The Monday Mix (14/11/2022)
Hi friends,
The World Cup starts in six days and normally I’d be excited about the start of one of the biggest sporting events in the world. Yet, I feel the opposite about this World Cup and that’s for a few reasons. The primary one is that it’s being held in Qatar, a country with minimal football history and home to appalling human rights abuses, which one of my links will highlight. Another issue is that the World Cup is being held in the winter and not in the summer. This is due to the heat in Qatar during the summer, which can reach 50 degrees!
This leads to the final issue which is that the competition should never have been awarded to Qatar in the first place. That decision was made back in 2010, and it’s always appeared murky, even at the time. How the decision was made, knowing full well that the summer was ruthlessly hot in Qatar boggles the mind. Of course, if you factor in that Qatar is a wealthy country with money to burn then the answer becomes clearer.
The problem with organisations such as FIFA and the IOC is that they’re opaque. The public doesn’t see the decision-making process that makes these consequential choices. Nor is it clear how you can represent such an organisation, in which these processes are more likely to resort to corruption. In an ideal world, these big organisations would be democratic and accountable to the public, but I’m not sure how that would happen.
I’ll probably watch some of the matches, but compared to previous international tournaments, my interest and enthusiasm will be nowhere near as high.
Here’s what I want to share with you this week:
Qatar Rights Abuses Stain FIFA World Cup
A useful link about some of the human rights abuses that have occurred in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded to the country in 2010. There’s a lot to unpack but the sheer amount of money that has been spent on building the infrastructure for the World Cup is incredible. $200 billion on stadiums, metros, roads and airports for a month-long competition. What happens to these stadiums when the tournament ends?
Then, you have Qatar’s laws which are discriminatory toward the LGBT+ community and repressive toward women. I would be wary about visiting Qatar to watch any games given some of the laws listed here, especially if I was a woman, gay or trans.
Stopping Climate Change Isn’t Enough – We Need To Reverse It
A lot of focus in the climate space is on reducing carbon emissions which is good, but this article makes the point that not a lot is focused on removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s an interesting piece that makes a compelling case; that we need to up spending on technology that can extract CO2 from the atmosphere. This is an admirable goal and one we should devote more money to. But as the author states in the beginning, we can also do this by planting more trees and, although not explicitly stated, rewilding large areas of land.
I’m wary of technological determinism but there’s no doubt we need to scale up carbon capture technology as we just don’t know what will happen in the coming years as more and more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere.
FTX Collapse
One of the biggest news stories of the past week was the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX. The story is mind-boggling and not at all surprising if you spend a good hour reading about the world of crypto. It’s amazing that crypto has managed to stay relevant for this long because it has also zero use cases apart from speculation in a vain hope that the ‘number goes up.’
As ridiculous as the story is, and the owner of FTX’s apologies are, the real victims are the thousands, maybe millions of ordinary people who have invested thousands of their savings into these platforms in the hope they’d make a lot of money. Unfortunately, that was never going to happen as the money was never there, a consequence of the fact that crypto is a largely unregulated industry. I’d be amazed if that remains the case after this. I think we’re going to see a gradual death of the crypto space and hopefully some prosecutions for what is essentially an egregious Ponzi scheme.
Book I’m reading - Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
Started what is regarded as one of Freud’s most significant works the other day. I’m not sure what to make of it so far. I’ve only read parts of it and never read anything by Freud before, so it’s all a bit new. I’m on the fence about this book and hopefully, I’ll have a clearer picture once I get to the end.
Quote I’m pondering: – “It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.” – Mary Wollstonecraft
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom