Desperately Seeking Tax Revenue, New Jersey Stoops To Stealing Gift Card Balances

First off, it must be pointed out just what a ridiculously bad deal gift cards are. By paying, say, $5 extra to purchase a $100 card, the buyer is basically handing free money right over to whatever company issued the card. So they were already not the smartest purchase a person could make, and if the State of New Jersey persists in its latest nefarious tax collection scheme, it's about to get a whole lot worse. Here is Huffington Post Money with the details:

Like many states on the hunt to fill in budget shortfalls, New Jersey is getting creative. The state is making a grab for its residents' gift cards.

If you live in New Jersey and wait more than two years to cash in on that Red Lobster gift card that your boss gave you, you'll be out of luck. Under a new state law, New Jersey will take control of funds on gift cards that have not been used for two years. The law could potentially translate into millions of dollars for the Garden State, which would hold the gift card money as "unclaimed funds." That means New Jersey will keep that money in state coffers rather than a consumer being able to access it through the card.

But gift card makers, unwilling to part with so much money in unredeemed funds, are fighting back, pulling out their wares from the state altogether. On Thursday, Blackhawk Network and InComm, the companies behind hundreds of major name-brand gift cards sold through thousands of vendors, said they are pulling their cards from New Jersey vendors starting on June 30 if not sooner. Earlier this week, American Express pulled its cards from New Jersey retailers.

The new law would make card sellers responsible for gathering from buyers certain personal information, such as a ZIP code. That information would then be used by New Jersey to collect the unused money on the cards into the state's unclaimed money fund 24 months after the last time these cards were used.

There are a couple of issues to consider here. First there is the invasion of privacy aspect of collecting customers' personal information. But that seems to be pretty much par for the course in America these days. Corporations and the government continually push the limits in that area, and as long as the vast majority of the public remains completely asleep at the switch about it, nothing is going to even put the brakes on that particular trend.

But more importantly, exactly what justification is there for this method of tax collection? It is so completely arbitrary as to have the appearance of out-and-out theft. Don't get me wrong, I am not an anti-tax reactionary. Government needs money to operate, and taxes are the price people pay for living in any society. But those taxes should be fairly and equitably assessed and there should at least be some articulable justification for them. This asshole move fails on both counts.

Heaven forbid that the Garden State might consider a more just and equitable tax to try and make up its budget shortfall, like maybe one on all of those financial sector scumbags who live in the state. Taxing a fucking asshole banker just for BEING a fucking asshole banker is every bit as arbitrary as confiscating people's gift card balances. And you know that one of the reasons this odious law passed is that millionaire bankers don't buy $100 Best Buy gift cards.

But wait, the state might argue, this action isn't REALLY theft because we have provided a fail safe:

Procrastinating residents could still obtain any remaining balances on the gift cards by contacting the state's unclaimed funds office.

Oh yes, that is just what I would want to do if my gift card balance got confiscated, wrestle with the state government's Orwellian bureaucracy trying to get my $100 back. How much do you want to bet that the office that would field calls about such inquiries will have the biggest nightmare of an automated telephone answering system ever installed in any government office? If you are ready to abandon all hope, please press 7.

But who is ultimately responsible for this abomination? Why, you are of course. And by "you," I mean the average dumbass American consumer:

Under federal law, gift cards must be usable for at least five years after purchase, though most do not have any expiration date. Consumer advocates have criticized gift cards because consumers often forget about them or leave balances unused.

Redemption rates are low for cards and as much as $41 billion in the United States went unspent on all gift cards from 2005 to 2011. In some cases, activation or dormancy fees can eat up small amounts of money left on cards. All these things have made them lucrative for card makers.

It kind of makes you wonder why stores even bother charging the $5 purchase fee in the first place, doesn't it? You would think that sales of the cards, and hence profitable unredeemed balances, would be even higher if they just gave them out for free.

What can you say about a society which is so wealthy yet addle-minded that its citizens can afford to piss $41 billion down the sewer for nothing? There are whole countries out there that don't have a GDP that large. To put that number in perspective, it equals over $100 for every man, woman and child in America. That means the average family of four has put over $400 onto unused gift cards and have just forgotten about them. No wonder so few people get upset and protest moves like one. It's not like they even noticed just how blatantly they were getting ripped off in the first place.


