Message-ID: <32E21E72.6D0@mind.net> Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 13:15:30 +0000 From: "B. Diamond" <mailto:bdiamond@MIND.NET> Subject: [Fwd: Re: Who speaks for Brazil?] To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Message-ID: <mailto:32E154F0.5E99@mind.net> Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 22:55:44 +0000 From: "B. Diamond" <mailto:bdiamond@mind.net> Reply-To: mailto:bdiamond@mind.net Organization: Office of Environmental Affairs X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM CC: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU> Subject: Re: Who speaks for Brazil? References: <mailto:970118232530_1210797065@emout09.mail.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitmailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM wrote:
> And the fist shaker will truly believe that the following picture is made up
> of "facts":
>
> 1. The US and all the capitalist countries are the beneficiaries of an
> economic system built upon addictive greed, one that venerates profits and is
> indifferent to human values: love, family, joy, community.
>
> 2. Capitalism needs the resources of the less developed nations, extracts
> wealth from them, and in the process of this extraction destroys their
> culture, their communities, their ecology, their people, their natural
> sociopolitical economy.
>
> 3. Capitalism feeds on the misery of the poor: it is "the development of
> underdevelopment."
>
> 4. Before capitalism there were better times and more loving and humane and
> ecologically sustainable thoughtworlds and lifeworlds, and we should preserve
> those that exist and learn from them so that we can modify our current
> capitalist insanities so that they are more like these natural communities.
>
> 5.Development aid as it is currently practiced is another form of capitalist
> coercion for its benefit.
>
> 6. Aid must be grounded in "participation": the indigenous--say, the poor
> mothers in India who do not know that unboiled water is killing their
> children--should decide on whether donor dollars are for potable water or
> schools or factories. Or: the university-trained intellectuals who are
> "indigenous" should be seen as surrogates for the poor and given the power to
> decide on the nature and scope of development.
Bravo Steve!!! You've finally got it! ;)
> Part of that story, Thor, is the story of how the "poor" of the developed
> nations came to be able to be poor while eating well, watching television,
> and driving an automobile.
Let's translate Steve's "capitalistspeek"
1. Eating well- to shift from a nutritional, subsistance-based, debt free diet, to a junkfood (coke and burgerking) diet that consumes on approximately 2/3 of their "slave labor" incomes derived by manufacturing designer jeans for the wealthy.
2. Watching television- subjecting yourself and your family to racist, (blond-haired blue-eyed models) sexist, and materialist advertising that hawks goods and services you don't need and can't afford.
3. Driving an automobile-ensuring a market for the oil industry, auto industry, and banking industry (gas, car, loan)
> Western intellectuals and politicians and entrepreneurs created that machine,
> and in the process damaged the earth.
>
> Now that they know what they have done, and the dangers, they have joined
> together to create the environmental movement, and they will repair the
> damage.
A) they continue to deny that there really is a problem (sound familiar?) and B) they will only repair the damage if and when it is profitable to do so i.e. industries battle over *any* perceived regulation such as limits on cfc's, the EPA proposed new air-quality standards fro reducing particulate matter, etc. It will *always* be more profitable to exploit the environment than to clean it up.
> And while doing so they will continue to find ways to create work and wealth
> for the poor of India, and the poor of the entire world.
>
> While the utopians dream of Gardens of Eden that never were, and will never
> be.
If you think the above statement about capitalists seeking to create wealth for the poor is true, then it is you who are dreaming. According to the World Watch Institute, "The ratio between income in the richest one fifth of countries and the poorest one fifth has widened from 30:1 in 1960 to 61:1 in 1991." Never, never forget that jobs and creating wages for workers are consequences of industry, not their purpose. As stated above, the more they can put in their pocket, and the less into the rest of ours, the better a capitalist they really are.
B. Diamond