At 10:02 PM 5/2/2009, ravi wrote:
>On May 2, 2009, at 6:51 PM, dredmond at efn.org wrote:
>>
>>I'm with you up to this point, but we First Worlders really
>>shouldn't be
>>playing the game of setting limits on consumption in the
>>semiperiphery and
>>periphery, not even as a rhetorical move.
>>
>>Yes, we urgently need to switch to a carbon-neutral, resource-neutral
>>economy, which reuses materials instead of ripping new ones from the
>>Earth. But we also need a broad agenda of raising real wages and
>>consumption throughout the world. Our utopia should be an immensely
>>higher
>>standard of living for *everyone* on the planet -- but a standard
>>built on
>>green jobs, equal planetary exchange, and green production.
>>
>>This isn't just a rhetorical issue, it's also practical politics:
>>attacking consumption has no traction when you can't get a job or
>>put food
>>on your family's table.
>
>
>Dennis,
>
>what is needed is to raise *average* real wages and consumption, and
>that does not conflict in any manner with sound and sustainable
>consumption. What First Worlders really should be doing is to stop
>playing (even if unintentionally) the Great White Father either in
>exploiting "third world"ers or claiming to defend their interests in
>internal First World squabbles based in motive-mongering.
>
>I know of very few overconsumption worriers who are attacking
>consumption by slum dwellers. For one thing, they don't consume the
>sort of things or in the sort of ways that are monstrously wasteful.
>Second, they are often the first ones impacted by the [unsustainable]
>consumption patterns of the wealthier classes.
>
>When the scenario is stark as that highlighted by the recent swine flu
>business -- where the world's largest industrial hog farm succeeded in
>setting up shop in Mexico against opposition from the local population
>-- that point is clear enough.
>
> --ravi
>
>--
>Anyone who takes an effort to intellectually challenge the status quo
>and established habits is infinitely more venerable than hacks
>defending that status quo and established habits, regardless of the
>truth function of their propositions. -- W. Sokolowski, LBO. Address
>the argument, damnit! -- Christopher Doss, NYC.
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