Loading...
The Citizen, 2017-04-20, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views Unchecked Those infamous videos that showed a 69 - year -old passenger being injured as he was dragged off a United Airlines aircraft last week after he refused to volunteer to give up his seat so airline employees could have it, go a lot farther than the stupidity of one company and its employees. Commentators have noted that employees of most airlines often treat passengers as if they should be grateful they were allowed to pay their money to be on the aircraft. There's always a delicate balance in any business interaction between the sense of employees and their employers as to whether they are there to serve their customers, or the customers are just the people who pay to make their jobs possible. The theory in our free enterprise system is that companies who don't treat their customers well will be punished by seeing them turn to their competition — but what happens when there's little competition? The reality is that in our current political, social and business climate, there's less and less competition. Mergers in recent years have reduced the number of major airlines in the U.S. from eight to four. At many U.S. airports, one of these airlines controls more than half the passenger traffic. The difficulty is that the very free market that's supposed to discipline bad behaviour through competition, also has a natural affinity with concentrating power unless there's a constant influx of new competitors. Given the way things have been going, one can expect four U.S. airlines to become two, then one, unless new companies enter the fray, and given the expense of starting an airline these days, it's unlikely there will be a flood of new competitors. It's not a new issue. More than a century ago several U.S. trusts, or monopolies, were so powerful they undermined the whole idea of a free market. Seeing the problem, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, (a Republican power leads to abuse Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk yet), brought in anti-trust regulations to prevent too much concentration of market power. Large companies were forbidden to merge if it would lessen competition. But as with most things, after a while people forgot the problem the solution was created to deal with and instead saw the solution as the problem. Free market advocates said the real way to prevent concentration was with competition, not regulation. U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton repealed several pieces of legislation to regulate companies and merger mania began. By 2008 there were financial institutions in the U.S. that were so powerful their mistakes could throw the entire world economy into a tail -spin. These companies were so large, the effect of their collapse from their own greed and arrogance would have harmed hundreds of millions of people, so the U.S. government had to invest taxpayers' money save them. In return for this salvage job, U.S. President Barack Obama stepped in to regulate the financial industry to prevent greed from causing such chaos again. The leaders of the industry were happy enough to take the government's money to save their jobs, share - options and bonuses, but soon began to resent the government limitations on their ability to do business any way they wanted. Candidate Donald Trump promised to take them off the leash and when he became President Donald Trump, the stock market went wild with hope and expectation. But the roots of the concentration of power go beyond the marketplace's natural evolution toward monopoly and politicians' tendency to please big business (whose leaders are often major campaign contributors). Increasingly consumers seem attracted to dealing with "the winners", companies that are so large they can dictate the way their suppliers do business with them. First came companies like Walmart that could set a price they were willing to pay and insist suppliers meet it, or else. People were quite willing to buy from a bully if it meant they got cheap prices. Now in the internet age, even Walmart isn't big enough for many consumers who turn to the buying power of companies like Amazon with even more clout. People also cheer for monopolistic companies like Uber to defy government regulation and drive the little guy taxi drivers out of business. Google and Facebook are becoming so powerful governments bow to them. But power changes people, even if they claim it doesn't. People who have too much power tend to see things from their own viewpoint. Governments may see citizens as beholden to them instead of the people owning the government. Businesses begin to see customers as an inconvenience instead of the reason they're in business. Nobody should have too much power. We've seen countries without strong constitutional checks and balances become one-person dictatorships. We've seen police get carried away and mistreat citizens. At our recent newspaper convention one publisher felt it was fine to deny a voice in his newspaper to someone who hadn't been co-operative to the paper. Sadly, many people don't behave well just to be good people. It takes checks like competition or regulations to balance power between big companies, organizations and governments and you and me. Last call! All aboard the hate train! Earlier this year, my editor Shawn and my publisher Keith talked about the frustrations they have had with our recently upgraded computer systems. I've been trying to deal with the upgrade with a little more of a, "This is a new challenge and I'm going to address what I can" kind of attitude, but it seems that technology, in our office, is destined to make life frustrating for those using it. In my case, however, blaming the technology isn't really giving those who design it a fair shake. My frustration stems from a network hard drive that has a lot of important files on it, which is currently out of commission. Between advertisements, pictures and copy, we generate numerous and large files and we have to find places to keep them. It used to be that a one -terabyte drive would have lasted us for years but, with new equipment, larger files, larger programs and larger operating systems, the space just doesn't last like it used to. Years ago, a few weeks of photos would fit on a burnable DVD, but now we would be lucky to get one edition of the paper's worth of photos on there as digital photography results in bigger photos and bigger files. So we turned to these drives as a means of backing up those files and making sure that, if someone from the public wants to find something, be it a photo, an old story or an old advertisement, we could locate and bring up the item of interest quickly. