Making the commercial more sustainable

For the past semester, I’ve seen many people working for a healthier economic society in which purchasing and producing are rational, paying and exchanging are diverse. I’ve seen people seek solution to the waste, as in the case of collaborative consumption, and solution to make producing more effective, as in the book the wealth of nation. All of these give me insight in how I could do a better consumption.

First of all, never make any waste. Waste comes from people who are careless about the whole environment and society, and people who have not aware of the full value in goods. Wise people rarely, if any, call a product a waste, they only use up it, or, as this class introduces, exchange it, so that any tiny remain is unavailable.

Secondly, use various ways to consume. Previously only barter and currency based consumption are of my attention, but actually there are much more choices. Sharing is of one kind, which was even not considered as consumption by me before. As a matter of fact, various ways of consumption ease the usage of product by different people, which eventually help to eliminate waste. Hence it is also a wise way of consuming.

Various ways doesn’t restrain in the kinds of ways people can take to make consumption, but also in the kinds of channels people could apply. Internet is a hot topic these days exactly because it is convenient and wide spread, which, combining with our eagerness to find diverse way to exchange, offers a fantastic solution, a platform, so that people living thousands miles away could easily trade.

In sum, in modern society, we are asked more and more to revolute our consumption and ameliorate it; at the same time, many people already start to achieve this requirement.

 

Sustainability Series 1 , last blog. International Efforts and Conclusion

According to last four blogs, we elaborate the issue on sustainability from individual to states, more and more macro. And today, we will move onto International level and see how the international society can endeavor to draw people’s attention to sustainable development issues and how the international society reform itself to greener the world.

For the reason that international society cannot effectively control every state’s policy making, or every individual’s actions on this issue, the only thing international society can do is to keep on maximizing its publicizing the idea of the benefit of green lives to every corner of the world to eradicate squandering resources, polluting environment etc. and to establish the new effective and green way to live comfortably.

International Organizations will play an important role in this issue, and luckily, we already have UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme, EEA (European Environment Agency), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) etc. to organize and create the resolutions, supply and innovate the green techniques to every state and even individuals. What will the International Organizations keep on doing and what they need?

1. Keep on Publicizing the green styles, and stay in linkage with every related international organizations and also motivates and assists the operations of local and national environmental organizations especially their local influences to the realization and ideology of local people.

2. Keep on acting as a forum for individuals, states, and national organizations to present their ideas and share and absorb the saps from each other’s creativity, innovation and also criticize the deficiency or mishaps of the formal work of the organizations and other units. And on a regular basis, lists of effective actions and potential resolutions for different situations of sustainable development or for various countries will be categorized and posted for the reference of different countries’ decision making. \

3. Keep renewing its personnel from the pool of the whole world, from different races, different ages and different classes, and melting the needs from them together and match them with the suggestions in the forum stated above to make the most moderate and suitable draft resolution.

Making capitalism more creative

According to Bill Gates’ article, paying voluntarily to socially beneficial issues is actually a way to make money more effective, instead of common thinking that that’s a waste to any individual who donates. This is indeed the truth. The extra dollar for a billionaire means nothing more than a pen that is available for another one stroke, but that same dollar could buy a piece of food for the starve people in Africa, which saves his life. The reason many people are reluctant to pay for social benefits is because they are not really thinking about the outcome of their behavior, not even say their own earn from their actions.

The same kind of losing attention to digging the real benefit behind issues happens also in companies and capitalism’s slowing moving to developing countries. Few people would spend even the tiniest time imagine how they could do business with the poor. How they could earn from the poor? However, they actually can, because, though the individuals are not as wealth as entrepreneurs, the whole wealth of this group is huge, considering about its giant population. So it is earning through working with them. Also, in another way of thinking, this bargain also benefits the poor, as can be seen in many cases.

Of courses, there are certain issues that cannot be found any benefit to the one who pays to motivate them, or really hard to do so. In this case, government and non-profit comes. They could apply capital to the most wanted, not only necessarily the most beneficial one.

 

Jianli Zhang

17/11

It is the way you think that defines your behavior

In the Chapter1 of the book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, the author compared and contrasted both fathers’ views and behaviors towards money, including working hard, getting an education saving and investing and realizing how habits of the rich and poor significantly differ.

