Just a few more words and then I have to stop arguing. It's too time
consuming.
>Davis:
>
>The world has become more competitive because of the removal of
>barriers to trade and investment.
I'm very much the layman in this area. I know that barriers to trade were
to have come down via the various GATT rounds, and have probably done so.
They have also come down among countries forming various trading blocks
(NAFTA, European Union, Mercosur). But given that there are many ways of
impeding the flow of trade, I wonder how free trade actually is. The
ill-fated MAI was to have promoted the freer-flow of investment, but we know
what happened to it. But, yes, I would concede that international trade is
more competitive than it was a few decades ago.
How competitive it will be in future is an open question. Some of the
thinking behind the big trading blocks is the creation of markets large
enough to be relatively independent of other markets. With the European
Union and NAFTA being as large as they are, trade can take place internally
and trade with countries that are not members of a particular block can be
restricted.
>Davis:
>
>I believe that unions have declined for 3 synergistic reasons:
I hear what you say, but I still believe that the changing nature of work
has played a large role in the decline of the unions.
>Davis:
>
>There are fewer and fewer "winning", but their slices of the pie are
>bigger than ever before. The middle class, which I was always taught
>marked the difference between banana republics and "us" is withering
>even as the neo-feudal princes and barons (CEOs and their hangers-on)
>reap unprecedented wealth, and staggering salary raise, often even in
>the face of falling profits, but most spectacularly when they fire
>large numbers of workers.
I posted something on the list a few days ago on the differential gains
between those at the top and those in the middle.
>Davis:
>
>In the early 70's, Schumacher pointed the way to a different path,
>"Appropriate technology", small scale, often more labour intensive
>technology which would have enabled communities worldwide to supply
>many of their own needs even while providing work for their people. The
>World Bank could and should have followed this model, but it was not
>very profitable for the bank's corporate cronies, and did not offer the
>glamour and macho gratification of geography-altering mega projects.
>
>The reasons for these things go very deep. There is currently a lot of
>discourse about how the world has been shaped by the western-
>originally Old Testament- view of nature as an alien thing to be
>conquered rather than the vitally connected web of life that
>aboriginals everywhere perceived.
Appropriate technology and small is beautiful has its place. I recall
appropriate technology approaches being applied in Newfoundland and the
Canadian Arctic as early as the 1950s. But, I would point out, much of the
world's population lives in big and ugly cities, not in small and beautiful
villages. Appropriate technology does have a place in these cities, but it
may boil down to how to tap into the local electric power supply or how to
build a shelter out of cardboard. How would you take cities of 10 to 20
million apart so that smallness of scale could be applied? Some misguided
idealists tried taking Phnom Pen apart a couple of decades ago, but the
results were disastrous.
The point you make about the Old Testament versus the Aboriginal view of
nature is interesting. In the very first chapter of Genesis, in the Revised
Standard Version, we read: "And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion
over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living
thing that moves upon the earth."
I've always understood this passage in the sense of practicing good
husbandry, and not as permission to whack hell out of everything, which is,
to my regret, how many Christians appear to have understood it. If it is
understood in the sense of husbandry, instead of exploitation, it may not be
as far from the Aboriginal point of view as we may think. Don't forget, the
passage in Genesis was written by, and for, an agricultural people. Many
Aboriginal people the world over were agricultural, and they would probably
have viewed their role as one of dominion in the sense of husbandry. In
Canada, only a few Aboriginal groups practiced agriculture, but even among
those who did not, the concept of husbandry was known. For example, the
Dene of the Mackenzie Valley would periodically set fires to tracts of bush
in order to revitalize the land and bring game back into it.
>I think we are at one of those junctures. And I do not think that
>either Pollyana-ism or ostrichism is particularly useful. What could
>ameliorate the crisis is a candid look at what is wrong with the
>economic, political, social and environmental systems, and the
>beginning of a widespread COOPERATIVE effort at creating greater
>equity, greater respect for the environment and for each other, and at
>finding satisfaction in personal relationships and cooperative effort,
>rather than in domination and accumulation.
I don't wholly disagree. However, I would have to take a very close look at
the rules around which cooperation took place before I bought into it. I
have never enjoyed being told that I should cooperate.
Anyhow, at this point our debate has to end. Christmas. Things to think
about and do. However, I must say I've enjoyed it. Have a very good
Christmas.
Ed Weick
