Herd Behaviour
Consider this herd of buffalo. Those three out front, they get to make all the decisions, choose the path the herd will follow and every choice they make well, the herd as a whole will face the consequences, good or bad.
Sometimes leaders make bad decisions.
Sometimes leaders make bad decisions that can’t be undone.
The inspiration for this post came about while reading today’s post at the Automatic Earth. An image popped into my head from somewhere in my past of a place in Alberta, southwest of Calgary - Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. The Blackfoot and their predecessors had a very good understanding of herd behaviour.
I watch the stock markets and they’re going up despite the continued rise in unemployment, increase in bankruptcies, increase in sovereign debt, the threat of inflation (or deflation), more people depending on food banks and generally speaking a fraying social fabric barely holding us together. Who is leading investors to blindly throw good money after bad?
Why do we continue to follow our neighbours out of established urban neighbourhoods to live further away from the places we need/want to go? Why do we allow our representatives in government to lead us into traps that will cost us our future? Who is leading the herd? Who’s playing the role of the Blackfoot hunters?
Sometimes the herd makes bad decisions.
Sometimes bad decisions end very badly.
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James, there are some independent thinkers out there. George Soros is one example. In the following lecture series he outlines a lifetime of thinking (wonderful resource).
George Soros: Open Society, the Financial Crisis, and the Way Ahead
http://www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/sorosceu_20091112
You have to remember the herd was chased into oblivion, it’s not a decision based on behaviour or a decision. They just ran blindly.
The Blackfoot never ran the herd into oblivion, they used only what they needed.
Enter the new age white man and greed. Simplicity for gain was the motto and destroy everything to get his needs was wasteful misuse.
The same goes for any other example.
Something is always the catalyst behind the behaviour, good or bad.
I guess I’ll try to address kdduck’s comment with this reply as well.
Edwin, there are many independent thinkers out there for sure. (Currently, my favourite read is Joe Bagaent.)
About a year ago the world thought they had found the one person, with the vision and the strength of character to change the herd’s course. Of course, I’m referring to Obama. One year on and it has become woefully apparent that one person (even the President of the United States - the most powerful national leader in the world) cannot change the herd’s course.
Those three buffalo in the first picture, leading the way, had proven themselves to be the strongest and most able of the herd. Yet their choices and decisions were based on reaction and self preservation.
When the Blackfoot started the stampede and drove the herd toward the cliff they fully understood that once the herd was on the run they would not stop and as a group would meet their end at the bottom of the cliff.
Had those leaders challenged the hunters or stood their ground they would have been much better off. 5000 years ago there was no easy way to bring down a buffalo, it was the largest mammal on the American Continent, I believe.
The greater public is being controlled and run toward a cliff. We are looking to our leaders and out of self-preservation they are reacting exactly the way our hunters want. Governments are leading the herd.
The question I posed at the end of the post and I will ask again is; Who is driving us toward the cliff?
The buffalo lived and thrived for thousands of years while the indians used them for thier livelyhood. Both were in balance.
It wasn’t until “civilization” and the ones with a “better idea” came up with mass destruction.
The answer is whoever you let do it will run you over the cliff.
The government isn’t leading the herd, they are chasing it.
Kind of changes the idea of herding sheep, doesn’t it?
We the “sheeple” are certainly being herded, no argument here. However I would argue that our three levels of government are every bit like the three buffalo leading the herd in the first pic.
Governments are leading the herd over the edge.
I don’t believe that our elected representatives are the hunters doing the chasing I think that many of their policies are the result of influenced decisions rather than informed decisions. The parties of influence are the hunters.
Test my theory. Pick a recent decision by any level of government. (In Windsor for example the decision to seize Docherty’s Tecumseh Road property.) Question the policy. How does it benefit the city/province/country? What are the liabilities to the city/province/country? Is it reactionary or for a long-term purpose. What were the alternatives? What were the benefits/liabilities of the alternative? Is there any minority benefiting at the expense of the majority?
Seizing the property can be looked at from two (at least) angles.
1. From the city’s side. Taxes weren’t getting paid. The property is contaminated.
2. From Docherty’s side. Can’t afford/want to pay the taxes. Can’t afford/want to clean up the site.
So the property is seized.
What now? The city has ownership of a contaminated brownfield that can’t be leased/rented/sold until it’s cleaned up. Meanwhile there is no tax revenue being generated.
Docherty is off the hook.
The only point in the city’s favour is that they are legally obligated to mitigate their losses. They couldn’t just allow taxes to build up without doing anything about it.
“The only point in the city’s favour is that they are legally obligated to mitigate their losses.”
Actually we are now legally obligated to mitigate a big toxic mess.
The city is owed back taxes by many developers we have been told. Mr. Docherty has been at the centre of many legal spats with the city. The city recently won a judgment against the same Bill Docherty (or a corporate entity in which he had interest) regarding a hole on Riverside Drive.
Of all the properties out there at this time owing back taxes - why this one? Why now?
We have seized a property with an assessed value of less than $25,000 I believe. Any development or sale of this site will require an environmental clean-up at an estimated cost of $6 million (expect that number to up).
While the property is contaminated I do not believe that it posed any short-term threat to people near-by. Certainly there was ground-water problems but, this situation has been known to exist for years.
As an alternative to seizing this property and obligating taxpayers to clean up the mess I would suggest that a case could have been made to ERCA, the Ontario MoE, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Fisheries and so on that would have demonstrated the owner’s knowledge of the toxic hazard and that the owner should have been compelled to fix it on his dime.
“They couldn’t just allow taxes to build up without doing anything about it.”
Check that Windsor Star story, cut it out, put it on the fridge and every time the city gets the taxes owing or seizes a property cross it off. I suspect that many of those tax dollars owing will never get collected or properties seized (unless the owners of the “Zalev” scrap yard stop paying taxes - we’ll take that and have an even bigger mess to clean up.)
The original company was owned by Gulf and Western and later became Wickes Windsor Bumper. From my recollection, They somehow agreed to pay for a whole bunch of waste treatment equipment to be put on the property. I’m not sure and could be wrong but I remember Docherty and a partner bought it hoping to not only use this equipment to not only clean up that site but make the site an off site waste treatment for other factory’s waste and sludge. Decline of manufacturing meant that potential customers disappeared.
History of the company here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf%2BWestern
The company had to dig and put a retaining wall surrounding the property and disconnect from the city sewer system to hold in the pollution which mainly consists of Nickel and Chromium. From what I heard rumours of, at one point every time it rained, one loading dock filled up with nickel solution and one with chrome which then had to be treated. Metals pollution does not travel unless it hits an underground stream. Windsor’s base is blue clay which prevents much of this
I’d like to know if this equipment is still there and being operated
The equipment I saw started at the pH control system that would allow wastewater to have its pH altered dropping metals out of solution. It was then ran through filter presses and a clarifier. Resulting water could then be tested and released into sewer system and sludge that was filtered out could then be returned to a normal pH and disposed of or sometimes sold back to Mining company’s due to its high nickel metal content. pH was altered with acids and sodium hydroxide to allow for filtering and then returned to normal pH