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We Need to Talk
preview The Book |
The Numbers Game
preview The Book |
The System
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Rescue Trooper
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Road to Tashkent
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Humor
preview The stories |
Essays and Comments
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Andy Turnbull has worked as reporter, photographer and desk-man on several daily newspapers, has been editor of two weekly papers and of three trade magazines and is the author of a couple of books by commercial publishers. His free-lance articles have appeared in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Evening Telegram, Toronto Sun, Star Weekly, Weekend, The Canadian, Maclean's, Canadian Business, Equinox, Reader's Digest and other magazines in Canada, Japan Times in Japan, Spotlight, Spot-On and Fernfahrer in Germany, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Road King, Overdrive and other magazines in the United States, The Geographical, Truck and Trucking International in England, Truck'n Life in Australia and others. He has worked in every province and territory of Canada and also in the United States, Panama, Jamaica, Mexico, England, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, Russia, Poland, Belarus and Central Asia.
In the 1960's he shot TV newsfilm for CKCO-TV, CFTO-TV and other stations and in the 1970's he recorded feature clips and a one-hour show for CBC radio. His magazine articles have won awards in Canada and the United States and By Truck to the North (co-authored with Debora Pearson) won the 1999 Norma Fleck award for the best kids' book in Canada, was nominated for the Silver Birch Award in 1999 and won the Hackmatack Award in 2000.
After 40 years writing the kind of stuff that sells Turnbull is now semi-retired and able to write things he considers important. The three non-fiction books in this series (so far) are The Numbers Game, The System and We Need to Talk.
All three books are available by mail order, or you can download and/or read them here. Because the books cover a lot of ground this site is set up to deliver them one chapter at a time. When you click the link you will get a table of contents, and when you click a chapter heading you will go to that chapter. Footnotes are on a link, and a link the the footnote page will take you to a glossary.
This is my newest book. I started it during an election campaign, when I was disgusted by the promises that various politicians were making.
I knew that none of them planned to keep their promises, of course but we have some some very real problems in the world today -- including climate change, war, natural disasters and the threats of global famine and/or plague that could kill billions of people -- and I thought our politicians should at least show us they were aware of them.
But no. All the average politician cares about is the power and the prestige and the access to the public purse that comes with office, and they all know that the easiest way to get elected is with dumb promises.
Even now our roads, sewers, water mains and other infrastructure are breaking down and we are closing schools and hospitals for lack of money. These are very real problems but rather than address them some politicians promise to reduce taxes. Some of them also promise to spend more money, of course, but the only way they can do is by -- in effect -- printing money. That will bankrupt the country but if he can get elected, that's all the average politician cares about.
Even if one politician did want to make a difference, this is the 21st century and the laws, institutions and attitudes left over from the 19th and 20th are no longer appropriate.
We Need to Talk is an iconoclastic collection of fresh ideas that offers an alternative to blind habit and unthinking conformity. It analyzes the threats of the new age and suggests appropriate responses that could provide prosperity for all and give Canada global influence and a government that truly represents the will of the people.
It recognizes the need for individual initiative and, at the same time, for protection of the commons. You may not agree with all the ideas, but this book will give you something to think about.We Need To Talk
The Numbers Game
Most of this book was written more than ten years ago and some parts things have changed since the terrorist attack of 9/11, the "war on terror," the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the failure of the oil supply, but the basic problems are still there, and the ideas are still valid.
The Numbers Game takes a radical and sensible look at the so-called "science" of economics.
Most economists assume that anything that can be exchanged for money can be counted as wealth. Alfred Marshall, generally recognized as the father of modern economics, once said "a lawyer's brief is just as real as a sack of potatoes."
But if a farmer produces a bumper crop of potatoes our cost of living goes down, and if a lawyer produces more briefs our cost of living goes up. Clearly, the two are not equivalent.
The belief that paperwork is as valuable as vegetables, and other misconceptions endorsed by economists, are driving the world to poverty.