Bonus: The gift

Walmart Determined To Do More Damage To Americans' Standard Of Living

Perhaps no other single entity has done more to help destroy the average American's standard of living during the past 30 years than Walmart. The chain's maniacal insistance on lowering prices at the expense of everything else in order to increase the bottom line has made founder Sam Walton's heirs among the wealthiest people on the planet while destroying mom-and-pop businesses all across the country and helping to drive down wages in every market it has entered or touched.

It all was working out handsomely until high gasoline prices and the Great Recession hit, and distressed consumers found themselves at a breaking point in which many of them could no longer afford even Walmart prices. So what is America's most predatory retail chain going to do in response? Why, lower prices even further, of course. Here is AOL Daily Finance with the details:

Walmart has put out an APB for shoppers: "We have the lowest prices all the time. Period."

This week, the nation's biggest retailer detailed its $2 billion plan to "reinvest" in low prices, expressly in areas such as food and consumables, to drive more traffic to its 3,868 U.S. stores.

During a presentation at a CIBC World Markets conference, Duncan Mac Naughton, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer, also outlined Walmart's other key priorities: to add more nutritious and high-end food to stores, such as USDA Choice beef; rework its poorly performing clothing business; and enhance its appeal to ethnic minorities with more merchandise tailored to their tastes.

The first question I had upon reading that passage was to ask exactly what kind of horrifically bad beef Walmart is currently carrying ("pink slime" would be my guess), but the business reporter stenographer who wrote the story apparently didn't think to ask it.

The money passage, so to speak, was in the next part of the story.

Walmart's move to regain its status as the nation's bargain emporium comes in response to the rise of dollar stores, which won over large swathes of new shoppers during the recession. It's also a course correction aimed at remedying its own missteps.

Over the past three years, the retailer unleashed a bevy of promotions that muddled its original everyday-low-price message, Mac Naughton said. That led customers to begin to question whether they could still expect Walmart to have the lowest prices, he said. The promotions "fractured some of that trust," said Mac Naughton. "That's why we're so focused on consistent pricing now."

Making sure the price is right is crucial as the U.S. consumer "is still facing some significant headwinds," Mac Naughton said. Although the recession has been officially over for a few years now, 23 million Americans are still officially unemployed, gas prices are high and rising, and economic growth is anemic, he noted.

Right there you see a clueless corporate flack, touting a new policy to increase his company's profitability that is utterly self defeating. Sorry to break this to you, Mr. Mac Naughton, but Walmart has reached a breaking point in which putting any more price pressure on your suppliers is going to cause direct economic pain for the companies who supply your products, which will be passed along to their workforce, which will result in them having less cash flow to be able buy shit at your hideous stores. You and the other major vulture retail firms have finally managed to squeeze all of the excess wealth from the pockets of your beleaguered working class customers. They are tapped out...just like your awful business model. It's just too bad that they were so dimwitted as to have gone along with the program until it was too late.


Bonus: "Now cousin Clifford...he got the good land...right on the highway off of Airbase Road...looks like a Walmart...waiting to happen...I'm here to tell you it's a pot of gold"

QVC Cuts Over 600 Jobs In Chesapeake (Virginia)

The first thing I thought when I read this article was: wait, you mean people actually still buy stuff from QVC? Apparently so, as this article from a local Virginia Television station reports:

QVC is laying off more than 600 employees from their call center in Chesapeake.

They say so many more customers are shopping online instead of placing orders by calling a hotline so they don't need an order services department any longer.

A spokesperson for QVC says that the employees were notified earlier this week. The layoffs will happen in phases. The first group, the on-call employees, will be phased out by June.

QVC has already cut the hours for the rest of their part-time and full-time employees from that department. And by 2013, all of the 606 positions will be gone.

So why do people continue to watch QVC if they then go online to place their order? I guess I'll just never understand the consumer mindset.


Bonus: Scenes we'd like to see

Peak Flat Screen Televisions

It goes without saying that Americans LOVE their flat screen teevees. So if sales of the damn things are starting to slip, it stands to reason that it isn't a good economic indicator. Here is paidContent.org with the story:

The consumer electronics trend that had us shuffling out our perfectly good but perfectly bulky CRT televisions in favor of fancy-new flat screens appears to be ebbing.

Whoa...whoa...gotta stop you right there, Hoss. I still have my old CRT television that I bought back in the late 1990s, and it still works perfectly fine, thank you very much. I could easily afford a flat screen, but I don't care to throw out a perfectly good set because I'm not a mindless consumer zombie like you are. So knock it off with the "us" stuff.

