Healthcare Crisis

There is a big crisis in the health care system (some would like to call it sick care system). The prices are going up by 10-15% every year, and correspondingly the insurance premiums. There is a tuberculosis epidemic that is threatening to breakout anytime, even in the developed countries. The chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, hypertension continue to plague us with no solution in sight. The pharmaceutical companies and the medical community have managed to find palliative measures that keep a patient alive for a long time, but there is no true cure for many health problems. Every new drug invented, every new procedure developed is costlier than the one before, but with few exceptions, most of them do not cure the patient. Instead they keep him or her dependent on the system for a long time, with attendant expenses and unwanted side effects. Even antibiotics which saved so many lives in the 20^th century have become ineffective against increasingly virulent and resistant bugs.

Every spoke in the wheel of health has had its own role to play in creating the mess we find ourselves today. Let's start with the health care professionals. General physicians seldom get to spend enough time to understand an individual patient, his or her lifestyle or diet. More than 50% feel they are overworked. More often than not, it is a quick enumeration of symptoms and some lab tests and a prescription. Physicians are happy to prescribe antibiotics and other strong medications even when they are not strictly called for. The pediatricians are the worst offenders of overprescribing antibiotics. Majority of the cases do not even need them because the infections are viral. This not only creates super bugs, but also weakens the immunity of a child. My reasoning is simple – if you give a crutch to the body, the body stops making an effort to heal itself and comes to rely on the crutch. See this article on antibiotics. Specialists such as dentists and orthopedics doctors are even more culpable. Often they tend to treat individuals like mechanics treat your cars – the more repairs the better – for them. This is not to say that there are no ethical, sincere and loving doctors around. But often they become unwitting part of an establishment that is too hard to navigate and change.

Next come the insurance companies. They show no interest in ensuring that an individual gets proper health care. For them every medical expense is another expense and it is their stated goal to reduce this expense. For example, most insurance policies do not cover preventive measures such as multi vitamins or supplementation. Most policies won't cover the membership of a health club or give discounts if you are an active member. Most often they are not interested because the employers who provide the biggest chunk of insurance policies, keep changing the insurance companies frequently. Thus insurance companies have zero incentive in keeping an individual healthy.

Then come the pharmaceutical companies. While they have done some wonderful work in the past in developing life saving drugs, now they are in a rat race. Their credibility lies in tatters due to recent scandals. Peddling drugs that are of dubious efficacy, suppressing research that shows negative aspects of their drugs, bribing doctors to prescribe more medicines, encourage doctors to use the drugs off label, you name a perversion, they have indulged in it. The scandal goes on and on and with no end in sight. What is worse, there is hardly any liability for the individuals who consciously swindle the society. At the most they get a slap on their wrists.

This brings us to the fourth spoke – the regulator – FDA in America. For all practical purposes they do the bidding of the pharma companies. It is a revolving door at the FDA, often professors and researchers with deep connections to pharma industry head the FDA. While there is a process to certify and monitor drugs, FDA uses its big stick to beat back any attempt by alternative medicines to address a market need. In the States, no supplement or food producer can make a claim that his ware can cure anything. There are many such instances where a traditional (really traditional like an Ayurvedic preparation) can and does alleviate a certain condition, but they are not allowed by FDA to make that claim or at least FDA won't certify them. According to FDA, something is a drug only if it has gone through certified clinical study. No matter that these clinical studies are conducted by the interested parties, and that the traditional medicines have gone through millennia long trials. A lot of the funding for FDA comes from the pharma industry itself.

The final spoke is the consumer. This is where the biggest blame lies in the whole system. People tend to believe that a doctor knows everything. We are ultimately responsible for our own health – failure to recognize this simple truth often results in fatal consequences. People go to doctors with their mundane problems and accept prescriptions which are often not necessary. Doctors have become very defensive because of the ever hanging threat of malpractice lawsuits. So they will choose the strongest measure even when a wait and watch method will work just as well. We are too lazy to choose a careful diet that's suitable for our lifestyle, genes and body. We do not exercise enough. We eat and drink a lot of junk food. In the end is it any surprise that we are at the mercy of harsh chemicals and - at best - indifferent professionals?

In the second part of this article I will write about some of the methods we have adapted to ensure a healthy lifestyle.

A limitation of the scientific method

Scientific method

"Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses."