His rich dad always tells him to place a positive attitude towards the subject of money while his poor dad usually emphasizes the need for knowledge. Apparently, the author places more interest in his rich father’s view.

The reason why some people are rich while others are poor usually depends on their attitude towards money. If you say “I will never be rich”, the prophecy tends to become reality. One should always keep in faith of what he is doing, only in which way we can finally achieve what we really want. Our attitude and what we think define our behavior.

Here comes another case. Which one is more important throughout your life, education or real world experience? From the author’s perspective, school education focuses on scholastic and professional skills while real world experience emphasizes more on financial skills. That is to say, having all the college degrees do not necessarily equal to a sound professional career. The combination of those two elements is both crucial.

In short, when we began to deal with something important, we should always find the right attitude.

 

Sustainability Series Blog 9 Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong?

States are making policies and rules all the time, which come from the supreme ruling class, which in case of United States or China, is citizen. Ironically, when the representatives of citizens inaugurate to be the sponsor or spokesmen or spokeswomen of the states government, their point of view would also be “inaugurated” to a new level slightly or drastically different from the perspective they held before in a “lower” social position.

So can they make the right decision? Last time we talked about the states actions on sustainable development and we wish the new policy could be considerate for both the nation as a whole and also for individual. Therefore, we cannot neglect the just and structure in administration and legislation class before we heading up to the international actions on green style of life.

We noticed that for some country eager to get their national power stronger and influential in the international society. They don’t considerately take the concerns of individuals, citizens from different classes or in various circumstances of lives into account, oppositely, they show their philanthropy through getting a role, an dedicated, active, and also philanthropic role in international affairs; they spend their money, their troops in an exaggerating way for territorial and sovereignty problems instead of basic livelihood problems of individuals. This ignorance may not be the ruling class’s representative’s concerns for themselves and this may, or to say, definitely is prerequisite of protecting the basic right of human beings, but if the livelihood was always in a marginal area of national concern, psychologically, people will grow to be more infuriated and unsupported for the country.

This is to say, to make policy, the point of view need to combine both domestic and international concern, moreover, the specific provisions should include the elements of individual right.

we buy series, not individuals

Companies’ critical idea about how their products are designed, produced, and sold matters the profits of companies and collaborative consumption of consumers. When thinking of how their products can benefit people’s life, companies design and carry their minds out into goods, as when consumers buy and benefit from owning the goods. Simultaneously, companies think about how their previous selling contributes to more selling by connecting product by some theme, function, or various reasons, and consumers participate in collaborative consumption by buying goods as bundle of objects that perfect their lives at every aspect.

This recalls me of my experiences at home. There are different size and shape of Locker & Locker in our house. At first only several of them were bought. But later on we realized that these boxes are good for various functions, and they possessed some good features that make other brands less appealing. So, eventually, we replaced almost everything to Locker & Locker. They serve different functions include warming food, storing food, or storing fruits. And, all in total, they serve as a facilitator that acts everywhere. This is an example of such kind of collaborative consumption.

In our modern world, we rarely buy something solely. Instead, we are always willing to get a series of objects that collaboratively ease our life.

 

Collaborative is all about you

With the development of the Internet, mass media has become more accessible to people. People began to share their commodities, comments, even ideas freely through the internet. As a result, a new form of interaction has been introduced, which is, named by Rachel Botsman, the Collaborative consumption.

Sharing is always the fastest way which broadcast the idea into every one’s mind. For example, the “share” function in Facebook is regarded as one of the most useful features that can communicate and spread out ideas immediately, thus a viral loop is created during the process. Moreover, you will seldom consider buying a movie ticket for your friends when you went to the box office. However, if you pay attention to the Facebook app Tickets Together, which provides you the easiest way to invite your friends to join you, it is less likely for you to watch the movie alone.

Collaborative consumption is the application in form of sharing, which, in general, requires people to share, swap, barter, trade or rent. Collaborative lifestyle will cost less, and collaborate more. It is not only a form of consumption, but a force that can enhance the communication between people, getting everyone involved in the process.

Collaborative consumption is all about you.

