military action.
But governments always talk to the enemy in the end. Fraser may be unwilling to support the Taxes for Peace bill, but he should respect the wishes of those who want 6% of their taxes to help pay for the talking to take place before the killing starts.
Graham Davey
Bristol, UK
Plastic money is a curse
Of all the wonderful things that Mark Carney could have taken to the UK from Canada (maple syrup, beavers and hockey spring to mind), why, oh why, did he have to take the plastic note (10 June)?
Here we have all plastic note-type currency and it is the bane of our lives. First, if you fold it, it will try and stay folded, making shopkeepers attempt to keep it in the till without it wanting to jump out, which is almost impossible. I speak as a volunteer at a charity cafe who fights these plastic notes weekly.
Add to that, the fact that if it is left in a trouser pocket and laundered, you might as well forget it. Hot water means death to your currency – the old notes would come out clean and could be pressed back into shape.
While I am delighted that Winston Churchill has been chosen for a new note, he could be about to suffer horrible distress.
Pauline J Liengme
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
It’s only fiction, isn’t it?
I was amazed at the report that the development of Margaret Atwood’s “pigoons” is actually underway (Human-pig embryos crated in bid to harvest organs,10 June). Riding my bike in the continuous Noah’s ark rain on the day my Guardian Weekly arrived, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake. Discovering that transgenic pigs are actually being bred to grow replacement organs for humans was almost too much to believe.
Will science never learn? It isn’t ethically OK to do things just because you can. Oryx and Crake isn’t a textbook of human genetics, but a rough outline of where we’re headed perhaps? One by one, each event Atwood “predicted” becomes a reality. Oh dear.
Lisa Silverstein
Basel, Switzerland
Marriage is no panacea
To credit marriage with heart attack survival is another example of correlation misinterpreted as cause (10 June). Actually, it is more precise to say that cohabiting with somebody, whatever the relationship, helps heart attack survival. Having somebody around to notice if you’re unwell, to persuade you to seek medical attention, or to help with post-operative care is what matters, not marital status.
Heart disease recovery is only one of many conditions, from happiness to financial success, where marriage is credited as a fundamental cause when, in fact, sociability is the key. That is, a social network that supports individual wellbeing, including coping with a miserable marriage. So, take heart (pun intended), you cardiac chancers. Marriage isn’t vital for survival but good friends are.
Andrea Shoebridge
Perth, Western Australia
Briefly
• Thank you for publishing James Smythe’s excellent review of Joe Hill’s The Fireman (17 June). I too found a serious, insightful novel in the guise of an horror story.
Hill’s characters, even the peripheral ones, are both vivid and credible, and the story itself poses an answer to a contemporary puzzle. How could the grandparents of today’s civil and civilised Germans have embraced Nazism? Also a comforting implied projection: perhaps a little American sleaze will be good for those sweetly idealistic Cubans.
Patricia Sitkin
Linden, California, US
• It’s sad to read the article Light pollution blots out Milky Way (17 June). With the exception of Canberra, Australia’s state capitals– providers of the majority of her light pollution – are all coastal cities. Those who love travelling inland benefit from “the glory of the everlasting stars”.
Our neighbour, New Zealand (the Land of the Long White Cloud), is also fortunate when the said cloud makes itself scarce.
Adrian Cooper
Queens Park, NSW, Australia
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