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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19682)	11/25/2003 9:33:46 AM
From: mcg404	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81209

Searle, <I'm almost beginning to see why you apparently hold non-learning in such reverence> Now where do you get this? I'd say you have misunderstood me but i've been accused of anti-intellectualism before - so there must be some truth to this. (g) <The situation is comparable to that of subsistence farmers in (non?)developing countries who produce cheap cash crops for export and to make money for foreign landowners rather than food crops to feed the starving multitude in their own country. > Or themselves. Very much the example provided in Berry's essay: "Albert Schweitzer, who knew well the economic situation in the colonies of Africa, wrote nearly sixty years ago: "Whenever the timber trade is good, permanent famine reigns in the Ogowe region because the villagers abandon their farms to fell as many trees as possible." We should notice especially that the goal of production was "as many … as possible." And Schweitzer makes my point exactly: "These people could achieve true wealth if they could develop their agriculture and trade to meet their own needs." Instead they produced timber for export to "the world economy", which made them dependent upon imported goods that they bought with money earned from their exports. They gave up their local means of subsistence, and imposed the false standard of a foreign demand ("as many trees as possible") upon their forests. They thus became helplessly dependent on an economy over which they had no control." So what drives people to behave this way? It doesn't seem to be in their own self interest. Wes Jackson argues (in 'becoming native to this place') that once exposed to material things, the exposed become 'fallen' and can no longer live without stuff. He even goes as far as to suggest that the downfall of the native american had less to do with european disease and genocidal warfare than their exposure to the 'stuff' of the american settlers, which they then 'needed' to survive. Noam Chomsky (in 'understanding power') makes a similar argument in discussing 'want creation' - the idea that to turn people living indigenous/subsistence ways-of-life into good, obedient industrialized workers (wage slaves) it is necessary to convince them they have 'wants' which they then need a wage paying job to obtain. One of the most fascinating changes in the US in my lifetime has been the social message that a family needs a working wife in order to survive - and the near universal acceptance of this message. Not a result of family 'needs' but new family 'wants' (imo). I won't argue that in some situations two incomes makes some kind of sense. But in my experience there are a baffling number (involving families with children) where the second income is so small it barely covers additional transportation, clothing, child care, etc expenses that it makes no sense at all. Why the willingness to give up 'living' to enter the wage economy ? This is the real hidden cost of excess industrialization and specialization: taking a vocation and reducing it to a job (eg, the butcher becomes a meat cutter, the tailor becomes a garment worker) and worse yet, turning those mundane but essential human activities (the stuff of life) into a 'service' (the nurturing mother replaced by the child care worker). And replacing the pride of self-sufficiency and self-reliance with the fear of a disembodied corporation casting you off in favor of a cheaper wage pawn in another country, leaving you begging for a government handout. I just don't get it. John

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19682)	11/28/2003 12:47:09 AM
From: Jamey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81209

<<If people are educated, confident, independent and self-sufficient they will definitely not need government --- nor will they need religion. >> Just think, once we become so enlightened then we have no need of community or love thy neighbor. We can become a nation of self sufficient hermits living within our own castles and surrounding moat. Forget the disabled, the poor and the uneducated. Maybe we will then get to decide what to do with them. Perhaps the old ovens can be fired up or new ones made for Pax Amerikana. Searle, the world that you portray is not worth living in. Glad I'm getting old. ~:<) James