One of the many things that impresses me about Clinton, besides his decision to go on national TV twice to "apologize," is his proficiency at "multitasking," i.e., eat pizza, horse-trade with Congressfolks, and be serviced by Lewinsky all at the same time. And then he golfs to relax and attends renaissance sessions on holiday. Seems like a workaholic to me. (Gates's hobby is biotechnology. C'mon.) I don't know if someone is arguing against this, but Clinton doesn't seem like a hippie at all to me. Hippies felt everyone should do their own thing, live and let live, drop out, right? Clinton fires his surgeon general for discussing masturbation, lectures the poor on morality, and bombs civilians to save his guilty ass.
His fearsome libido and unquenchable desire for fast food seem to me aptly symbolic of the American public. Between the public's buying habits and the advertising industry's deafening background noise, I think the voluntary simplicity crowd have a snowball's chance in hell of becoming hegemonic. Of course VS could provide a nice rationalization and could become all the rage should the train run off the tracks.
The voluntary simplicity crowd do have sort of a point in questioning what should be the goals of our society. Should the highest priority be providing the widest possible range of goods to choose from? The newspaper The Onion had an interesting graph recently that showed how product "diversity" has recently past by bio-diversity.
Peter