🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan26.120132.21873@cas.org> jac54@cas.org () writes:
}	Going back to food, the U.S. offers some of the worst sausage
}	it has ever been my dubious privilege to taste.  Oscar Meyer
}	would cause riots in the streets in Poland, never mind Germany.

Ah, but that is our *chief* advantage, you see. The unwashed masses
may eat Oscar Meyer sausages, drink Budweiser beer, and eat Velveeta
brand processed American cheese-like (not!) food-style product, but
I don't. And why not? BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE TO, here in the SF bay
area.

What America lacks in the large commercial advertised arena it more
than makes up for in small local businesses, many of them run by
Nth-generation immigrants, where N is a small number. So I get my
sausages at one of several local German delis, I get my beer from
local microbreweries, and I get my cheese from local organic dairies.
I also get my Thai food at restaurants run by Thai immigrants, my
Vietnamese food at Vietnamese-run restaurants, and my Japanese cooking
ingredients at a large local Japanese-run grocery.

I have these wonderful nearly-infinite choices of locally-produced
good quality foods, yet I still have the advantage of the electronics
and clothing and myriad other consumer goods mass-produced in this
country. So the American advantage is that the things we lack on a
national scale can usually be made here by small businesses run by
people who know how to do them right, whereas the things that Europe
lacks would require huge capital investment and large factories.

And, yes, Iowa is horrible, but America is so huge and diverse (despite
the raging on-slaught of generic television and fast food franchises)
that one can choose to live in some place almost, but not quite,
completely unlike Iowa, yet remain in the same country.
-- 
Curtis Jackson			'91 Black Lab/Blue Heeler "Studley Doright"
cjackson@mv.us.adobe.com	'92 Collie/Golden "George"
DoD #721	KotB		'91 Hawk GT	'81 Maxim 650
"I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead." -- J. Buffett