Anyway, proceed:

According to research firm IHS iSuppli, U.S. shipments of flat-panel TVs will actually decline for the first time since Fujitsu introduced the first 42-inch plasma display in 1997. And it doesn’t appear as though the now mature product category is in line for returned growth anytime soon.

IHS forecasts the U.S. flat-panel TV market to decline to 37.1 million units in 2012, down 5 percent from 39.1 million units in 2011. By 2015, the research firm predicts that the American market for these TVs will drop to around 34 million shipments. The flat-panel category includes TVs built around the now-dominant liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, as well as older plasma and somewhat obsolete digital light projection (DLP) technologies.

Driving the forecast, IHS says, is the maturation of the market—most consumers who could afford to swap out their big, bulky TVs in favor of more elegant high-definition flat screens have already done so. That means that in the U.S., most of the purchasing is being conducted by consumers who are replacing an older flat screen.

“The U.S. flat-panel television market has never declined on an annual basis, even at the height of the recession in 2008 and 2009,” noted Lisa Hatamiya, TV research analyst for IHS. “The decline starting this year suggests that demand may have crested for the mature U.S. TV market. Sales in the United States now are being driven by consumers who are replacing their older flat-panel sets with new models boasting more advanced features. This contrasts with developing regions of the world where vibrant, untapped markets remain for buyers making their first-ever purchase of flat-panel sets.”

But they saved the best part for last:

Another factor cited by IHS: “irrational exuberance” on the part of TV manufacturers, who glutted the current market by over-projecting demand last year.

See what happens when the government releases manipulated economic statistics to make things look better than they really are? Idiots, like those who run flat screen teevee manufacturing companies, believe them.


Bonus: A cool little ditty by the Television Personalities

Sharks Eat Shark Porn: Amazon & Costco Devouring Walmart

I love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning. Smells like...Walmart biting the dust. Here are the gory details from DailyFinance:

Walmart revolutionized consumers' lives for decades. It built a successful retail empire across the country, powered by its low prices.

Hold on for just a minute. Wally World built its successful retail empire by running mom and pop stores into the ground and destroying the social fabric of communities all over the country, not to mention perfecting the business model of using precious resources to have cheap shit built in China and shipped halfway around the world using more cheap resources. It changed people's lives all right, but hardly for the better. The company is a scourge upon the Earth, and when in finally goes belly up, I for one will be dancing upon its grave.

But anyway, please continue:

But Walmart has failed to keep up with the innovation, and now other companies are successfully changing consumers' behaviors in a way that is slowly killing the world's most famous retailer.

Want proof?

Look no further than its most recent quarterly earnings report. Although it marked its second full quarter of positive same-store sales growth (albeit a measly 1.5%) after nine consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales, overall earnings still declined 13%.

Bwahahahahahahaha. So their margins are getting squeezed. Excellent! Couldn't happen to a bigger or more deserving bunch of scumbags.

So if Wally World is in a funk, who is picking up the slack?

Amazon's low prices (thanks to its low overhead expenses and no sales tax in most states) and unbeatable selection (thanks to the acquisition of companies like Diapers.com and Zappos), combined with the convenience of online shopping, have attracted a growing fan base of customers -- stealing more and more customers away from Walmart.

Even Jeremy King, the chief technology officer of Walmart, admits Walmart.com is "playing a catch-up game" with Amazon. And yet it's pretty clear that any attempts to compete with Amazon online will be futile.

That's because Amazon's reach will only continue to expand as it builds out its Kindle platform. The ease of purchasing with just one click from virtually whatever device you choose (your computer, phone, Kindle, or even Apple's iPad) will continue to attract a growing number of consumers -- again, spelling bad news for Walmart.

And how about those not going online to shop?

On the physical front, the most revolutionary Walmart killer is Costco.

Costco, a members-only warehouse chain, targets a more affluent demographic than Walmart but similarly prides itself in offering heavily discounted items. Even though Walmart has a similar arm of its business, Costco is light years ahead of Walmart's Sam's Club.

Costco's charm permeates many levels.

Markups on products are heavily controlled. Items can never be sold for more than 15% of cost (whereas supermarkets will mark up items by 25%, and department stores mark items up by as much as 50%). This means consumers always know they'll find unbeatable bargains. And that keeps them coming back for the majority of their shopping needs.

Stores require little upkeep. They are bare bones in design, meaning they require less maintenance capital than its more posh (by comparison) competitors. Plus, Costco only stocks around 4,000 items. Walmart's stores, by contrast, often carry more than 100,000 different items, which constantly need shelf attention.

