On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 9:04 PM, ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> sothat the rest of the world can have more. (I say "reduce" in quotes >>> because a scaling back in GDP or consumption may very well turn out to be >>> a good thing for everyone.) But in GDP terms, it really is, to some extent >>> at >>> least, a zero-sum game. How many people, even on the Left, are prepared
Certain forms of consumption, such as massive amounts of flying and SUVs probably are unsustainable (and are also comparatively new). But quite luxurious electric trains are sustainable - ones where you are guaranteed a seat, and which run 24 hours a day with no more than a ten minute wait are sustainable. That is GDP even the way we measure GDP now. The only areas where I see the workers in the rich nation having to give anything up are : individual cars, the huge red meat consumption and cheese, and flying. None of these have to be reduced to zero, but they genuinely do need to be reduced. The red meat could be replaced by chicken and other fowl, or by vegetable protein. (Any vegetarian can tell you that even giving up meat entirely does not have to be hardship. But with as much chicken (goose/duck/quail ect) as you want, and some red meat, just not a lot, I'd say that really does not have to entail any sacrifice at all.) But just about every other material good could be provided sustainably to everyone in the world. The reason is because contemporary capitalism is enormously wasteful, avoidably wasteful, wasteful on a breathtaking and staggering scale. That was not always true. In the 19th century a substantial percent of pink-skinned working class wages probably came from exploitation of other workers with other skin colors. But that is no longer the case: exploitation of the global south (including exploitation of the global north's internal global south, produces less wealth than investing the capital used for control directly could produce. In the 19th century it would have been true to say that the poor nations were poor because the rich nations were rich and the rich nations were rich because the poor nations were poor. But from the early 20th century onward while the first was still true, the second no longer was. The huge waste that occurs as a side effect of class division in the U.S. could pay for not just GDP, but real material wealth to be greater. (Probably in a more equal society we prefer a tradeoff where we had less stuff and more spare time, but that would be a choice, not an ecological requirement.) The global south as a whole, in the absence of a external imperial feet on the neck, and the absence of internal imperial feet on the neck could catch up to the U.S. in a matter of decades and do so sustainably. (Just as the global north has its own internal global south, the global south has its own internal global north.) The problem is that actually existing capitalism can't make that transformation. It requires some type of global transformation - either global socialism, or a modification of capitalism by a global new deal into a global social democracy, one that is less neoliberal and closer to socialism than any actually existing social democracy. So probably we are all doomed, but what dooms us is not the working class of the global north thriving at the expense of the working class of the global south. Both halves of that premise are wrong. The working class of the global north is not thriving, they are stagnating. But most of what they have is NOT at the expense of the global south; the constant unleashing of all four horsemen against the global south benefits only the rich of the global north, not the global north as a whole. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
