From The Morgue

“Why is it… some people buy 20 properties a year and others only buy 1?”
There’s an ad in the ‘entertainment’ section of Wellington freebie the Capital Times this week: “How to profit from property!” It’s advertising an upcoming seminar and, cod-socialist that I am, every word in the advertisement makes my hackles rise.
“NZs Largest Propety Success Program to Property Climbers!”
“Learn the secrets ONLY 6% of investors know that gives them success where many others fail!”
“You will never win the race of wealth riding on a donkey!”
The seminar is from a “Richmastery“, a property investment services company based out of Auckland. Their website promises a long and costly process of induction into their secret techniques, culminating in the slightly spooky inner circle:

STEP 8. Presidential Inner Circle
The Presidential Inner Circle is a unique and exclusive opportunity that is strictly limited to fifty serious members worldwide who will experience a range of privileges, access and discovery that is unattainable outside of this selected private group. This group is about Fun, Discovery, Learning and Access at the Highest levels.

They even have their own website: http://www.presidentialinnercircle.com/. There are some great photos of last weekend’s “Ferrari and Porsche day”.
Anyway. I don’t have any grand purpose here other than saying “Look at that!” and pointing. If it reminds you of Amway or Landmark or even Scientology, that’s no mistake, this is just another iteration of the same tried and tested techniques for sucking people in. And I surely don’t have to remind anyone in NZ of the havoc wreaked socially by the rise in investment property.
“Imagine how much faster your personal wealth accumulation could be with this information!”
Bah, humbug. I’m going to catch the bus to work now.

I’m going to the UK in August. 24 hours in a flying tin can for me (each way). And yet. I worry about climate change. I esteem George Monbiot, who says not flying is the single most significant thing one can do to help avert climate change. My moral heuristic is Kant’s categorical imperative: do as you would have everyone do. I even co-ordinate a teaching programme about the gap between attitudes and behaviour in the environmental context.
All this, and I fly to the UK.
I’m going over for the wedding of one of my oldest and closest friends. If there is ever a reason to travel the world, surely this would be it? But on the other hand, I know my friend would understand if I didn’t go. If our friendship means anything, it is respect for one anothers’ principles. Besides, I have a lot of very close friends all around the world. There will always be events of significance out there.
But there are flights going all the time. What’s one seat on one flight going to do? It’s not like they’d cancel the flight if I wasn’t on it, right? But any decision anyone makes has social consequences. If I didn’t go, then that would contribute to social perception of air travel. Me not going might nudge a few other people closer to thinking, yeah, if I’m serious about climate change I’m not going to make that sort of trip. And if they made similar decisions, so it would spread further. Me going has the opposite effect – someone whose conscience is nagging them, like mine did me, can think “well morgue always talks about climate change but he flew around the world just the same”. And maybe that will hold them back.
The big problem in climate change is corporate and government activity, individual carbon output is just a sideshow and worrying about it is useless. But corporate and government activity happens in the social matrix. All the stuff about social influence above applies here as well. The big powers will only change when there’s a mass of public sentiment demanding it, and if I believe that then isn’t it incumbent on me to be part of the demanding public?
Well, just buy come carbon offset and consider yourself in balance. Maybe. I’m suspicious of carbon offset schemes because of the time lag – they promise to pay back your carbon output in the future, but the problem is worsening now and timescales for change are short.
So am I a hypocrite? Yeah, I think I am. And there’s not much I can do about that except acknowledge it. So bear it in mind whenever I talk about this stuff – I’m just an ordinary hypocrite like everyone else. And I’m sure looking forward to the UK.