Shopping is easier. The smaller scope of products makes the purchase decision easier for customers. But it also generates higher sales volumes, which enables Costco to sell items quicker than they have to pay their suppliers for them -- and allows them to negotiate even lower deals with these suppliers.

Costco has a secret ingredient. The stores have an additional element that Walmart will likely never be able to replicate: the "treasure hunt." Costco constantly stocks shelves with new items available for just a short time. Customers return excited to see new offerings, and they often leave with items they hadn't intended to purchase.

Returns are never a problem. Even if shoppers later decide their impulse buys were unwise, Costco has the most consumer-friendly return policy out there, accepting returns on most products without a receipt and with an infinite timeframe.

Given all this, it's little surprise that Costco's retention rate for members hovers around 90%. This means that once a customer gets a taste for the savings -- and experience -- Costco offers, he or she will likely be a customer for life. Again, bad news for Walmart.

Ummm...there are a lot of words I might use to describe Costco, but saying it has fucking "charm" isn't one of them. The downside to this story is that Walmart's woes are not being caused by consumers finally wising up to the horrific societal costs of cut rate, cut throat retailers. In fact, all it really means is that the O.S. (Original Shark) is now getting devoured by two even more ruthless sharks. But nevertheless, it is fun to contemplate the possibility of Walmart's rapid demise and that soon all of its stores will look like the one in the picture above.


Bonus: "That place is huge and fucking horrible"

Saturday Night Video: Louis CK on Currency, Economic Collapse and "White People Problems"

I really wish the outstandingly funny Louis CK would do more social commentary in his routines, because he is really good at it. In this clip he makes fun of lazy, complacent Americans and our "white people problems," speculating that we're not going to do so well when economic collapse hits.

Choice bit: "We're the fattest people in the world, and we have all this stuff. And we HATE it."

Enjoy!




Bonus Video: Juice News did a excellent rap report on the whole Kony 2012 controversy (otherwise known as white people for once actually worrying about black people in Africa problems). Too bad it was recorded before Jason Russell was detained Thursday after his rather bizarre public breakdown because then it would no doubt have been even funnier.

The Perfect Candidate

Wow, it really IS a Great Day in South Carolina! Here is Talking Points Memo with the details:

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, who spent campaign money on a Playstation, women’s clothing, iPads and his wife’s cell phone bill, will submit his resignation on Friday morning.

“During my campaign, it was my responsibility to make sure things were done correctly,” Ard said in a press release, according to The State. “I did not do that.”

Ard said he “must take full ownership and resign from the Office of Lieutenant Governor … I am deeply sorry and take full responsibility.”

Here is where I really have to ask a simple question: what exactly is the problem, anyway? All Lieutenant Governor Ard really did was uphold the preeminent value of modern day America: consumerism. In fact, I would argue that Lieutenant Governor Ard is actually a true American hero for helping to so vigorously stimulate the economy at a time when the nation is still trying to recover from the lingering effects of the Great Recession. Come on, South Carolina, LEAVE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR KEN ARD ALONE!

Oh come on, Bill. The man used his campaign funds to purchase stuff for his own personal use and the use of his family. That's a crime. Certainly you of all people should be demanding that Ard be vigorously prosecuted. You going soft on us?

Not at all. For what is a campaign contribution, anyway? It is money given to a candidate by either a rich asshole who is trying to buy influence or a delusional twit who still thinks their vote really matters. Either way, I really don't give a flying fuck what happens to their money after they willingly surrender it to some scumbag politician. If Ard didn't spend it on a Playstation, he likely would have instead bought some stupid teevee attack ads or something equally corrosive and wasteful. At least his Playstation and his wife's cell phone won't be responsible for helping to dumb down the public discourse.


Bonus: "Big man, pig man...ha ha, charade you are"

Forever Lazy: Idiocracy's Formal Wear

Since Super Sunday is the day in which tens of millions of people actually look FORWARD to seeing the latest inane and intelligence-insulting teevee commercials to spew forth from the reptilian minds of Madison Avenue hucksters, I thought this story would be appropriate. I rarely watch television and thus am not normally exposed to commercials for the latest awful products available in our mindless consumer economy. I thus don't have any way to judge how widely known the existence of the product advertised in the commercial linked below is. I'm not sure what represents the bigger indicator of the impending end of the empire: the fact that such an article of clothing as Forever Lazy even exists, that an oversized onesie is being marketed to alleged adult human beings or that the advertisement actually advocates it as appropriate attire to wear out in public.