Sustainability Series1 Blog 8 States Actions

We talked about individual’s behaviors for the last two blogs and apparently, individual’s significance is like atoms of which the materials are composed of. But in chemistry, we need forces and bonds to hold the structure, which in international affairs or economics, would be the countries or states.

In other words, the right decision of state, the reasonable and clairvoyant “stare decisis”, will hold individuals together to follow the certain policy, to protect the country, and to care about the world. You may ask what’s hard about it. Metaphorically speaking, who would be as great as Newton or Einstein who can combine micro-physics and macro-physics that smoothly and logically? States need to balance the benefits of individuals and also the purpose of sustainability. How to find that point on the leverage so that would stay united and developed? Problems, huh?

This might not be easy, but I am criticizing one policy of China this time. To reach the goal of maintaining a sustainable world, the best way to achieve is getting into each detail of lives of squandering and making it green. Once in every markets of China, after shopping, the cashiers would give you bunch of plastic bags for you to classify your groceries. While the government realized the overloading of plastic bags would cause White Pollution, a policy came out—consumers must pay 5 dimes for a plastic bag after they shop. They thought consumers would be too cheap or so green that they would bring green bags themselves, but it turned out that those consumers wouldn’t mind pay 5 more dimes after 100-ish grocery grabbing. For a bottle of water, that makes no difference, because people won’t waste their power carrying a bag while they just need a drink. Eventually, the White Pollution is not solved; what’s more, people spent money on this. A simple solution of distributing paper bag would be more efficient and more green and this will make a good policy instead of “threating” people’s with financial cost.

 

We believe in the wrong things

Mr. Dan Pink talks about the contradiction between scientific findings and our common beliefs, which reminds me that we all make mistake because we received wrong information. Specifically, we are making mistakes because we do not realize that what we are based on when we are doing our tasks is actually irrational and mismatching.

The example of rewards’ effect in distorting people’s thinking and hence prohibit their efficiency is a critical case. This recalls me of my homework. The closer I am to finish my homework, the more mistakes I would make. This can be explained by Dan Pink’s motivation theory. The nearer I am towards the ending, the more appealing the events afterward attracts me, and as the more events haunt in my mind, the more likely I will be distracted from my work at hand, and eventually the more mistakes I would make.

Of course the rewards motives people at times, like in the case when people devote more to the issues that awards themselves. In a way, these people broad their mind and enlarge their ability. However, after some thresholds, this motivation does take up space of their mind, as when people think about their rewards when working, and consequently they can only devote even fewer of their brain to their tasks.

Sustainability Series 1 Blog 7 Individual Actions II

Individuals are the most important component of the society. If the whole human society is a systematic material, even with international society as crystalline material or with states as molecules, the indispensable part would be human, as atoms. So let’s spend more time on the individual level of acting on the sustainable development or green way of life. Undoubtedly the first step would be preventing from damaging the natural resources or environmental stability, which creates the vicious cycle from the beginning. We already talked about it last time and in this passage, I will put more concentration on how to improve the green life, to really dedicate positively to the sustainability consistency on individual basis.

Rampant deforestation in Central America has been problematic for decades due to the vicious cycle created by those people who is greedy for the temporary profit of money but neglected the significance of resources. The large-scale illegal or even legal logging distorted the normal hydrological circulation, directly causing the scarcity of water resources.

However, in recent years, while both the international society and the local individuals have noticed the damage existed, and they have begun to take actions to prevent the worst from happening. The citizens in Costa Rica, began to pay for hydrological services including consumption, energy generation, irrigation etc.. What’s special about it is they are obliged to pay much higher service fees if they exceed the amount of standard usage of water.

Maybe the case of Costa Rica is not special enough because nearly every country in the world is using this policy to protect the over-load of environmental pressure. But what matters here is the coherent cooperation and support from every citizen in each aspect. Denmark mainly supplies the electricity to its citizen by Wind Power, which costs money to develop and consume. So here can we see how this country get the support from its citizens. Technicians are willing to take the challenge of doing research on this area and more importantly, people are supportive because they didn’t fight against this new resource even though it costs much more. With realization and high-education background, the individual would dedicate to the sustainable development in certain concerned ways.