Posted by Bob - the Alien on July 08, 2002 at 19:40:14:
In Reply to: a follow up posted by john on July 08, 2002 at 13:17:06:
First article was a nice take on some very important ideas. I've heard a lot of the ideas before, but that article really argued them out logically and pulled in some hard evidence and reasoning for them. It is good thing to hear those ideas in a way that is scientific, as that may cause more people to take them seriously.
(Wow, that was a badly written sentence. But moving along...)
The second article? Interesting from an acedmic point of view, but it was written in '96, and I think it is out of date because of the impact the Internet has had on the economy. The Internet changed everything in the financial world. It made people look more to a global economy. It made business look more to global outreach, and tried to get people to ignore their local community and buy from this global economy. Even in your local systems, you see this. The small shop owners are being shut down by the large corporations. Chain restaurants and Borders bookstores are the norm anymore. Even in Boulder, Colorado which used to fight all of this. I think the Vons would be apalled at how many of the local shops on Pearl Street have shut down and been replaced. Narayan's? Its a freakin' nightclub. But I digress and most of you won't catch the references, so move along I shall.
The real point of all this is that the second article thought things may go the other way. It didn't draw any strong conclusions from this premise, but it did look to this premise as a start for finding a solution. Except that I think that premise is wrong.
I would like that premise to be true. So our next question is what can we do to make it true?
The answer to that questions ties right back to one of the main points if the first article. As a society, we have to stop making growth and money a priority. We have to look at things with a different value system. This is a hard change to make. I'd love to hear ideas on how to accomplish it.
I know we can make small steps. We can choose not to shop at large chains. We can make our personal choices based on the 'new priorities'. We can teach our children, and even our friends, to do the same. We can use the internet solely as an information and communication tool, and not for commerce.
And how will this help? It will help us make decisions based on our local communities and personal priorities, not on money. It may teach other around us the same. Even if we can't stop the growth of the economy and the corporate world, we can recognize flawed priorities in the world and change them for ourselves.
And if people say we are silly because these habits won't change the economy, we can agree with them and explain that we do it to change our priorites not the world.
Given a few generations, as children grow up with different priorities, this just might change the world anyway.
With Love,
Bob