The other thing the cracks me up about commercials like this is that the actors on the screen don't appear to be the kind of people who would ever be caught dead using such a product in real life. The perfectly symmetry would be to see someone wearing one of these while chowing down on one of those KFC Famous Bowls. Anyway, in case you are like me and had no idea that the American consumerism has hit yet another new low, here is the Forever Lazy in all of its appalling glory.

Hollywood Blues: 2011 Was the Worst Year at the Box Office Since 1995

In yet another sign that consumers have less money to spend, there was a steep drop in tickets sales for movies this past year, as reported by the Atlantic Wire:

The numbers are in, and they show what studio execs likely feared and movie-goers likely suspected all along: Not a lot of people went to the movies this year. Box-office tracker Hollywood.com says that "an estimated 1.275 billion tickets sold" in 2011, a 4.8 percent decrease from 2010 making for "the smallest movie audience since 1995," reports the AP. A hodgepodge of reasons for the sour showing were cited in the AP and ABC News reports. Among them: Too many sequels, too many kids movies, too many distracting gadgets, the bad economy, high ticket prices, and, something being called an "'Avatar' hangover" from 2010.

Conspicuously absent from the list was the fact that most of the movies released in 2011 sucked balls.


Bonus: Cue, Billy Joel

Black Friday Redux: Air Jordan Release Sparks Violence

As it turned out, Black Friday was not the most out-of-control display of mindless consumerism in America this year. That honor now goes to today, Black Friday Redux, and the accompanying violence and senseless behavior over the latest release of sneakers endorsed by a washed up has-been who hasn't played a game in nearly a decade. Here is BBC with the details:

There was disorder from California to Georgia as shoppers vied to buy a retro version of a classic Air Jordan model.

A new pair costs about $180 (£115), but they are already being listed on eBay for as much as $605.

The ugly scenes recalled the violence that broke out in the early 1990s on streets across America as the shoes became popular targets for thieves.

In the early hours of Friday, police used pepper spray on about 20 customers who started fighting at a mall in suburban Seattle, Washington state, as they waited in line to buy the black-and-white Air Jordan 11 Retro Concords.
Gunfire

One man was arrested for allegedly punching a police officer.

"He did not get his shoes. He went to jail," Officer Mike Murphy said.

He added: "It was not a nice, orderly group of shoppers. There were a lot of hostile and disorderly people."

In other disturbances:

At least four people were arrested after customers broke down a door at a store selling the shoes in Lithonia, Georgia

There was an attempted robbery on a victim who was mistakenly believed to have just bought the shoes in Stockton, California

About 100 shoppers forced their way into a shopping centre in Taylor, Michigan
A gunshot rang out as shoppers queued in Richmond, California, although no injures were reported

Disorder were also reported in Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Omaha, Nebraska

How many of these people do you suppose were also putting themselves even deeper in debt just to buy a pair of these overpriced pieces of shit? What a sad, sick culture we live in. Frankly, when it finally collapses I won't miss it one damn bit.

Fukushima and the Fragility of Modern Civilization

As a companion piece to an on-the-ground account of the Japanese earthquake we published last week, I am posting here some thoughts from our colleague Peter David Pedersen of the Tokyo sustainability consultancy E-Square Inc. He reflects on the longer-term consequences of how Japan (and the rest of the world) will change behaviors related to potentially dangerous energy sources such as nuclear power. Peter has had personal experience with censorship in the Japanese media when it comes to criticizing TEPCO specifically and nuclear power in general.

---

Ogoto-onsen, near Kyoto, March 18, 2011

I am writing to you from a hotel along the shore of Biwa-ko, Japan's largest lake, some 528 km west (and slightly south) of the Fukushima nuclear power station. Fresh snow is covering the landscape in what would normally be a very idyllic setting.

Right now it feels absolutely surreal, as if all the earthquake destruction in eastern Japan combined with the man-made specter of nuclear destruction were scenes out a Hollywood movie entitled "Twin Disasters." But this is no movie, and whether there will be any form of "happy" ending to the nuclear malaise remains entirely unpredictable.

The Japanese government "cannot" talk openly and honestly to the Japanese public about the potential dangers in a worst-case scenario at Fukushima, primarily because of fears of panic among the 30 million people in the world's largest metropolitan area, Tokyo and Yokohama.