...Wikipedia

I often hear from scientists and wanna-be scientists (like me) that the scientific method is the only way possible forward in understanding the universe. Logical reasoning and the scientific method have their place in the scheme of things. But to say that they are primarily responsible for all progress is putting the cart before the horse. In the definition above, formulation of a hypothesis is taken as a part of the scientific method. However, this formulation is often mysterious, and no one can really explain how a "productive" hypothesis is arrived at. Most of the times logic and reasoning have nothing to do with it.

The anonymous Indian genius that conceived zero, Kepler, Newton, Kekulé, Marie Curie and Einstein all have one thing in common: they created a paradigm shift in our understanding of nature. The paradigm shift was not in the proof they offered but the hypothesis itself. While proof is important, it is secondary to the hypothesis. I doubt if anyone of these giants have explained how they came up with the hypotheses. Given a "productive" and viable hypothesis, someone can and will come up with a proof eventually just as Fermat's last theorem demonstrated.

The modern scientists spend their lifetimes perfecting the scientific method. But they probably do not spend enough time understanding how the hypotheses are made. It is assumed that a good scientist "knows" how to arrive at one. There is no process, no class (that I know of) and no "formal" guidelines to come up with a good hypothesis. No good hypothesis no significant progress. That's a limitation of the scientific method.

The ancient Indian sages approached the process in a different manner. Many of them were true yogis and attained samadhi by meditation. The claim is that when one attains samadhi, the knowledge about the true nature of the universe arises spontaneously. Perhaps this is the source of all hypotheses. They made seemingly amazing leaps in understanding the nature. Often they didn't explain how they arrived at that knowledge, but only stated it with authority. Frequently one hears the phrase "self evident" with such statements. It is left for the later commentators to comment on that statement and expound it. Some commentaries on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras say this: if all the books are burnt and all knowledge is lost save the Yoga Sutras, then rest of the knowledge can still be developed by accomplished yogis.

I know that there will be some scientist types on DC who will grill me on this one (where is Commonsense?), but I will make this claim: scientists will do much better in their disciplines if they include meditation in their curriculum. Have you noticed how often multiple scientists come up with the same new idea that miraculously solves a difficult problem that mankind has grappled with for ages? In my opinion this phenomenon is not magic or coincidence, but it can be explained by our spiritual nature. We are all connected by an underlying thread and that manifests itself in these mysterious ways. In fact someone even conducted a maze running experiment on rats that showed that once a particular maze is solved by one rat, other rats find it easy to solve.

Bubbles and the current financial crisis

Bubbles! Bubbles!... My bubbles!

... a cartoon character from Finding Nemo

Is there an end to the current financial bloodbath that is plaguing the world markets? Like a recursive nightmare, you wake up from one nightmare to find yourself in the middle of another. I am still in the middle of my productive career, and I don't find it amusing that my life savings go down 5% everyday. I just can't imagine what it must be for those who are staring retirement in the face or who have already retired. The only light I see at the end of the tunnel is the proverbial headlight of an approaching express train.


Folding banks, closing auto dealerships, collapsing companies, massive layoffs, government defaults; the looming specter is stunning. Many pundits are saying that this will be a mild recession and we should be back on track in a couple of years. In particular let me quote the following:


'Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss expects a mild recession that ends next spring. "Gradually we will regain confidence in the market. Lower oil prices and a falling trade deficit will help," he says. "This is a financial panic, not an economic one." '

I don't know what weeds these people are smoking. A lot more bad news awaits us. What we are seeing today is a result of 60 years of unbridled growth and reckless spending. The dominoes are falling and there is no telling when or where they will stop. They blame it on many factors: corporate greed, extreme leverage, wall street excesses, mortgage crisis and so on.

I remember reading this article by S Gurumurthy of RSS. Though the article itself has been ridiculed by the economists and intellectuals in various forums, and there are some factual errors in the numbers quoted, I felt there was an element of truth in it. This article was written in 2002 or thereabouts. Common sense tells me that I can not continue to spend more than I have. A day will come when the bill collectors come calling. This is true for individuals and also true for institutions. But there is a white elephant in the room everyone seems intent on ignoring.

I laughed out loud when President Bush doled out money to people as a stimulus package. The trouble with the economy was not that people were not spending enough; it was that people have spent way too much and they can no longer finance their profligate ways. During the last several years rate of personal savings by Americans has turned negative. The so-called stimulus package only inflated various bubbles a little more. Besides it encouraged people to be even more reckless with their money.

