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 19:04:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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314 times
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<picking kernel bits out of my teeth>Golly!</picking>
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> > (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 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 "fair" would be.
> 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.
Why is it that a man in the US can make a living farming ten acres and live
happily, but that doesn't commonly happen elsewhere?
> 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.
It seems to me that in the late 1700s the British colonists in North America
had it much better than these people, and yet 'we' (well, some of 'us')
chose to rebel and do our own thing. I understand that the distribution of
land was moved around as a result. Why don't Central Americans
rebel with enough cohesion to win so that they can redistribute their land and
work it in peace for themselves? Is it just that they don't know
their options?
> 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.
Like The West?
> 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."
That famous Chilean economist whose name is escaping me right now recently
published the results of an analysis of developing nations looking
for the significant cause of their poverty. What he came up with is that most
of the nations we would now call "third world" don't have an
infrastructure that supports ownership of business. They have tradition that
allows people to own their bakery (for instance) but the government
doesn't keep records of that ownership, and by extension guarantee that they
will continue owning it. Because of that lack of stability, the
owners can't get loans like we in the "civilized" world can using our
businesses as collateral. And thus can't improve.
To whatever extent that analysis is correct, it is at least partly the fault of
the people in those nations...even if it's really only the fault of the
leaders. The people in charge all went to college in The West, so they ought
to know how such things are supposed to be. If they're not
working to correct them, then they're purposely screwing their fellows. Their
citizenry ought to rise up and stone them.
> and maybe enough
> money finally to afford to send one child away to school.
That's the big payoff too. I had a West African coworker who sent about 60% of
his US income back to his family. He told me that he alone
made so much that his contribution ot them was more than half of the family's
income. Of course, as a proper Westerner, I just thought that
would be a great place to go retire in ten years after I saved a few $100K.
:-)
> We (again, the writ-large West) unfortunately have an economic
> interest in continued human misery. As far as fighting for better
So what do we do about it? I tend to buy foods produced in the US, so that
minimizes my personal contribution to the economic enslavement
of those other people, but how can our nation turn around and make it better?
Like the flaw that you point out in Frank's suggestion about open
borders, I have a hard time believing that refusing to buy their goods is
actually going to help them.
> 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.
Cheaper in the short term. A man can get more food per acre out of three acres
than can a factory farm out of 4000. And he can do it without
causing far reaching ecological damage. As a libertopian, I would like to see
projective costs included in our ears of corn, and then compare the
cost of buying human-grown or robot-grown corn. I bet we'd be surprised.
> 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.
How?
> 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).
But this really is why the Brits who formed the United States left King George.
'We' saw the economic relationship as unfairly advantageous to
the king and we forcefully resisted. Why don't others?
Thanks Lindsay,
Chris
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Is space property?
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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). ;) (...) It doesn't. The lifestyle we enjoy in the US, UK, Europe (as a whole), Japan, Oceania, Canada, (...) (24 years ago, 2-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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