Apartment Therapy on: Bees & Bankers

We tend to see everything as connected. So when we picked up the paper earlier this week and saw these two articles on the front page, it got us thinking.

• Top Hedge Fund Managers Earn Over $240 Million
• Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons

In our book we wrote a lot about the concept of "flow" and how it affects your physical and emotional experience of your home. These two articles spoke to us of separate flows that share the distinction of being out of balance at the same time.

The bee population sits within the careful design of the natural ecosystems. When healthy, they provide a tremendous service to our food chain. They are responsible for the honey on your toast as well as for the fruit in the basket in your kitchen. Recently, something has shifted causing them to die off in great numbers. A large population has become small...

The financiers sit within the careful (though often freewheeling) design of our financial system. When healthy, they provide a tremendous service to our markets. They are responsible for efficient markets, the funding of companies (large and small), and for increasingly global relationships. Recently, something has shifted causing an incredibly high concentration of capital to move into the hands of very few people. A large amount has come to be held by a small pool.

The changes in the bee population at least affect the availability and price of food, while the changes in the hedge fund market at least change the real estate market in NYC (prices go up), and both of these impact our homes.

If you read An Inconvenient Truth, you come away with the inescapable notion that it is the overall design of our earth that has slowly shifted out of balance and that restoring it is key. When the seas heat up, the polar ice caps melt, and the sea rises leading to flooding on Long Island (and all around the world). It's all connected.

Once you start to look at things this way, it becomes a habit and you have begun to think like a designer. Then you can start to think about design solutions.

Not that we have a solution to help the bees or think that the hedge fund managers have too much money, but we are thinking about it. And we have a sneaking suspicion that they might be connected.

Comments (8)

As flipped-out as it sounds at first blush, it's really so absolutely true, it's not funny.

They are indeed connected. Consider this op-ed and editorial published in the nytimes today:

"John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in Gilded Age America, made in 1894, because in 1895 he had to pay income taxes. (The next year, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional.) His return declared an income of $1.25 million, almost 7,000 times the average per capita income in the United States at the time.

But that makes him a mere piker by modern standards. Last year, according to Institutional Investorâ€™s Alpha magazine, James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $1.7 billion, more than 38,000 times the average income. Two other hedge fund managers also made more than $1 billion, and the top 25 combined made $14 billion.

How much is $14 billion? Itâ€™s more than it would cost to provide health care for a year to eight million children â€” the number of children in America who, unlike children in any other advanced country, donâ€™t have health insurance."
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http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html

This applies to the EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service as well:

Crippling Government From Within
"The Bush administration has proved indefatigable at finding industry foxes to upend the regulatory chicken coops. The result has been an undermining of restraints on everything from strip miners to long-haul truckers and corporate executives intent on consumer-unfriendly mergers. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/opinion/27fri2.html

And yes, hedge fund managers *do* have too much money. There, I said it.

So what you're saying, Boomer, is that because Al Gore is a hypocrite the rest of us should ignore environmental responsibility? Don't be naive. Even if nothing on his documentary is accurate it is impossible to deny the fact that as humans we impact the earth (as does anything living). However, as our population increases those effects begin to wreak havoc upon the delicate ecosystems that play an integeral part in the sustanability of our planet (as we know it). Also, the first article you linked states that the mite problem was inadvertently introduced sometime in the 1980's. Who do you suspect introduced Asian mites to US bees, and why did it happen? My suspision is that the introduction can probably be pretty directly connected to humans, and possibly a little less directly connected to the capitalistic structure of our society. As humans we should make every attempt to tread lightly as lightly as possible (if we expect to continue living comfortably on this planet). This seems to mean a restructuring of our society. That said, I don't do a very good job recyling.

Boomer - care to back up your allegations regarding the use of "doctored photos" in "An inconvnient Truth"? A quick google produced nothing at all. You haven't provided one shred of evidence to support your implication that global warming isn't a danger that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

As for bee mites, I believe they are linked to the cases in Hawaii but not to the overwhelming number in the mainland USA and other parts of the world as of yet . And as erinorea pointed out, your links do not back up your claims.

Great perspective... one of my favorite posts on AT.

People like Boomer have found some sort of license to continue to live as we have been doing by hating one man - Al Gore. Meanwhile Fox News has been allowed to continue its tendentious lies on a daily basis and gets a pass from the same people.

The thing that Boomer and others always seem to forget is that Al Gore is not presenting HIS science. He's presenting THE science on GW.

Meanwhile, I remain cautious on this current red hot stock market as some sort of indicator that the economy is "Booming". It's booming for the people who are IN the stock market, and pretty much no one else.

Can't find anything on Inconvenient Truth and doctored photos. Am really curious...

"Can't find anything on Inconvenient Truth and doctored photos. Am really curious..."

probably because it's a lie.