Ep14 -- There Will Be Consequences

 A bunch of years ago, I had an acquaintance who was a real estate agent. In fact, he was the agent who helped us buy our townhouse when we first moved to California.  We stayed in touch and were Facebook, friends and all that. So one day he posts a photo to Facebook. He was out for a morning, jog down by the Santa Monica Pier and apparently there was a man without a home, quite disheveled, who was sleeping on a bench in a very picturesque area.  And to date this anecdote and tell you how many more people are now living without homes in LA.  My friend was quite upset by the fact that this person was sleeping there. And so much so that he stopped and took a photo of the man and posted to his Facebook account with the caption, "Thanks for ruining my morning jog."  

And I remember thinking there are a lot of reactions one could have to someone's sleeping outside in abject poverty with nothing.  But for me thinking that I was somehow the victim and that this person had, so notably impacted my experience that I had to share my sense of personal affront with the world.  Well, that wouldn't have been high up on my list.  What was really interesting to me was that while this friend of mine was clearly impacted by this other person, I don't think he would ever imagine that the direction of impact could go the other way. That anything he could be doing in his life could possibly have anything to do with that other person's situation.  And that reminded me of a quote from the profoundly insightful and obsessively observant anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who by the way, if he were alive in the nineties, would've seen the perils of social media coming a mile away.  But he said, "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think." 

And Bateson told us over and over again, that everything is connected. Change one little thing in the ecosystem over here and it's going to have an impact over there.  

And this friend of mine made the mistake we all make of so often ignoring this fact and failing to see the role we all play in contributing to the major problems of the world.  So this week, I want to take a look at some of the ways we ignore how nature works, how we're all connected within the same fragile ecosystem, and try to figure out a few ways we can change our attitudes and our behaviors to improve the health of that ecosystem.  Stay tuned.  

I'm Craig Boreth and this is The Great Ungaslighting,  a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature and how we can begin to fight back and put the kind back into humankind.  

But first, a word about a sponsor.  

The Great Ungaslighting is definitely not brought to you by TurboTax from Intuit.  Mercifully, we've all just made it through another tax season.  Some of you in 12 select states may have heard promotions earlier this year from the IRS about its new Direct File program, which will allow taxpayers to file online for free through the IRS website.  While this would likely be good for many taxpayers, it would definitely be bad for Intuit. And it's understandable that they've been spending millions to lobby against Direct File. But it's the way they've been doing it that's particularly galling. Intuit objects to the IRS, referring to Direct File as free since as a public program it's paid for by tax dollars. Yeah, sure, technically taxpayers are each paying a tiny amount each year to fund Direct File. Probably less than a dollar a person.  But it takes some serious chutzpah for Intuit to parse the word free.  It turns out the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Intuit it for four years over complaints that they've been misleading consumers by advertising TurboTax as free.  You've no doubt heard the ads touting their free tax filing.  Actually, back in 2020, they ran a series of ads where free was the only word in the ad. Well, guess what? It turns out that only about 37% of filers with TurboTax qualified for free filing.  Everyone else got baited in by the promise of free only to discover after they spent hours inputting their tax info that they're filing wasn't actually free.  So nice try Intuit,  but at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, once again, we see that a big business accusation is actually a confession.  

And we're back.  Okay. So I mentioned Gregory Bateson, who I'd love to do a whole show about because he's such a fascinating individual who helped humanity make great strides in understanding ourselves. Specifically, understanding how we live with each other in nature.  And as much as we modern humans like to believe we are somehow outside of or above nature. Eventually, we'll discover that's not the case. It's really just a question of how much damage needs to be done and how much suffering must be endured before we realize it.  

For me, the most important element of living within nature is that everything within the ecosystem affects everything else.  You may not notice it. You may not want to believe it, but it's true.  And every so often you find out about a way you're impacting others that you'd never thought of before.  So for example, last month. a Stanford finance professor and an MBA student published an op-ed in the New York Times titled, "the dirty little secret of credit card rewards programs."  In it, they argue that those free flights, hotel rooms and upgrades that affluent consumers get with their credit card rewards points are actually subsidized by increased prices that everyone has to pay, including people who will never receive any perks in return, people who tend to have lower incomes, worse credit, and are unable to pay the high annual fees for the best rewards cards. But how much of a subsidy are we actually talking about? Well, the Federal Reserve estimated that in 2022 about $15 billion in rewards value was redistributed from poor people to richer people. So it's a big deal and I know. It sucks. I wish these things weren't too good to be true.  But it turns out those credit card points that I love to use, I mean, who wouldn't, they have a real and negative impact on other people. That's just part of the reality of all living in the same ecosystem.  

