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Show 4 OPINION Common courtesy should not be a rule Wednesday March 20, 2013 M y 84-year-old grandma, who can hardly walk, couldn't find a disabled parking spot the other day when she went to eat at a local restaurant. She had to park at the back of the lot and needed the help of both my mom and her walker to make it to the entrance of the restaurant. When she finally got inside, a group of able-bodied teenage girls walked out to their car — conveniently located in the disabled parking spot my grandma couldn't have. This is what happens when we replace the dictates of common courtesy with rules. These teenage girls had a handicapped sticker on their car, so they were not actually breaking any rules. To them and so many people in our society, disabled parking spots have become nothing more than a rule to be followed. Consequently, when able-bodied people happen to have a handicapped sticker — by whatever means they obtained it — they will park in a disabled parking spot with no guilt because they think they are doing nothing wrong. Whenever we make a rule to enforce common courtesy, we run the risk of making that rule or law too successful. In other words, people might start thinking of the new rule as just that — a rule — instead of a means to enforce something more fundamental, such as courtesy or morality. Consequently, when the rule doesn't match up exactly with courtesy, people will act in ways they normally would not had there never www.dailyutahchronicle.corn : 4 OVE 1 \ 0\J 1 \ i i STEVENSON SMITH Opinion Columnist been a rule in the first place — just like the disabled parking spot example. The converse of rules that are too successful and backfire is best illustrated by six day care centers in Haifa, Israel, that decided to start fining parents who came in late to pick up their children. Before its new rule, the parents would pick up their children on time as a common courtesy for the day cares. After the day cares instituted the tardiness rule, however, the number of tardy parents doubled. The parents began looking at picking their children up on time as a rule, and they acted accordingly. If the outcome is the same for rules that are too successful and rules that aren't successful enough in that they subvert common courtesy, is the answer to this problem of courtesy to end most rules? It is an interesting question about human nature to see if we actually could be motivated to act courteously without external force. Imagine if there was no law punishing people for parking in disabled parking spots. The only enforcement would be the internal drive we have to act courteously — the same enforcement 111F\ al, LP L LASLo that motivates people to do great things, such as helping the elderly cross the street, opening a door for a stranger or helping someone pick up papers they've dropped. Would there be more or less abuse with able-bodied people parking in disabled parking spots? I don't claim to have the answer to this question, but it is worth thinking about. However, in the case of my grandma and those teenage girls, if the girls had been thinking of disabled parking spots Americans need to protest corporate consolidation I nequality might seem like old news. Occupy was beating that horse in 2011, and we've surely seen some graphic or other on the massive bank consolidation taking place since 1990, resulting in four bank monopolies: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Inequality has always existed in America, anyway. Why is it so urgent now? Not only is the wealth more uneven than it has ever been, but unequal distribution does not stop at wealth. We are living in a time when a handful of corporations control wealth, media and food. There is $24.7 trillion in mutual funds in the world, and $1.24 trillion of this is directly invested in index funds, according to a 2011 Fact Book that the Investment Company Institute released. That means the rest of that vast sum of money is in actively managed funds. But according to Brendan Coffey at Forbes, "an internal study [a chief investor at a hedge fund firm said] his firm recently found that the vast majority of mutual funds defined as actively managed see 95 percent of the assets they hold determined by an index." Coffey goes on further to say indexes are controlled by "McGrawHill, which owns Standard & Poor's, PATRICK BONER Opinion Columnist Northwestern Mutual, which owns Russell Investments ... CME group, which owns 90 percent of Dow Jones Indexes, and Barclay's, which took over Lehman Brothers and its Lehman Aggregate Bond Index." These four corporations, then, hold in their hands the investment future of roughly $23 trillion. But hold on, because we've only just begun our journey into inequality. The seeds from which our food grow are now consolidated in the hands of ten multi-national corporations. The proprietary seed market has grown tremendously because these corporations can run an exclusive monopoly on them. These monopoly seeds "now account for 82 percent of the commercial seed market worldwide," according to Context Network. An article in Cereal Secrets found "that in 2003 ... the ABCD firms controlled 73 percent of the global grain trade." The ABCD firms include ADM, Bunge, Cargill and (Louis) Dreyfus. These four corporations control more than half of the grain grown and eaten on Earth, so essentially they control the global grain trade. We believe we maintain control over our lives, but this appears to be but a cognitive dissonance that enables us to ignore the reality of our situation — we are increasingly controlled. In fact, a handful of corporations even control the media. Looking at visual data Jason at Frugal Dad collected, just six companies control 90 percent of the media. These companies include General Electric, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS. The question that needs to be asked is whether the media still controls only what we think about, or whether the media now controls what we think. These mega-corporations might not own our lives, but they certainly control us. But knowledge is power, and knowledge also heralds action. Like the Occupy movement, we need to protest a new corporate control of our vital institutions. letters@ chronicle.utah.edu RORY PENMAN/The Daily Utah Chronicle 5.474,- /3 SALLY YOO/The Daily Utah Chronicle as a courtesy instead of a rule of which they could more or less take advantage — seemingly without consequence — I highly doubt they would have ever parked in that spot. letters@chronicle.utah.edu LETTER TO THE EDITOR Divestment from fossil fuels offers the U no downside Editor: Divestment from fossil fuel companies is one of the most effective, low-risk and common sense actions the U can take to combat the current and future impacts of climate change. Our administration understands the dangers of climate change — demonstrated by President David Pershing's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 through the Climate Action Plan — efforts to immediately reduce emissions on campus and renewable energy purchases of about 36 percent of the university's total power use in 2012. However, the U continues financial encouragement of fossil fuel use globally with its investments. Investing in these fossil fuel companies provides the financial incentive and social license to continue extracting, selling and burning more carbon — carbon we cannot afford to burn if we want to avert catastrophic climate change. It seems contradictory that the U is ranked third nationally in green power purchases, but invests in the burning of destructive fossil fuels with its endowment. To be clear, divestment is anything but a "feelgood" measure. In fact, it is one of the strongest actions we can take against climate change. In 1987, at the height of the apartheid era, the U, along with many other institutions, divested from companies that did business in South Africa, thanks to the tireless dedication of students. One of these student leaders for divestment at the U during apartheid, Tom Price, is a passionate supporter of fossil fuel divestment. "I know from experi- ence that the U can divest for non-financial reasons when there is a compelling cause, and that doing so sends a clear, effective message," Price said, adding that there is no "more clear and present threat to our way of life than climate change." Divestment is also a financially sound technique. The estimated negative effect on the U's endowment is less than one half of a hundredth of a percent — 0.0034. What about scholarships? According to the U's Office of Budget and Institutional Analysis, only about 7 percent of "non-need-based" scholarships or grants came from "institutional" or "external" sources. Fossil fuel companies are just one of the many benefactors in this category — only a portion of the 7 percent. But here's the kicker — the percentage is irrelevant. Since endowed scholarships are bound by contractual restrictions, they cannot be revoked on a whim and certainly not because of university investment policy. In all likelihood, no scholarships, no grants and no student aid would be affected. Divestment would cost the U essentially nothing, maintain scholarships, align our actions and principles with our investments and would be a monumental move against climate change. The student government, ASUU, already has a courageous action in support of this endeavor — Joint Resolution 12. It deserves swift passage. Matt Kirkegaard, Sophomore, Political and Environmental Science Founder of Fossil Free U |