>Surely the fact that the richest nation on earth is prepared to eat
>contaminated meat reflects some more fundamental pathology than just tastes
>in food?
Hey, American wealth depends on cost-cutting, cost-externalization, and waste on a truly grand scale. Seems perfectly apt to me.
Oh yeah - if you don't want the mass crap, you can always get the high-end stuff Jordan pointed to. That's the American way too - but you have to pay through the nose for it.
An old favorite:
>I think it must be conceded that it is possible to create a society
>in which the response to market failure is not a swing to socialism,
>but an exacerbation of individual efforts to stay ahead by making
>and spending yet more money.
> Does the public health service have long waiting lists and
>inadequate facilities? Buy private insurance. Has public transport
>broken down? Buy a car for each member of the family. Is air
>pollution intolerable? Buy an air filtering unit and stay indoors.
>Is what comes out of the tap foul to the taste and chock-full of
>carcinogens? Buy bottled water. And so on. We know it can all hapen
>because it has: I have been doing little more than describing
>Southern California.
>- Brian Barry, from an essay in book Thatcherism, edited by Robert
>Skidelsky (Chatto)
Doug