NASA photo
In these times of growing pollution, heating of the atmosphere, stagnant economies and flat wages everywhere, there is growing research that strongly suggests that the world simply cannot accomodate everyone living like U.S. citizens lived from 1955 to 1985. First off the planet has finite capacities – especially the atmosphere in its ability to continue to be an overhead dump. But perhaps more importantly researchers say that having more and more of everything hasn’t made us happier. In fact, to the the contrary. It’s made our lives more lonely and stressful.
A fascinating “getting it all together” approach to making choices over the next twenty to fifty years that make sense, from the point of view of sustainable economics and human happiness, is found in this piece in Mother Jones magazine. It’s a big read, but WELL worth the journey. Click here.
Great article, read this guy at 350.org regularly
Dave,
You need to correct the URL to link readers to the first page of this 3 page article.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/03/reversal-fortune?page=1
It doesn’t surprise me that Mother Jones is essentially calling for a collectivist agrarian society governed my a Keynesian group of elite thinkers. This fails everyplace it is tried, except in societies who have not learned to think beyond survival.
Anyhow, your readers need to be led to the beginning of the piece, rather than being dropped into the end of it.
I strongly suggest that you direct your readers to Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind ” It will, at least, help them understand why liberals follow like lemmings, and what the final result of their actions will bring.
It was published in 1896 and is in the public domain, so everyone has free access to it.
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BonCrow.html
Whit
It’s all about the decay of the commons without which you and I would not have enjoyed the education that profoundly molded our lives, streets to drive, technological breakthroughs and medical advancements that have extended our lives and a fairly pollution free environment to make our lives liveable, not to mention police, firefighters and military who kept us free. None of it can be funded by anyone “on their own.” Our moral core is one that is also devoted to true progress, not just blind selfishness fueled by a foolish belief that everyman is a mountain of competence unfettered by the “common man.”
Le Bon’s hyper-simplistic treatise (written during the 19th century) about how popular opinion is circulated is more of a headline than the final word of judging what any individual or crowd thinks or believes is true or useful. The significance of a statement, conclusion or policy is to be found in whether it holds up to a test of democracy, equality of opportunity, national, regional and local resources for individual advancement and achievements. There are widely held beliefs today that seem to gather steam as one moves up the financial food chain that “I got mine because I was smart.” Increasingly, “He got his because the tax code was gamed so he no longer had to pay taxes.” Le Bon is but a shallow characterizer of simplistic sociology unrelated to today’s complex inter-relations of economics, power politics and accountancy.