From: ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Start again.
Date: 11 Dec 92 20:06:54 GMT
Organization: Kaos Laboratories


In article <Bz3r16.3tn@access.digex.com>, corun@access.digex.com (Corun MacAnndra) writes...
>In article <1299@abb-sc.abb-sc.COM> ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley) writes:
>>
>>I maintain that this is not just a possibility but a necessity. All Alizard's 
>>flames about lowering the standard of living aside, it is possible and 
>>necessary to redefine our relationship and reduce our consumption, which 
>>translates as a lower standard of living. We *don't* need everything that we 
>>have.
> 
>I think you might better say that we don't need the *quantities* of the
>stuff we have. Bigger, better, flashier, etc. The whole "keeping up with
>the Jones'" bullshit is what got us into our mindset that everything's
>disposable. We railed against this attitude in the sixties. But what do
>we do about it? Free enterprise is a good thing, but what's so wrong with
>a monopoly if the company produces a good product, and does it cheaply and
>with as little environmental impact as possible? Yes, there must be checks
>and balances. But I think that all the competition in all the industries
>just puts alot of expensive junk out there.
> 

Yes, "lowering the standard of living" was probably a poor choice of 
words on my part, but what I'm getting at is most often precieved as 
such. An example might be a sustinance level family that has a TV in 
the living room, in the kid's room and in the parents bedroom because 
no one can agree what to watch and some people want to watch in bed 
instead of walking into another room. What an incredible waste of 
resourses (money and technology and welfare support)! I know of many 
families like this, wealthy or not and I view this as wastefull lazy 
consumerism. Even if we presume that the family in question is too 
disfunctional to agree on what to watch, they could use a VCR to record 
one program while watching another instead of owning several TVs. But 
what are subsistance level families doing with something as 
non-essential as a television anyway? That money should be spent on 
getting them educated and trained so that they can work at a higher 
level and not be a dynasty of broom pushers. 

Then again, I think most of what is on the TV is crap, so I don't own 
one. ;-)

Monopolization of industry. Hmmm. Well, I guess it has it's benefits 
but it has it's down side too. Once a product and manufacturer own the 
market, a small, new company with a better product may be successfully 
kept out of the market, creating stagnation and a failure to advance 
the technology. There's a compromise here somewhere.

Yes, a lot of the new products that come on the market are just the 
same old stuff dressed in flash and sparkle. I guess the way to get 
this waste of resourse out of the marketplace is not to buy it, and 
that involves the change of conciousness that I've mentioed in other 
posts, along with a little truth in advertising. Now this is a real 
problem in the computer industry because the technology is moving so 
fast that you almost *have* to buy new hardware every five years just 
to be able to communicate, use new software, hell, even make the 
technology functional in the world! That is one of the problems with a
technological boom, although the benifits far outweigh it.

One thing is for sure though. We *don't* need another beaurocratic 
agency restricting the marketplace. What we may need is a re-vamping 
and re-structuring of some of the existing ones. Maybe.

(social reform comments deleted, see earlier posts)

> 
>Thanks, Ashely. Your comments are just what's needed in this discussion.
> 
>Bb,
>Corun
> 
	Thank *you* Corun, for seeing this through.


				- Ashley

Newsgroups: alt.pagan