And what about my real estate broker friend? Who's morning jog was ruined by that guy sleeping on the park bench?  Well, he may really want to believe that the primary or maybe only driver of homelessness is laziness.  

And that it has absolutely nothing to do with anything he's ever done. But the data and just thinking about it for a minute kind of suggest otherwise.  I mean, if homelessness is up dramatically in recent years, and it is, that means what? That there are just more lazy people around than there were in the past.  I'd suggest that the proportion of humanity that is inherently lazy has remained pretty constant. And it's the circumstances within which we all live that has changed.  So since we're talking about whether or not people have housing, let's look at what has happened to housing in recent times.  In the 1950s, the median price of a home was a little bit over two times the median income.  Today, the median price of a home is over 11 times the median income.  And while we can debate the reasons why housing prices are way up, it's undeniable that they are way up.  And it's even worse for renters than for owners.  Renters earning the median income pay just over 28% of their income in rent, whereas owners pay just under 18% on their mortgage.  And sure there are additional fees that owners pay but I doubt it's an extra 60% above the mortgage.  And what's really interesting, according to a recent study done by Zillow.  Is that when the rent-to-income ratio crosses 32% homelessness increases dramatically.  And currently in Los Angeles, the rent-to-income ratio is 36.5%.  

So, if you want to believe that homelessness is caused by laziness, go ahead, I can't stop you, no matter how much I might disagree.  But what you can't deny is that homelessness, regardless of how lazy anyone is, would decrease dramatically if housing was more affordable.  Now, I'm not saying that my real estate broker friend is causing high housing prices and thus causing more homelessness, but he's an integral part of that industry, which exists within and directly affects the ecosystem, the same ecosystem within which that unhoused person is trying to live his life. The connection is undeniable.  

So what's the takeaway this week?  At the highest level, it's just to remind yourself that everything's connected. We're all connected. If you want to live in a world that has fewer homeless people, then change is going to affect you. Something is going to have to change within your immediate existence.  But don't just think about what you might have to give up or pay to make that happen. Also, think about what you'll get in return.  Nobody enjoys living in a neighborhood where other people have to live on the street.  Whether you blame them or blame society. Whether their existence ruins your morning jog, or whether it pains you to see your fellow human suffering,  you will feel better if fewer people live without a home. So that's an improvement for you. Something you'll get in the process. 

 Another thing you can do, for whatever it is you're 

doing, whether it has a positive impact on the world or a negative one, remember the words of Edmund Burke, who said: "Nobody made a greater difference than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."  

The changes you can make can be minimal.  They don't have to be major grandiose life-altering changes to make a difference. So for example, clearly, raising cattle and eating beef is terrible for the environment, way worse than any other food product. But calls for people to cut out beef altogether seem to me to be ineffective at best.  

If you eat a lot of beef, you're exactly the type of person who could make a big difference and have a big impact just by changing a little.  If you replaced just some of the beef you eat with pork, so not going vegetarian, just changing one meat for another, since pork is much better for the environment than beef, you would probably have a bigger impact than if several infrequent meat eaters went completely vegan.  

And conversely, as we talked about with Danusha Lameris your small kindnesses can have a bigger impact than you think.  

So as you go through your day, just try to be present and be aware of what you're doing. Notice if there are immediate impacts and think about what you might want to change to maximize their positive impact or minimize their negative impact.  And if you can't see any immediate effect,  know that there is one. And try to do a little research and see if you can figure out how much of an impact positive, or negative, you might be having that you wouldn't otherwise have thought about.

 Basically, what I'm suggesting is that everyone follow the advice of the incomparable Aretha Franklin, as she said in The Blues Brothers: "You better think about the consequences of your actions."  

 Well, that's it for this week, until next time be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, and use your damn turn signal.