In clear, readable language The Numbers Game shows how our economic system counts crimes and disasters as "economic benefits," and how it encourages people to be parasites and predators rather than productive workers.
It shows how banks create their own money, and how this money erodes the value of our national currency. It shows how mutual funds and the stock market encourage the destruction of viable businesses.
It shows how the "global economy" impoverishes rich and poor nations alike, how it spreads pests around the world and how it will someday help spread a plague that will kill tens of millions of people.
It exposes the farce of the "post industrial economy" and shows that when we use the people of the third world for cheap labor, we rob them and ourselves.
Canada and the world are now drifting into recession. The Numbers Game explains what went wrong, and how we can fix it.
This book takes a radical new view of the world and of human culture.
Most of us think people run the world, but The System argues that it's not people but the relationships between people, between systems and between the self-organized systems that I call 'metasystems' that control our future.
Nobody wants war, but corporations that make and sell weapons do better if war threatens. Senior military officers need the threat of war to promote their careers and politicians know that if the nation is threatened, the people will rally behind them.
That's why the metasystem we call the Military Industrial Complex developed. American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that to understand the cold war you had to realize that the military industrial complexes of the United States and Russia were united in a war against the civilians of both countries.
The Military Industrial Complex is a well-known metasystem but it's not the only one. The Establishment is also well-known, and there are literally thousands of others, large and small. Each has its own program and it is the interaction of these programs that decides our future.
We can see one possible future in the lives of ants and termites. The insects are very different - ants are carnivores descended from wasps and termites are cellulose-eaters descended from cockroaches - but their systems are similar and, in 100 million years, both have evolved to fit their systems. Other systems unite groups of animals and other life forms into a single entity.
The System tracks the development of The System that rules humanity from its probable origin, when a band of robbers became an army and captured and held a prehistoric craft village, to the present day. It shows how the metasystem of metasystems that I call The System developed, how it controls our lives and how it may eventually kill us or destroy our humanity. In the end, if humanity survives, The System will mold us into a race of automatons.
But that doesn't have to happen. If we know how The System works we can control it, and create the future we want.
The System does not answer all questions but it does explain why the world totters on the edge of disaster. We can't defeat The System but we can understand it, and if we can understand it, we can control it.
This is my only fiction book, and a good example of something I decry when other people do it -- fiction written as propaganda, to make a political point. In this case I don't apologize because I think my point -- that it would make more sense for Canada to maintain an international rescue corps than to maintain conventional armed forces -- is valid. This is a theme I've supported for a long time -- you'll also find the argument in the "Defence" section of We Need to Talk. I wrote this book years ago, during the cold war, and had a few copies printed, but it was never widely distributed. I include it here because I still think it's a good read, and an idea that makes even more sense now than it did in the cold war.
You might also look at it as a lesson in propaganda, because it doesn't look like propaganda and many people would not recognize it as propaganda but, in this case, you have the author's word that it is.
This book has never been published, but it should have been. On one level it's a travel story about riding a truck that is delivering a computer from the south of England to the head office of the Bank of Uzbekistan, in Tashkent, but it's more than that.
It's also a celebration of trade and trucking, and how they contributed to the development and still contribute to the maintenance of modern civilization.
This trip followed one of the routes of the old Silk Road and while we never actually entered China, we passed within sight of mountains within China. One of the drivers in our group route was robbed, another foiled an attempted robbery and two of them had to patch up one truck after a breakdown in Siberia, hundreds of miles from help.
I compare this trip to the old days of the Silk Road, and the comparison is not a stretch. In fact the Silk Road is now opening up again, and the truckers and traders who travel it are writing new chapters in the history of trade and adventure.
As a newspaper reporter I wrote the occasional humorous piece and for a couple of years I wrote for a humorous magazine. Here are a few light pieces as used by the magazine, and at least one that wasn't. This is light reading, mostly for fun, and included here partly to boost my ego. Humor me.