Since the 1940s, America has managed to build a huge economy based on consumer spending. It starts with how money is created (primarily through bank lending, see here). Every time someone borrows money (say to pay for a new car), the system creates a little bubble and new money is injected into the system. This money is supposed to be taken out at a later stage when the loan is paid off, but people keep spending money all the time so the money is never really destroyed except during serious economic contractions. This is not specific to the US economy, most of the modern economies have grown in this way.

This bubble creates other bubbles. Consider this: when there is more economic activity, the governments have more tax revenue and therefore bigger budgets. The current political wisdom tells us that the money should be spent immediately on populist and not-so populist schemes such as the earmarks. After all, one must get elected again in a few years. Once a particular expense head has been created by a government, it seldom goes away. Many economists argue that deficit financing is good for the economy. Wars and natural disasters have contributed by further expanding the budgets. Among certain quarters, there is almost a macabre glee whenever natural disaster such as an earthquake or a hurricane hits.

Without intervention this unstable system will seek some stability through cyclical economic downturns and many of the bubbles will gradually deflate. There have been downturns in the American economy, such as the recession of 80s and 90s, hyper inflation of 70s, stock market crash of 1987 and dotcom crash of 2000. Every time the government intervention has been short sighted with no attention paid to long term consequences of these actions. None of these events convinced the political leaders, financial leaders and individuals that they must spend less than they have or else...

If you remember the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, many people believed that the stock market will never go down. Ditto with housing markets of early 2000s. Similarly for too long, investors all over the world have nursed a belief that dollar is a safe haven and Americans will never default. This has caused them to send money to America in unrealistically large amounts of money through real estate investments, government bonds and lately purchases of assets of large financial institutions. This has significantly contributed to the financial bubble.

To keep this bubble inflated, governments and institutions have to spend more money and foreigners have to keep pouring their savings into American economy. To encourage these events, the lowest pillar that is bearing the weight of all these bubbles, our friend Joe, must keep spending. The trouble is that Joe can't spend any more money because his account is overdrawn. Nobody is willing to lend him either.

The credit crisis is a sign that people have understood the true nature of our economy. Money in my pocket is better than money in yours. Nobody trusts the bogus credit ratings of individuals and institutions anymore. At some level one can blame the banks for lending to one and all, but the blame must be shared by everyone; legislators for not providing enough oversight; bankers for not ensuring the borrowers have capacity to repay; borrowers for being greedy.

Americans have a total debt of about 120% of the GDP. The companies collectively have a debt of 160% of the GDP. Total American debt reached 53 Trillion dollars. That's about $176,000 of debt for each resident of the country. People and institutions have leveraged way beyond their means to pay back. To paraphrase Nouriel Roubini, now “the housing bubble, the mortgage bubble, the equity bubble, the bond bubble, the credit bubble, the commodity bubble, the private equity bubble, the hedge funds bubble are all now bursting at once in the biggest real sector and financial sector deleveraging since the Great Depression”.

The casino culture has taken over the American financial markets. Short selling of stocks is the most obvious and glaring example of the gambling that savvy stock market players indulge in. There is also the futures market for commodities. For example the much maligned speculators who have presumably driven up the price of oil and other commodities. In the 1990s new instruments of financial trade called derivatives were created. These are the CDOs, the CDSs and many others from the alphabet soup, which Warren Buffet famously called financial instruments of mass destruction. That bubble is now worth 55 Trillion dollars. To put it in perspective, it is more than the annual gross product of the entire world. This is nothing but suicidal gambling by large financial institutions hedge funds, and wealthy individuals with no added benefit to the society at large. This is another bubble that is waiting to burst and who knows what happens then.

If my hypothesis about the economy is correct, then there are three ways this crisis will resolve itself. Firstly the obvious one, in which there will be a catastrophic crash of markets and institutions all over the world. This will be too chaotic for anyone to predict the sequence of events accurately. The consequences are too horrific even to contemplate, but humanity will survive. It may take a decade or two to recover to some semblance of normalcy.

Second way is that the current patchwork of interventions will work and somehow the world markets will be stabilize. However, I think this only be temporary and we will come back to the same situation sooner or later, perhaps with a bigger bubble, because we not really addressing the underlying causes.

