Subject:
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Re: Is space property?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 2 Jan 2001 17:51:35 GMT
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Viewed:
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385 times
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Warning:
Long, long rant by the resident imperial historian follows.
Grab a donut (or an ear of corn, if you're a Middle American
like myself). ;)
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Paul Baulch wrote:
> > Should I compare the paunchy, corn-fed Middle American with a nuclear
> > family, two cars, a big house in the 'burbs and enough disposable income to
> > amass a considerable Lego collection, complaining about the government
> > talking from him what is effectively luxury wealth, when there are two
> > billion other human beings in the world who work four times harder than him,
> > for a bowl of rice a day? That troubles my sense of fairness a great deal -
> > and it would explain why, when I heard people protesting/whinging about
> > paying tax, I felt tempted to tell them to "get stuffed".
>
> I do find it unsettling that the majority of humanity doesn't live under
> the same conditions I do, but I don't see a clean way to get from where
> we are now, to a utopia where everyone has a "fair" allotment of "stuff"
> (life necessities, goods, peace of mind, health, whatever). I'm not even
> really sure what my definitions of "fair" and "stuff" would be (though I
> don't feel that "fair" means we all have the same amount).
It doesn't. The lifestyle we enjoy in the US, UK, Europe (as a whole),
Japan, Oceania, Canada, etc etc., (read "The West") is untenable. The
only way we can have the things we do is by extracting labour at
impossibly cheap rates from approximately 85% of the world's population.
The environment also can't handle our current rates of consumption.
"Fair" is too tricky, although an even distribution would mean that
we'd likely all be operating at about rural Mexico's level of prosper-
ity.
> I do find your opinion troubling. You wish to tell me to "get stuffed"
> because I have all these nifty toys to play with, yet feel the system of
> taxation is unfair (but I would remind you - I might be quite happy to
> give as much or more of my income to charity than currently is given
> between how the government allocates my tax dollars, and the additional
> money I give directly to charity), yet you obviously are happily
> involved in the same "luxury" hobby.
I'll agree there. However, this may be only because I effectively
pay *no* taxes--making, as I do, less than $15K a year, which does
not count tuition stipends and other cost waivers that are not
considered taxable because they are "granted educational services."
What about the ABS affliction we all share? Well, it's made in
Europe, packaged in Europe or the US, and the like, so chances
are it's significantly less exploitive than, say, sugar cane.
However I have no idea where the ABS itself comes from--Bhopal,
perhaps? (That plant is still running, last I heard. At least
Russia finally shut down Chernobyl.) I try to placate myself
with the thought that the logical ability I build by playing
can help to build case studies that will eventually serve in
the cause of global justice--tortured logic, I know, but I do
need to sleep at night.
> I also happen to believe that a totally free market with "taxes" only
> covering a minimum of services, and said taxes being as close to user
> fees as possible, that we would all be better off. I would also point
> out that the farm worker in a "third world" country may be happy just
> the way he is (though I suspect most would definitely be happier with a
> better government, and almost assuredly would be better off with better
> health care and more availability of food). I would also lay most of the
> blame for the conditions of living in the "third world" on the people
> themselves. We (US and Europe) have better conditions primarily because
> we fought for them. We demand that the government treat us fairly, and
> that a court system exist which limits the ability of the rich and
> powerful to screw us over. We also have dramatically reduced our
> birthrate so that we are not overwhelming the resources of our countries
> (though of course we are also importing huge quantities of food, but I
> also feel like I've heard before that the US is actually a net exporter
> of food).
***SCREEEEECH*** Whoa!
The above passage starts off troubling and gets worse. In the first
part, "third world" is a glib overgeneralization--while there may
be some farm workers who are happy in a few small areas, the vast
majority are highly exploited in differing ways. For example, the
farms in much of Central America are devoted to growing cash crops
under a plantation system, and the company both pays the workers
*and* controls the food, rents, and services--and their prices--
that they must consume. It's 21st-century sharecropping, in the
name of maximizing profit for the company while providing an item
for our consumption at the lowest cost. In Zimbabwe, for example,
I don't agree with Mugabe's farm invasions--but he does have a
point that the farm owners--the vast majority white settlers--
seek to make the greatest possible profit from the workers' labour,
and for that reason they perpetuate the same exploitive system
supposedly destroyed in 1980. I could go on, all over the African
continent, much of Asia (although less now than in 1950), South
America, and so forth. It's become a very corporatist world, and
the European ideal of the small farmer just doesn't exist anymore,
save in a few areas with particularly strong traditions and, more
importantly, a very limited experience with colonial rule.
The part that I find really disturbing is laying the blame for
the troubles of "developing nations" (a very very bad term) on
the people themselves. This is the panacea that's been touted by
European nations to explain away the poverty of the South and
East--"if only they'd do this or that, they'd be like us; the
fact that they don't means they get what they deserve." Africa
as a continent has a billion people--if you take it by total land
area, the population isn't bursting at the seams; in fact, it's
not much different than Europe and much lower than Japan. High
infant mortality, low life expectancy, and relatively brutal con-
ditions mean that if a family is to remain viable, it must reproduce to
sell the only thing that the global market finds of value in it--
its labour. More people, more labour, more income, and maybe enough
money finally to afford to send one child away to school. That's
how Europe worked in agricultural and early industrial days,
and that's how our "periphery" works now under similar conditions.
