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According to Wikipedia, laziness is ‘a lack of desire to expend effort’. Through the ages it has been denigrated as something bad. In Christian faith, laziness or sloth, as it’s called there, is one of the seven sins.

Whilst we have many arguments against laziness, we work very hard to achieve it. But then we give it a different name: We call it leisure. When it comes to products, we enjoy ease of use, functionality, convenience. In other words, we have an intense desire to expend less effort when using these products.

The invention of the wheel, which dates back to the 4th millennium BC, made life easier for mankind, as less effort was needed to perform many tasks. The wheel ultimately led us to the automobile, which is full of small innovations triggered by laziness: automatic transmission, power steering, power windows, power seats, cigar lighter, cruise control, climate control, navigation system etc. All of these little helpers make driving an automobile more and more effortless.

So Lech Walesa was right when he said “I’m lazy. But it’s the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle, because they didn’t like walking or carrying things.”

Laziness is an important trigger of innovation and being lazy is human. TGIF

Posted via email from Achim Muellers

We know the value of the expiration date from groceries and medicines, at least we think we do.The expiration date marks the last date, on which the consumption of perishable goods is safe. Considering that consumption after that day may be hazardous to our health, we tend to give it the attention that it deserves.

Over the years marketing has been very successful in convincing us that all products have an expiration date. Actually 'classical conditioning' is a better word than 'convincing'. More and more frequently, I wonder why the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov used dogs in his experiments.

In today's consumerist society, all products have to be perishable to ensure continued growth: shoes, smart phones, computers, cars, you name it. The shelf life is not determined by health considerations anymore, but by the purchasing prices. We can buy a smart phone more often than a car, hence the shelf life of the latter is longer.
 
Marketing makes us believe that consumption makes us feel good, thereby insinuating that it is good for our health as well. After all, it is difficult to argue that feeling good is detrimental to your health. Not only that, in a subtle way we are being conditioned to believe that using a product, which is beyond its shelf life, makes us outdated as well.

So we effectively behave like hamsters: The hamster runs in his exercising wheel and we consume in our consumption wheel. But the difference is that the hamster stops running when he is tired, whereas many of us will prefer to get into debt before stopping consumption.

Getting into debt ultimately means loosing our financial independence, our freedom. What's so healthy about that?

Posted via email from Achim Muellers

On April 20, 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon leased by BP plc sank in the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion. It resulted in the largest offshore oil spill in the history of the United States. The spill not only cost human lives, but also heavily damaged the ecosystem, which will take decades to recover. So far approximately 5 million barrels of oil have gushed into the ocean. Today BP will yet again try to finally close the well, as all previous attempts have failed.

Sure, BP have set aside money to pay for the spill and they've decided to replace the CEO. But what else?

Plans by BP to begin drilling for oil in other parts of the world, like off Britain's Shetland isles and the Libyan coast, continue. Politicians from the EU and Italy have called for a moratorium. However there is one major problem and that is the lack of any formal mechanism for nations to jointly agree a ban. As one BP manager sarcastically responded when asked about the possibility of a moratorium of the Libyan coast: "…and who is the authority for the 'Med'?…"

Not only does this underline BP's corporate culture problem, see my posted dated July 27th, it also highlights a, if not the, major challenge in the context of globalization: If there is no global political counterbalance to globally acting corporations, the world has a big problem.

So far, all political efforts have been pretty much unsuccessful. When looking at the results – if you can call them that – of the recent G20 meetings and climate conferences, we find no cause for rejoicing.

We the People do have the power to change things, but we have to engage. Remember the public uproar against Nike because of the sweatshops in the 1990ies?

"Nike, we made you. We can break you". This does not only apply to Nike and not only to the 1990ies!

Posted via email from Achim Muellers