> From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Toward a More Sustainable Economics > ... part of life, of reality. Marshall Sahlins: Lessons > from the Paleolithic. It has been said that there ...=20 > www.smartoffice.com/DesignGenius/Toward%20a%20More%20Sustainable%20Economic= > s.html - 28k - Cached - Similar pages Wow. Thanks Charles. Thanks for drawing our attention to a very concise description of the heart of the matter and the real truth. (except for the Therow part. <G>) I searched through the Sahlin statements to find one that echoed my orientations, and found the whole thing worth quoting! ... but I'll merely draw attention to this: "By the common understanding, an affluent society is one in which all the people's material wants are easily satisfied. To assert that the hunters are affluent is to deny then that the human condition is an ordained tragedy, with man the prisoner at hard labor of a perpetual disparity between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means" (Sahlins, 1). And this is where the economic fallacy comes in. Market economics assumes that humans want a great deal of material goods, more than they can ever afford, in a world of limited means. And the only way to narrow the gap between means and wants is via increased productivity. Marx once stated, "in poor nations the people are comfortable," whereas, in rich nations, "they are generally poor" (2). Sahlins summed it up by asking the question, "Is it so paradoxical to contend that hunters have affluent societies, their absolute poverty withstanding?" (3). Yeah. that's it. Everyone do yourselves a favor and visit that URL. It's fundamentally informative. It will give you perspective. Tom "They counted on being able to punish them into being better, on being able to inspire them into being better, on being able to educate them into being better. And after ten thousand years of trying to improve people-- without a trace of success -- they wouldn't dream of turning their attention elsewhere." -Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael _______________________________________________ CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