(Note that this is for the masses, not for the elite privileged few.)
The big difference is that when Europe's conditions were showing
signs of betterment, there wasn't a bigger, stronger kid on the block
beating it up and taking its proverbial lunch money every morning.
We (again, the writ-large West) unfortunately have an economic
interest in continued human misery. As far as fighting for better
things, better lives, better institutions--I would defy you to find
more powerful movements for justice than those in Africa and Asia
during the second half of this century.
There's no definitive answer on how much capital the West has removed
from Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the last five hundred
years, in either labour or materials, and it's a great point of
argument among global historians. I have pages upon pages of
reference materials for those who want it, but the general
agreement is that the numbers are enormous and the overall effect
of this extraction was crippling. Andre Gunder Frank [ReOrient],
for one contentious example, has made a good case that the looting
of African labour and American precious metals made it possible for
Europe to fund its growth and subjugate the much richer countries
of Asia who, to that point, had no interest in the dirty barbarians
from the West and were far superior both militarily and
economically. [2]
As far as the US being an importer or exporter of food, it has
much to do with megafarming or corporate farming--operating on
such a huge scale that automation becomes affordable and even
cheaper than human assistance. All farming is not equal.
> Of course there is also something to be said for those who
> have climbed the cliff first to give a hand to those still at the base
> of the cliff. One way I'd like to see the US change which would make
> that lending a hand work better would be to scrap the immigration laws.
> Don't make Mexican workers have to practically sign up as slaves to be
> able to get a job in the US doing stuff no US citizen wants to do. If
> the Mexicans (and other Central and South Americans) could freely enter
> the country, they would have the ability to tell the abusive farmers:
> "Good bye, I'm going to work across the street for that other farmer who
> makes sure I have the proper protective gear and pays twice as much as
> you do."
This would merely force the farms to pass the cost along to the
consumer, trebling the amount we pay now (or more) [1]. The end
result is that it would be cheaper to import from elsewhere,
thus destroying US agriculture. That very scenario has played
out in numerous industries around the world for hundreds of
years--textiles being the most obvious, including the famous
destruction of the Indian luxury textile market by cheap and
shoddy English product long before official British control
of the country. In the end the situation reversed itself, but
only once British labour was busily producing even more
capital-intensive items.
It's not enough to say "we need to lend a hand to those still
at the base of the cliff", because we're the ones who pushed
them off of the top in the first place. The entire system--
its values, goals, and reasoning--needs to change. To define
our goal as giving "them" what "we" have is pure neoimperial
development theory, and it's only one step removed from Kipling's
"White Man's Burden." It's the same flawed idealism that informed
our political behaviour in Viet Nam, the Philippines [4], Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, etc., and it practically put Mao, Khomeini, and
Castro into power, if only because they offered an alternative
to being treated like errant children by the same pompous
Powers that created the original problem by fracturing local
economies and civil societies. The United States behaves
in much the same way as the colonial powers of old, performing
similar feats of exploitation without incurring for ourselves
the cost of administration and rule (and the international obloquy
that attends such things). When is imperialism not imperialism?
When it's American! [3]
Anyways, just my two cents. I simply feel that we need to
be honest with ourselves and the rest of the world (there's
another loaded phrase!) about the implications of our lifestyle
and its eventual untenability. The eventual hope is that the
level of thought and industry made possible here can still be
converted into a workable system for all people--but my optimism
drains daily. I do love my country, but we have a loooong way to
go before we're model world citizens. [5]
(*Phew!*)
best
LFB
[1] It also requires a certain amount of general education on
the part of the worker to know his or her rights, what is
available, what safety recommendations are--another thing
that much of the world still has no access to.
[2] There's still argument over why these advantages never
translated into a search for global domination, but I
read it as European excentrism--nobody sought Europe out,
but all over the Western Pacific and even in Europe, all
sorts of peoples great and small sought out and exalted
China, bringing the Emperors gifts, favourable trade
conditions, and some even professions of fealty. There's
not much of a push to go anywhere when everyone comes to
you (and gives you things)!
[3] As for US cultural imperialism, especially in Europe,
Canada, and so forth, it requires much more collaboration
from the "imperialized." One can stop buying Disney and
be just fine, but one cannot stop working to earn money
to buy food and medicine!
[4] Kipling's poem was in fact written to herald the US
acceptance of the mantle of an Imperial Power following
the Spanish-American War. (Apologies for this being before
note 3.)
[5] I'm saying "United States" and "West", which today are
very fluid categories--it can include corporate interests
as well as the government that supports them and responds
to them. But the government-industry axis is another rant
for another day.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Is space property?
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| <picking kernel bits out of my teeth>Golly!</picking> (...) I don't see how this paragraph supports the idea that "fair" isn't an even distribution. I mean, I basically agree with what you're saying, but I don't see the connection to defining what (...) (24 years ago, 2-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Is space property?
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| (...) I do find it unsettling that the majority of humanity doesn't live under the same conditions I do, but I don't see a clean way to get from where we are now, to a utopia where everyone has a "fair" allotment of "stuff" (life necessities, goods, (...) (24 years ago, 2-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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