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case lately. The problem stretches back to shortly after we last upgraded our computer systems. Just after that move, a power outage fried one of our office computers. The computer's hard drive was damaged Denny Scott Denny's Den significantly and the recovery was no mean task, both in terms of work and how much it ended up costing. Fortunately, recovery was an option as we hope it is with this second drive. It got me thinking, however, about some of the other computer problems we've run into since I started at The Citizen more than seven years ago. I'd like to say that my own brand of bad luck (or juju, or karma, or curse, or whatever you think causes me to have incredibly bad luck — seriously, my life is occasionally like a sitcom about a guy with bad luck) may have rubbed off on the computers I use, but it's not always my computer. The problem isn't necessarily a single power outage, the problem is that, with things like these hard drives, or computers if you happen to be at work, these electronics get turned back on after a power outage. With network drives, external hard drives some printers, our office telephone system and other devices with an on-off toggle (instead of a single power button driven by the state of the device) they will return to the state they were in when the power went out. That means if they were on, and the power went out, they would turn back on as soon as the power returns. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. The power goes out, it comes back on, and everything going back to normal is actually a good thing. However, in our section of Ontario, one power outage is rarely where it stops. In Blyth, if we have one power outage, it's likely to be followed up by several, sometimes smaller outages. It's similar to an earthquake with aftershocks. So the devices, which are usually shut down methodically with their power switch, have several power surges channeled through them which can, quite often, end up causing significant damage to the devices. That's what I believe happened to our most recently afflicted hard drive. Earlier this year we were (unsurprisingly, once again) hit by several consecutive power outages and, after that, the drive decided not to work. It's not an inexpensive issue to fix, either. A ballpark estimate could be two to three times a mortgage payment in what North Huron's finance department calls an average residential home. I've had it happen at home too. I recently sent what was a pretty expensive, custom-built PC to the electronic waste depot because some core components wouldn't work anymore despite being plugged into power surge protectors. So while Keith and Shawn were frustrated with various aspects of the new computers and new programs, my gripe is with Hydro One. This company which charges us through the nose for "delivery" of electricity doesn't deliver its resource reliably. As I pointed out last year, there is significant work needed on the power grids maintained by Hydro One, and, despite filing requests with the government to do the work, it always falls by the wayside. So yes, computer problems are a pretty universal problem in our office, but, for me, it's not the computer manufacturer's fault, it's once again Hydro One dropping the ball. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense No one's listening Listening is one of those things that seems simple, but so many of us fail to do it effectively. To listen to someone speak and be engaged, understand what they're saying and retain information is not something many of us do well. One of my favourite movies, one I cite often, is Fight Club. In it, Ed Norton's character attends support groups for those with terminal diseases, expressing the sentiment that "When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you instead of just..." and he's interrupted by Helena Bonham -Carter's character, who finishes his thought with "waiting for their turn to speak". As another example, how many could read a story in this week's issue of The Citizen and then pass a test on its contents? Who knows? It is with these realities in mind that I throw my opinion onto the pile of the many who have already done so regarding proposed changes to waste collection in North Huron. Who will care that I've done this? Few, likely. I am in good company. Anyone who took the time to fill out a survey should feel as though they're in the same boat as we together navigate the choppy waters of irrelevance. As you likely read in The Citizen last week, North Huron is seeking further public input on the future of its waste management. This will be the second bout of public input on the same issue. This time, however, the results will not be made available to members of the public. This will be done to ensure everyone feels confident that they can be open and honest in answering questions put to them by the survey. I, however, can't help but suspect that this measure, which differs from the first survey, is a means of ensuring that the township is not beholden to its people and their wishes. The issue at hand for many is maintaining weekly waste pick-up in urban centres like Blyth and Wingham or a move to bi-weekly pick-up currently in effect in the rural parts of the township. Despite the fact that 83 per cent of residents said they would prefer weekly collection, Public Works Director Jeff Molenhuis has recommended cutting weekly service in half for those in Blyth and Wingham and instituting blanket bi-weekly collection across the township. There is also the other factor of wheelie bin collection, which over 70 per cent of residents said they would favour, but that didn't even make an appearance in his report. With this embarrassing contrast between what the public wants and what's being recommended to councillors, how can anyone even pretend that respondents' opinions are worth even the paper they're written on? I'd hate to discourage residents from taking part in a democratic exercise, but one has to look at survey results versus staff reports and wonder what good this second survey will do. If North Huron wants to move to bi-weekly collection throughout the township as a cost- saving measure, council and staff should have the guts to say so to residents. To go through the charade of a second public consultation period and make residents feel as though their opinion matters just insults the intelligence of everyone involved and breeds further distrust between the township and its residents. It also supports the narrative that after voting in an election, residents have no impact whatsoever on how they're governed. I have always been a trusting person and I like to believe the best in people. However, in this situation it feels like the township, council and staff aren't listening to us, but rather just waiting for their turn to speak.