Neuroscience series coming up

After a good chuck of time without posting I feel like I need to add some new content here. My big excuse for not posting has been the fact that since last September I have not only work full time, but I am also a full time graduate student and recently my work responsibilities have increased due to a promotion I received.

Anyway, enough whining, my most recent idea was to actually write more about what I know and do for a living, which is neuroscience and pharmacology research. It should be a lot easier to write about those things to me, than it is to write about philosophy and economics, since I get paid to do my research into this topic. So I will be posting a series of posts looking first at some of the animal models that interest me and may interest other people outside of my field. The first few will likely be on the Conditioned Gaping model (rats), MPTP Parkinson's Disease model (mice) ,and then later I will write about some of the rodent operant models I really enjoy (Drug discrimination, 5CSRTT and others)

A look into buying local

While doing some redditing, I came across an interesting chart looking at how much of your money spent locally stays within your community and how much stays when you don't spend your money on local business. Here is a different version of the chart I saw on reddit:

This was based study that took place in Michigan by "Local First", looking at the impact of local business on the West Michigan economy. I thought this was interesting and it shows how much of an impact there is when you buy things from local business.

I'm a bit of a supporter of some protectionist practices, so I obviously have some biases when it comes to interpreting these figures. I don't necessarily believe in protectionism like they have in Italy, which is destructive to the economy and full of problems. However, I do believe in governments intervening in the economy in an attempt to promote local manufacturing and services. Not only buying something made in your region may be better for your community, but it also saves money on transportation costs and associated administrative costs, which don't go into profit for the people producing whatever it is that your are buying. This in turn ends up affecting the consumer at one point or another.

If buying Peruvian oranges costs the same as buying a local orange, you need to ask yourself how come adding the cost of transporting your orange thousands of kilometers doesn't add to the price tag? Well, there may be several reasons for that, one of which could be that the conditions of the people collecting oranges are not very good. They probably don't make much of a salary. I think this is a fairly poor example, however I do believe in avoiding purchasing items that support unreasonable working conditions in places like China, or spending my money on products that take the money to a corporation, where people at the top are making many many millions of dollars. Dollars that are seldomly used to pay higher wages to employees or to invest in worthwhile efforts. I personally prefer spending my money in smaller businesses, that don't have humongous costs associated with CEOs, large administrative efforts and advertisements aimed to convince me that their product is better.

This certainly doesn't apply to a lot of things, and in no way I'm saying the CEO of a company like Google doesn't deserve all he has. That's not it at all. I just rather buy a car made in Canada, which pays Canadian employees a livable wage (this is debatable of course), over buying a car made in China by facilities with safety nets on the side of buildings to avoid workers from committing suicide. I rather buy a locally grown bell pepper, which may even be slightly more expensive than a Mexican pepper, because I know the people collecting my food are paid relatively decent wages, and my pepper doesn't contribute as much to my carbon footprint. 

The world economy is certainly shifting, and countries like the BRICK countries are becoming major international players. I think this would be an amazing development, if only I thought that this means that those countries are raising people from poverty, and that the condition people live around the world was improving. I highly doubt that's what is actually happening. More likely the first world countries are turning into stratified countries with more distinct social classes, and a much weaker middle class, while CEOs and big corporations in third world countries exploit cheap wages and sub-par working conditions in order to further separate themselves from the working class. The rich get richer, the poor stay relatively the same, and developed countries like Canada and USA slowly move towards becoming just another divided nation.