Re: 1 year ago today...

[n ik <fragments@va.com.au>]

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> A question for anti-globalisationists - do you think that the
> increased efficiency of the global economy will be beneficial to the
> environment?
>

<snip>

> snippet 5:
>
> ...[environmental] damage has occurred through
> human action, both with and without the free market, and has been
> done not just by Big Business but also by
> governments and the average citizen (Baumol et al, 1992).

increased efficiency wont necessarily be beneficial to the
environment...one, because the efficiency you talk of will serve profit -
that is to say, there will only be as much efficiently is needed as to
avoid economic penalties and to maintain or increase consumption, and two,
because the efficiency of the global economy is an efficiency of
*production* - and it is overproduction that is the problem. we need to
consume less, not efficiently consume more (that would just be teaching
the locusts table manners)....
....and then there is always the efficient inefficiencies...the
externalisations of cost (this makes production economically efficient for
a company), the deregulation and relaxation of labour laws (pushing much
of the worlds population into serfdom, but again, it reduces cost and is
therefore economically efficient),....so much of the answer to the
question (as  always) comes down to who does the defining....he (and its
usually a he) who has the gold makes the rules...

and yes, enviro damage existed before the transnational corporation, but
take a look at the damage wrought since the beginning of this century.
since the half-way mark of this century. the only system that has caused
as much damage to the earth and its peoples as corporate globablisation
and 'economic rationalism' is state-based socialism (ie the
commies...)....when we invented agriculture, we began to do great harm to
the earth, but when we invented industrialisation and globalised
economies, well, the fifth great extinction started

n


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