Over the last 10 years or so, I have repeatedly experienced the attempts of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) to control information on nuclear power in this country. For eighteen months, from 2000–2001, I anchored the main news program at MX TV, Tokyo's local TV station, and was told by the producer that "since TEPCO is a sponsor of our program, I would prefer if you do not openly criticize nuclear power."

On another occasion, I was writing a piece for a well-known publication for 5th and 6th grade school kids on the environment. That time the chief editor told me, "TEPCO is one of the sponsors of our magazine. While I would like you to write on the environment, please don't be critical of nuclear power."

On a third occasion, not directly related to TEPCO, I was interviewed by the Yomiuri newspaper, one of Japan's top two newspapers in terms of circulation, about the 1978 demonstrations throughout Denmark against the possible introduction of nuclear power, in which I participated as a child. When the interview appeared in the newspaper, my phrase "demonstrations against nuclear power" had been altered to "demonstrations for renewable energy." This was not what I had said, and when I called the journalist in charge, he sheepishly apologized, saying, "I did not dare to write anything negative about nuclear power lest I should invite the wrath of my editor (boss)."

I feel so very sorry for the people who are, right now, sacrificing their future health, and some of them their immediate lives, working to stop the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. They may be described as "heroes"—and surely their efforts as such are heroic—but in a wider perspective they are victims of an industry in which the brainwashing of contractors and workers to believe that what they work with is safe has been pervasive.

In its entirety, the present situation in eastern Japan and the Tokyo metropolitan area has revealed the amazing fragility of modern civilization. All lifelines—water, transport, electricity, food supplies—have been severed or disrupted in eastern Japan, and Tokyo, one of the world's largest cities, was in danger of a large-scale, sudden blackout yesterday afternoon (March 17) as a cold spell of weather drove up electricity consumption close to the limit of maximum supply.

A good friend of mine, working at Tohoku University not far from the epicenter of the earthquake, called to tell how he finally, after six days, managed to leave Sendai (a city of more than 1 million on Honshu's east coast), driving to Tokyo in a 16-hour ordeal. No gasoline being available anywhere on the route, he barely managed to reach Tokyo, his gas tank drying up. More frightening than the drive, though, was how food and water were virtually impossible to obtain in the city center of Sendai.

"Emergency supplies have been distributed to the schools where tens of thousands of people take refuge, but nothing seemed to reach the city of Sendai and shelves in supermarkets were almost completely empty. For the first time, I had the feeling of a threat to my life because of an inability to buy food," he told me.

My friend made it, but older and weaker people are dying—or will die—as the crucial lifelines of a hypermodern society have been devastated.

The question, obviously, is what we can learn from this experience, not only in Japan but also in modern society as a whole. It remains to be seen whether we will truly learn anything at all. To me, there seem to be at least three major lessons. The first is the question of how or if lifestyles and values will change. The thing that the Japanese have been praised for throughout the first week of this terrible disaster has not been "technology" or "financial strength"—it has been the strong spirit, the patience, and the human qualities of the people here that have touched many around the world.

Money and shiny goods in temples of consumption have carried absolutely no value for the people here in the last week. Is there a chance that we may, now, see and act on the emptiness of useless consumerism? I hope there is a chance, although I do at the same time fear that once things settle down, Japan and the world will go on as if nothing had happened.

The second lesson is the danger of concentration of population into huge metropolises. Although the epicenter of the M9.0 earthquake was hundreds of kilometers northeast of Tokyo, the city was paralyzed, streets were clogged, subways inoperative, and phone lines dead. The staff at my office could not get home or get in touch with their family.

What if—and this could happen any day—the earthquake had hit Tokyo straight on? I have not the courage to think of the scale of disaster or the number of human lives that would have been lost. As urbanization continues at great speed in the world's population centers, the utter fragility of the 21st century megacity poses serious questions. Is there a way to answer this question in a more humane and sustainable manner than we are experiencing today? There must be.

The third lesson is the folly of making ourselves dependent on energy production from large-scale and extremely dangerous power stations, where no workable plans exist to control worst-case scenarios. Huge costs will be incurred in Japan over the next several decades to clean up Fukushima. Huge costs were incurred to build the plant in the first place. Surely this money could have been used more wisely. Hopefully, the lesson taken from Fukushima will, finally, make the idea of nonviolent, nontoxic, decentralized energy sources the mainstream policy and business choice around the world.

If we can learn the lessons, there is hope for the future.

Peter David Pedersen
Chief Executive
E-Square Inc.
Tokyo, JAPAN

[PHOTO CREDIT: Globovisión. Damaged reactor at Fukushima (CC).]