Roody

I agree with everything here, and especially the last sentence. GDP cannot grow infinitely (or indefinitely), therefore the growth is unsustainable and a very poor measure of the really important things in an economy.

IMO, it's far better to measure things like health, eductation, culture and arts, equitable distribution of resources, and ability to "play well with others" when you're ranking nations or neighborhoods.

wahoonc

Well we lost our art museum this year, closed and the building is on the market...due to lack of funds. So I guess my community is headed down the crapper. Funny part is we are in an area that has a built in economic engine, called a military base and it is growing, but that doesn't mean they will spend the money where we think it should be spent.

Aaron

gerv 

You'd think that spending on cultural activities would be a great way to spend stimulus dollars.... I mean rather than a new anti-missile system.... Strange how governments react!

Robert Foster

I had a big long involved answer but we have moved so far off topic I just couldn't get into it.

There is a world that is and there is a world that some would like to think there is. They will never be the same.

As they said in the movie, it is all about the "stuff". Always has been, always will be.

storckm

"Stuff" certainly matters, unless you don't like eating. At the same time, normal, sane people generally have other motives in addition to simply profit and accumulating stuff. Corporations, on the other hand, don't care about anything at all, because they're legal fictions which only exist legally and are generally legally required to care only about profit, whatever the people involved might personally prefer. And corporations, even though they have only legal existence, have had a lot to do with the real shape of the world. This has not always been the case. While it would not be easy to bring about, it is not impossible for the power of corporations to be reduced, although I admit that it doesn't seem likely (whichever political party happens to be in power).

Roody

And there's another world that you dream about and wish you lived in. So you keep dreaming, and you also try to work hard to make the real world a little more like that dream world.

And somehow that brings us back to the topic--which is reasons why I became carfree again.

Robert Foster

To continue with the thought. In the US what kind of stuff do normal sane people have? What kind of Stuff does normal sane people strive for?

storckm

It's true that all of us do want lots of things that we don't really need. That's always been the case, and always will be. My point was that corporations make the problem worse because they don't generally concern themselves with things like neighborliness (although some unneighborly corporations try to project the image of neighborliness in order to increase sales), justice (except to the extent that breaking the law cuts into profits), or even the quality of their product when that conflicts with profit. I'm not claiming that ordinary people are always neighborly, just, or concerned with quality production. Far from it. Rather, I'm saying that we are sometimes all of these things, some of us more and some less so, even when such concern is inefficient and unprofitable. But since, by their very design and constitution, corporations are only, or at least primarily, concerned with profits, and because they have a lot of power, they exaggerate the weaknesses which we already have.

And I think Roody is right that, while we won't ever eliminate these problems, we should do what we can to make things better by ourselves trying to live well and become better. But, while this will have the most effect on each of us personally, there isn't a total separation between public political and economic life and our personal lives: each affects the other. By doing things like driving less (or not at all), buying things produced more locally (even if their getting to us does involve automobiles), helping our neighbors, talking to our friends instead of watching TV, brewing our own beer, and paying attention to quality and longevity instead of style and flashiness, we live more happily, and also affect, in little but meaningful ways, the shape of the economic and political communities which we belong to.

Robert Foster

Don't we have an obligation to ask ourselves who is normal and who is sane? After all there was a time before corporations when people had very little and we were far more tribal. Something caused us to evolve to the state we are in and that was the accepted by the majority of society. So normal became what most people do or believe. Abnormal became the resisters. Sane became the people that blended in the best with society. People that accepted the changes society migrated to were considered sane and, for lack of a better word, the resister were considered eccentric.

it is our obligation to conserve as individuals. It is our obligation to be good to our neighbors. It is our obligation to support our local businesses. But only as individuals. But all of those obligations are based on personal morals and ethics. Who are we to determine what is best for the majority if we don't want the majority telling is what is best?

There is a recurring theme in this forum particularly. It is that life was better before people got things. If we study history closely we will discover that it wasn't all that great and that is why people adopted our modern world, because it was easier and to most people, better. If it wasn't they wouldn't have changed.

Like I have said before, people didn't leave the city centers for the metro areas and urban sprawl because cars tempted them to. They left because life in the city core became less desireable, crime ridden and expensive. The blame placed on cars in misplaced. The blame should fall on the community and the people living there that encouraged the exodus.

I may have cut my driving by 60 percent in the last three years. I may buy locally even if the goods I buy are not locally made for the most part. But I can easily seperate the political from my social and personal life.

I guess what I am saying is we have to be careful when we in the minority use terms like sane and normal in a society that see very little sane and normal with our life style choices.

Roody

I agree that getting more things was a step forward. ONE step forward. Not the LAST step forward, hopefully.

IMO, the NEXT step forward is to figure out how nine billion people can all have enough things, while at the same time preserving the earth that provides all those things.