🚀 go-pugleaf

meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:

> In spite of your denials above, you still
> seem to believe that the problems of other countries stem from the US
> grabbing to much in way of resources.  Well, no, not really.
I don't believe that, thank you for acknowledging it with your "well no
not really". I don't believe the US is grabbing too much - I just don't
think they are prepared to have real faith in the capitalist system -
and it appears to me as an outsider looking in that there's a lot of fat
people in the US - is it because they consume too much? I remember a
cartoon in a Playboy Magazine in the 60's (which I only ever read for
the interview and the cartoons) which showed a Texan in a big car saying
" Goddam it -I'm wealthy - I can afford to waste the Earth's resources". 
  
> On the
> other hand, slow down the US economy a bit and who you think is going
> to suffer the most.  Exactly those third world countries whom you
> would like to help and who'll find the best market for their products
> disappearing.  And yes, I really mean the best since the US market is
> way more open than those of the other affluent countries.
Do I conclude that the only way to feed the starving of the planet is
for the US to keep consuming, and if that consumption increases then
starvation will decline? If the economy slows down because the Americans
have each made a personal commitment to do more with less (a Buckminster
Fuller principle) and that is where the effect is absorbed it won't
affect free trading partners at all. In fact some goods and services
will become cheaper (thus more with less) if supplied from a Third World
economy - at what internal cost to the US - increased unemployment -
solve it with a shorter working week and the development of an increased
leisure industry - people will have more time.

> By the time we add all these categories together, we've some 80% of
> the US population.  So, you seem to believe that some 20% enjoy the
> fat of the land, ruling over the remaining 80%.  Is this really your
> opinion or are you just repeating stuff without thinking about it.
Right first time - it's the old 20/80 rule, as much a Universal Truth as
Murphy's Law, Parkinson's Law and Sod's Law.

> >My country, New Zealand, in 1964, agreed to send troops to Viet Nam in
> >return for improved access to the US market for our beef.
> If that was the whole reason for your country's participation, i.e. if
> your government considers its soldiers to be just merchandise, to be
> bartered away for trade privileges, then you've my sympathy.
Of course that wasn't the whole reason. NZ is the only country to have
always stood with the US and the UK. We would have been there anyway -
most Kiwis believed in the Yellow Peril and Red under the Bed
propanganda, and our fathers who had done their bit in the 1939-1945
World War expected my generation to do the same and stop the spread of
the evil by making a stand in Viet Nam. We were already in Malaysia
doing the same thing - I don't recall the US being there with us - and
we do have a justifiably proud war tradition. But when we were reluctant
to be involved because of our Malaysian commitment, and the US wanted
the moral support of it's long time ally, NZ, we were told that our
continued access for our beef was contigent upon our moral and physical
support. At the time we were vulnerable - the Poms had just ditched us
in favour of the EEC and our privileged trading status had gone -
consider that irony, we lost a greater percentage of our population, in
the 1914-1919 and 1939-1945 World Wars, than any other country - freeing
France/Europe, standing by Mother England - we were probably a Third
World Nation.
> >We've always
> >been on a quota. It was practically wiped out when we banned US nuclear
> >armed and nuclear powered ships from our ports and declared ourselves to
> >be a Nuclear Free Zone.
> 
> So, you took a stand and you paid some price for it.  This often
> happens when you take a stand.

Tell us about it - name a country which understands this better than we
do.

Regards,

John Rich