Third way is when our leaders act responsibly, the markets respond in a sane manner and people correct their ways. Government will stop wasteful spending, wall street will stop being greedy and people will start saving more responsibly for their retirement and their children's education. If by some miracle this sequence of events comes to pass, then it will still take a couple of decades for us to come back to stability. The reasons are obvious, the the bubbles are simply too large and they can't be deflated in a short time. However the likelihood of this happening are extremely remote. Consider:

- Law makers are short sighted and often ignorant
- Government likes to keep borrowing to spend even more money and has zero credibility with
the main street having spent all of its political capital waging pointless wars
- Washington is full of wested interests, but none protecting Joe's interests
- Wall street has short memory and within a few years it will retrace the history
- Regulators have no credibility as they are either corrupt or ideological but almost never right

This problem is not unique to America. I am only using American example because I have lived here for the last 8 years or so and seen what is happening first hand. I am sure similar things are happening in many other countries as well.

The situation is rather bleak, but people change only when there are catastrophic events that overtake them, or a JFKesque leader guides them. Is Obama the JFK of our generation? I sincerely hope so, but I am very skeptical.

What are the lessons for India in this crisis? Unfortunately I don't believe India will escape it unscathed. The only silver lining is that India is not yet that highly leveraged that it will suffer as deeply as the US. However, India is following the path that US took in the '50s and '60s. We can yet avoid it by ensuring that the truly important issues are addressed and never compromised in the name of capitalism. These issues are, savings for retirement, ensuring universal health care and providing good education to all those who want it. Most importantly we should not build our future on bubbles.

Matthew Okunevich: Coach Extraordinaire!

Victorious Keystone Montessori Chess Club with their coach Matthew Okunevich

Matthew Okunevich, or Coach Matt, is a familiar figure in Phoenix scholastic chess. He works as a coach with Chess Emporium. He also coaches the students at Keystone Montessori school, in addition to many others. Under his able tutelage, Keystone kids have come to dominate chess tournaments in Arizona like no other.

Matt grew up in Illinois. He used to watch his father and grandfather play chess when he was still a first grader. He learnt to play chess then and started borrowing books on chess instruction from his elementary school library. His dedication and interest paid off handsomely when he started playing in tournaments. He started winning almost immediately and his interest grew so much that by the time he was in high school, he started reducing other activities, so that he could participate in chess tournaments, near and far.

Matt went on to study at Northern Illinois University and founded the chess club there. He was elected the president of the club and kept a busy schedule there as well. And then he was asked to coach school children and the coaching bug bit him for good. He continued his studies, while coaching children at the Jefferson elementary school. After his graduation, Chess Emporium in Phoenix offered him a full time coach’s job and he accepted it. Illinois’ loss was Arizona’s gain!

Ever since Coach Matt has taken Keystone kids under his wings, they have blossomed and grown in strength by leaps and bounds. Now there are so many strong players that, even if one or two of the top players are missing, they still win the top team trophy in almost every tournament they participate. His energy and enthusiasm shines clearly in his interaction with the kids, and they never miss a single opportunity to learn from him. He is always there in every weekend tournament, even when he doesn’t have to be. His dedication is such that, he has spent entire weekends during tournaments, encouraging the kids to do their best and doing post game analyses. Here are a couple of quotes from Keystone parents:

"Matt is simply awesome as the coach of the Keystone chess club. He has taken the club from it's inception in 2005 and has nourished, guided and coached with energy and passion, so that now the club stands 35 members strong, with many of the kids competing seriously. His commitment to the kids is astounding. He has voluntarily given up entire weekends to be there to cheer the kids on and to analyze their games when they have competed in USCF tournaments, which are unrelated to Chess Emporium's tournaments. Matt has an uncanny ability to keep the kids grounded but also competitive. There is a wonderful aura of camaraderie amongst the all the kids and all the parents. It has truly been an amazingly positive experience for the kids and Matt has made this happen."

... Frances Chandran

“Coach Matt is one of the best chess coaches I have ever seen. His enthusiasm and volunteerism in teaching and promoting chess in our school community have won many parents' respect. I especially admire his philosophy that "does whatever he can to help kids learn chess." His tireless effort in educating the children not only in chess but also understanding team spirit and sportsmanship really deserves a reputable recognition.”

... Hung-Nan Chen

Some of the recent tournament performances of the Keystone Montessori Chess Club:

1st Place at Best of Phoenix (Nov 2006)
1st Place at State Grades Scholastic, Gilbert AZ (Jan 2007)
2nd Place at State Scholastic Championships, Tucson AZ (Mar 2007)
1st Place at Governor's Cup, Peoria AZ (April 2007)
4th Place at USCF National Scholastic Blitz, Nashville TN (May 2007)
10th Place at USCF National Scholastics, Nashville TN (May 2007)

Matt will be off to Chicago Open soon and Keystone parents and children wish him all the best!

