At 01:49 PM 11/28/97 -0800, you wrote:
>The earth is a veritable storehouse of everything we need.
>If we run into a temporary shortage, the market will handle
>it while government is printing the appropriate forms.
>
>If we run out of something, we'll use something else. We are
You are probably right Harry about using something else. It
may be possible to boil raw sewage into something edible. I
suppose road kill may not taste too bad if one adds lots of
spices. No oil though, so you're your going to have to cook
with reclaimed Pampers ... but again no problem, you can wrap
wet rags around your head to survive the greasy smoke.
I am constantly amazed that economists would prefer to live
like this. Do economists assume that everyone would prefer
live in the gutter?
___________
FUTUREWORLD
Feral children mining the dumps for plastic (Pampers) to burn
so they can heat the holes they live in. Roadside Warriors have
gone mad, killing, raping, and torturing. Pandemics sweeping the
world, punctuated every so often by explosions as abandoned nuke
plants go critical. Leaking dumps and tanks, chemical fires,
blowing garbage and trash, genetic mutations, filthy water,
cannibalism...
_________________________
POST-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS
No doubt economists will be surprised to see their favorite
perpetual-motion machine (the economy) run out of gas. But fear
not, we will ALWAYS need economists. For example, we will need
to know whether it is more efficient to let children grow up, or
whether we should eat them:
"In this curious society which seems to have bypassed Karl Marx
in economics, there is one common value, apart from language, to
which all Ik hold tenaciously. It is ngag, 'food.' This is not
a cynical quip-there is no room for cynicism with the Ik. It is
clearly stated by the Ik themselves in their daily conversation,
in their rationale for action and thought. It is the one
standard by which they measure right and wrong, goodness and
badness. The very word for 'good,' marang, is defined in terms
of food. 'Goodness,' marangik, is defined simply as 'food,'
or, if you press, this will be clarified as 'the possession of
food,' and still further clarified as "individual possession of
food." Then if you try the word as an adjective and attempt to
discover what their concept is of a 'good man,' iakw anamarang,
hoping that the answer will be that a good man is a man who
helps you fill your own stomach, you get the truly Icien answer:
a good man is one who has a full stomach. There is goodness in
being, but none in doing, at least not in doing to others.
"So we should not be surprised when the mother throws her child
out at three years old. She has breast-fed it, with some ill
humor, and cared for it in some manner for three whole years,
and now it is ready to make its own way. I imagine the child
must be rather relieved to be thrown out, for in the process of
being cared for he or she is carried about in a hide sling
wherever the mother goes, and since the mother is not strong
herself this is done grudgingly. Whenever the mother finds a
spot in which to gather, or if she is at a water hole or in her
fields, she loosens the sling and lets the baby to the ground
none too slowly, and of course laughs if it is hurt. I have seen
Bila and Matsui do this many a time. Then she goes about her
business, leaving the child there, almost hoping that some
predator will come along and carry it off. This happened once
while I was there -- once that I know of, anyway -- and the
mother was delighted. She was rid of the child and no longer had
to carry it about and feed it, and still further this meant that
a leopard was in the vicinity and would be sleeping the child
off and thus be an easy kill. The men set off and found the
leopard, which had consumed all of the child except part of the
skull; they killed the leopard and cooked it and ate it, child
and all. That is Icien economy, and it makes sense in its own
way." [ Turnbull, 1972 ]
Actually, now that I think about it, aren't economists doing that
now? Deciding whether it is more efficient to let our children
grow up, or whether we should eat them?
"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste
in the lowest wage country is impeccable ... because foregone
earnings from increased morbidity" are low. He adds that "the
underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted;
their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared
to Los Angeles...."
-- former World Bank chief economist, Lawrence Summers
The Economist, Feb. 8, 1992
Jay -- http://dieoff.org/page1.htm
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Sustainable development both improves quality of life
and retains continuity with physical conditions. To
do both requires that social systems be equitable and
physical systems circular.
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