Message-ID: <199706011454.AA28092@mail.crl.com> Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 07:56:46 -0800 From: Gary Berlind <mailto:gberlind@CRL.COM> Subject: Re: average American's perception of the US role in the 1st To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Hi guys! (fancy meeting you here).I think Steve's point is very legitimate. And I also think that to a large extent both views are true. Who says there has to be only ONE cause of a problem?
The fix for the megacorp problem is complex, challenging, etc.
The fix for the people-making-what=may-be-dumb-choices problems is probably easier. Just a matter of education and marketing, right?
But I still hold that both causes exist, and both have to be addressed.
Gary Berlind
>In a message dated 97-05-31 13:17:05 EDT, mailto:j@QMAIL.COM (Jay Hanson
>mailto:mailto:j@qmail.com) writes:
>
><< If you want to see the inevitable outcome when residents can not
> protect their commons from corporations, come to Hawaii and marvel
> at the concrete -- and wonder where all the Aloha went.
> >>
>The pros and cons of tourism as a road to development are indeed pertinent to
>the theme of this list.
>
>The issue, of course, is whether want to keep their climate and their sand
>and water and beauty for themsleves, or commodify them and market them to
>strangers in search of those things.
>
>One possibility is that in Hawaii, and the Eastern Caribbean, and in all the
>places where what you want to call the "commons" has been paved is that the
>desires of the residents to keep their country and culture and beauty intact
>was overriden by megacorporations who bought the votes they needed from local
>government to get the deeds and permits and tax rebates they needed, and who
>proceeded to tear down the trees and pave the fields and beaches and erect
>towers to house vulgar tourist indifferent to local culture and beauty. And
>who take their bloated proftis out of the country , or out of hawaii, and
>enjoy them elsewhere.
>
>Another possibility, however, is this:
>
>The local residents include many who want and need work and income, and who
>believe, with some evidence, that tourist hotels create jobs: for managers
>and busboys and waiters and chamber maids and advertising agencies want those
>hotels to be built, and do not support the intellectuals and middle class
>folks who want to keep their "commons" unspoiled. These supporters of tourism
>outnumber the intellectuals and middle class, and the legislature know they
>have broad support for bringing the corporations and the hotels in, and do
>so.
>
>If enough people in Hawaii had wanted to organize to stop the spread of
>tourism they could have do, Jay.
>
>This second story is not as exciting as the first , which has the drama of
>rapacious corporations savaging the land and destroying a landscape and a
>culture.
>
>The truth is less dramatic, but even sadder: Coca-Cola and MacDonalds are
>everywhere in the world, and the locals desert their native foods and ways to
>drink and eat American not because our capitalists seduce them with false
>illusions but because they like them.
>
>Steve Eskow