Advice to Gates and Buffett

Dear Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Warren Buffett,

I have been an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a philosopher. I am no longer an entrepreneur, and my philanthropy budget (lifetime, not yearly) does not possibly exceed three digits. My only philosophical contribution to humanity has been to write a few online articles, which were rarely read or appreciated. So I naturally felt empowered and entitled to advise you both gentlemen on certain matters.

Our society is not interested in root causes. We are merely interested in applying bandages and patches to problems to suppress them at one place, which later reappear with a malignant vengeance elsewhere. I will just take two examples from the myriad ones available to illustrate the point.

Education

Education starts in the womb. However, most parents become parents because they happened to conceive children. It is auto pilot parenting, mostly running without conscious control or guidance. Very few actually take any pains to learn more about the art of education, and most people just wing it. The untold billions that are spent on education, mostly go to sustain the bureaucracy and the testing mechanism. While it is no body's case that our children's teachers ought not to be paid more money, in reality, a teacher can only do so much. Most children do not come with adequate preparation to learn, and there are at least 20-30 children per class in the best of the schools in the US. When the basic skills, such as, concentration, attention to details, ability to verbalize and comprehend, fine and gross motor skills are poorly developed, their health is seriously compromised due to junk food and bad nutrition, when their mind is distracted with all the disturbing images of TV and video games, how can any child learn? It is amazing that so many of those children still survive and do well in life. The credit goes to the coping mechanism that is inbuilt in humans, not to our education system. The root causes of our education ills lie at home and in our environment.

Health care

People have mostly abdicated their responsibility for their personal health and well being and handed it over to the likes of FDA, large pharma and AMA (American Medical Association). Then we have the spectre of doctors over prescribing antibiotics and other noxious chemicals, drug companies falsifying clinical trial data, and the incestuous relationship between the doctors and the pharma companies. Our food is poisoned in a variety of ways so as to ensure that our children grow up obese and unhealthy. Our lifestyles do not encourage physical activity and we do not eat enough natural, healthy food. All in all, you will agree with me, the picture is not pretty. So the root causes are pretty obvious I would think. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and yet, we put all our billions in researching new-and-improved molecules, only to discover a generation later, that those molecules are not as benign as they first appeared. If even a fraction of that research money is available for studying healthy lifestyles, healthy diets and exercise programs and natural home remedies, we will have a much healthier population.

If we fix the root causes of our ills, we will have a much better return on investment. I happen to believe that both education and health care are basic human rights, not privileges. No big companies are ever going to pour money into research, that will eventually spell their doom, such as a diabetes cure. No governmental agency is ever going to find optimal solutions either, because they are too beholden to the industrial behemoths. The only way it can be done is with private philanthropy. Therefore I urge you gentlemen, to invest more money in fundamental research that will address the root causes of these issues. Let me make a small wish list for your consideration.

1. Education - better parenting skills, prerequisites for optimal learning

2. Health care - better diets, home remedies, healthy lifestyles

3. Energy - energy efficiency, renewable and alternative sources

4. Environment - reduction of pollution, elimination of toxins, reversal of global warming

5. Poverty - micro credit, taking responsibility for the self and family, education

I hope you will divert at least some of your generosity towards these issues addressing the root causes. I strongly believe that addressing these root causes will go a long way towards bolstering your respective legacies as people who truly changed the course of human history.

Sincerely,

Ravi Kulkarni

Mortgage Scams

To understand the scam that is perpetrated by the mortgage specialists one doesn't have to go far. Just today I was talking to a mortgage agent regarding the mortgage on my home. I have a mortgage that is 5/1 ARM, in other words, after five years it will change to a floating interest rate which could lead to higher interest I pay on the loan.

At first she wanted to know if I want to take out additional money from the value of the home. I explained to her that my intention is to reduce my risk exposure, I don't need any additional money at this time. After collecting some of my personal details, she came back with, what she thought of as a very attractive package. She said, she will reduce my monthly payment by 40%! She said I can choose one of the four options: 30 year fixed, 15 year fixed, Interest Only and Minimum. She was offering me the "minimum" and I asked her what she meant. She said, instead of making me pay all the interest upfront, they backload the loan so that I only pay the minimum. So I asked her, what happens to all the interest and the principal I have not paid if I were to close the loan, say in two years after sellign my house. She skirted the topic. Then I asked her to send me the details. She did, then it became clear to me. Here is how it works:

Let's say I owe the bank, 1000 dollars.

