``....It's no secret which way I come down--I am a card-carrying neoliberal, after all. Let free trade and investment rip, watch wealth accumulate, hope that sweet commerce creates softer forms of rule, and get ready for the next turn of the political wheel which will make movement toward social democracy possible in a generation or so....'' Brad DeLong
``...At some point in history, the pretense must stop; there must be frank acknowledgement and cultivation of broad awareness that we are encouraging evil forces that debase human potential in our pursuit of material abundance. There surely must be better way to achieve the necessary goal of assuring material security for all.'' Carl Remick
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No shit. I remember the night it occurred to me that material abundance was already sufficient, and that wasn't the problem.
I was driving back from some where on the Ventura Freeway. I was eighteen, so that would have been 1961. There had just been some news announcement about a UN study on the global population explosion. I was arguing with a buddy over feeding billions. He had been advocating population control. I dropped him home and was going up Reseda Blvd toward Northridge. It just occurred to me in an instant---the entire economic system was bullshit. There was plenty to feed everybody on the planet and a bunch of pricks were keeping it all to themselves. It was as simple as that. There was absolutely no excuse at all that people starved to death.
I wouldn't even call this a radical thought. It was more like understanding that if you hit your finger with a hammer, it would hurt.
So, here I am, forty years later reading to the same old crap. It makes time itself into something tangible.
Chuck Grimes