30 years fixed: I pay a fixed amount every month, say 5 dollars, out of which 4 dollars will go towards the interest and the remaining towards paying off my debt. Because at the end of the month 1, I have paid off $1, my debt now stands at 999 and not 1000, so my interest next month will be slightly lower and debt repayment slightly higher. This will I keep reducing my debt and in 30 years, it will be fully paid.

15 years fixed: Same as 30 years fixed, except I will pay more per month, say 7 dollars, so that my debt is paid off more quickly. Also note that I am paying much less interest overall, because I have paid off the debt faster, even though I am paying more money per month.

Interest only: I only pay 4 dollars, which is the interest I owe on the loan, keeping the 1 dollar to myself. In this fashion, the debt is not being repaid at all and hence end up paying more interest overall. In other words I am not saving anything for the future.

Minimum interest: This is probably the worst case scenario. Here I am only paying 3 dollars, instead of 5, thereby adding more to the debt. Why? Because the actual interest is 4 dollars, and because I am not paying all of it, 1 dollar gets added to my debt at the end of the first month making it 1001, and increasing it even more at the end of second month and so on. In other words, I am borrowing even more, and what is worse, the interest rate is not fixed. It can fluctuate, increasing my risk even more.

I am a conservative investor and spender. So, I said "no, thanks" to her and asked to provide the best 30 year fixed rate.

Regards,

Ravi

Consumption v/s jobs

As an amateur economist, I can't resist but think of world's problems such as poverty and uneven distribution of wealth. While we were chatting on IM, as we often do, my friend Iggy made this observation:

: i also have a theory
: it is a mistake to say that by not consuming luxury goods people will lose their jobs
: it is just a question of where we spend our time
: e.g. if we wanted to spend our time in making the planet green again then that's where the jobs would get created
: if we wanted to spend our time educating our children right then that's where the jobs would get created
: but if we want to bully the world then the jobs will get created in bomb making factories

I thought that was a brilliant observation. Capitalists often make a case for conspicuous consumption. I do believe that rich people need to spend money and often so that the rest of us can have gainful employment. The secret of American success has been the domestic market. Americans like to spend money and acquire goods. It is precisely for this reason that one gets the best value for money for almost any product in the United States. Europe is way too expensive, not just because of high taxation., but I am digressing....

However, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, has only widened in the recent decades. In terms of global distribution of wealth, there is certainly a welcome development in the last couple of decades. More Asian countries have seen certain economic success, the latest being China and India. But for the rest of the underdeveloped world, the picture is not rosy. Africa and the Middle East have taken especially a severe beating. By spending more money, Americans have certainly helped a lot of people in the world. For example, when they buy clothes, they are helping the poor chinese find gainful employment. When they consume IT products, they are helping aspiring engineers from India, Israel and Ireland. Their apetite has created the biggest market ever seen on the face of the earth, and there is no doubt in my mind that without the current globalization, the people in many parts of the world, would continue to languish in the same hopeless existence.

And yet, all consumption is not made equal. For example, the mass weapons consumed by the American juggernaut couldn't possibly do any good. No doubt the military industrial complex provides jobs to millions of people worldwide, but to what end? Similarly one could argue that the jobs provided by tobacco industry, illicit drugs and many others are undesirable and not in the best interest of the humanity as a whole. Less obvious are the industries such as automobiles, oil companies and other industries which contribute tremendous damage to the world ecology and perhaps increase poverty and ill health.

So how do we increase wealth distribution while ensuring that the resultant consumption is of the "right" kind? How to make sure that my consumption of a good or a service doesn't harm a poor soul in the Amazon forests or my great grand children? So we need a guidence to tell us what is the impact of our consumption. When I buy an item, I could like to know, what went to making that product. Under what conditions was it produced? How many miles has it traversed, and how many unnecessary calories has it consumed? I would like to call it an index of humanity. This index will tell us if it is a positive or the negative for the world. Manufacturers are not obliged to provide this metric along with their products, but conscientious consumers will pay a premium to buy products that have this label, just as they do for organic products today. In the long run, one hopes that this will result in a consumption pattern that results in the greater good.

Thanks to Iggy for the stimulus.

Ravi