<p>"I cant agree with that. You are assuming a fundamental logic that the world is not built for sustainable human growth."</p>
<p>If you don't think we're raping the earth, then you need to wake up. Thinking about the problem in economic terms won't help. Any scientist can tell you that the earth has a finite ammount of any material on it. When a material is used up, it's gone for good. Currently, our industrial process runs on fossil fuels. We use oil to power our homes and our factories, we use it to drive our cars to take us to work, it powers the crop harvesters that gather our food, it powers the trucks that take the food to our store and the refrigeration in the store. We use it to make the pesticides that keep our massive fields from becoming completely overrun by insects, we use it to make the plastics that go into nearly everything we make. Well, we don't have that much of it left--most scientists project 50 years left for oil.</p>
<p>Then there's all the byproducts of everything we make. When we are done with something, we throw it out and pretend its gone. Well, its not, it piles up to mountains and mountains of trash, it poisons our oceans and our rivers, it leaks into our soil. All high-tech manufacturing processes, from the monitor you are looking at to the car you drive, leave behind toxic chemicals that there's no real way to dispose of yet. Because we make more money if we sell more things, many products have obdolence built into them so they become obsolete and require a new purchase after a few years. Other things we are just convinced to buy more of than we need, like T-Shirts. How many T-Shirts do you own? If you calculate how much "stuff" went into making it and getting it to you, your mind would be boggled. THen you multiply it by 6 billion, and you're starting to get the picture.</p>
<p>If every nation lived like us we'd need 3 earths to satisfy our needs. Well, it looks like China is going to be the new us this next century. Great!</p>
<p>"But then again, who would trade the American environment for an Indian one? "</p>
<p>Third world countries are so as a result of the exploitation and other adverse effects resulting from contact with capitalism and imperialism. You might not trade your modern life for a different one, but that's because you've already been lulled into being a lazy beast. If you were born into another era you wouldn't long for a flush toilet. </p>
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<p>"Let's start with confusing repetitive, dull work with erosion of liberty. Pleeease. Anyone that wants to leave a factory job and return to subsistence farming (after all, that's what most folks did before the boring factory jobs came along) can certainly do so. </p>
<p>A good economics education will teach you that different people have different preferences. Some people will trade almost anything for staying put. They will never move for a job. Others, like college educated folks, view the whole US as their job market. The study of these preferences is part of econ."</p>
<p>Its not about "freedom." "Freedom" is what lets people sell useless trinkets that destroy our planet so that they can make tons of money and waste our land even more with their destructive habits. It's about society actually doing stuff that matters, and on another level, doing stuff that isn't self destructive. </p>
<p>Some people are better suited for a simple life, a life of labor followed by blissfull respite. These are the type of people that should follow orders from people who know what they are doing, but in a capitalism "the market" decides what gets produced so we get gas-guzzling SUVs. Leaders, on the other hand, should be worried about what's best for society as a whole, not what will get them the largest stock dividends or the most votes. </p>
<p>"Preferences" these days are just hedonistic social whims or selfish material goals. If the goal of your society is to live in as much comfort as possible, fine; if your goal is to have a purpose on this planet and not **** it up, you better find another way of deciding what gets done.</p>
<p>"Economics does not say we need growth etc."</p>
<p>It's always easier to get money by finding a new market than by being succesfull in a new one. Populations may stabilize in "well-developed" nations but their consumption continues to grow exponentially. Because these days everyone look out for his own arse, you can rest assured that eventually we will simply run out of space and material.</p>
<p>"A good liberal education like at Chicago will teach you the differences among political discussion, economic analysis, social policy and so forth."</p>
<p>Quite frankly you are a moron if you think these things can all be seperated into nice, neat little categories with no overlap. </p>
<p>"IMHO, the real miracle these days is that so few people can make our basic necessities, and that we can trade to other places so even fewer need do so. That's what enables our service economy."</p>
<p>You really need to think about just how fragile our system is. There are so many gears and parts in it, that if one aspect gets thrown off, the whole **** hits the fan and now we're stuck without lunch because all we know how to do is administrate a corporate intranet. I would say that most of what goes beyond our basic neccesities is nothing more than indulgence and thus superflous.</p>
<p>I am by no means a primitivist, nor do I think its possible to turn back the clock. But I think its clear that the "market system" produces things that are useless, make things more complicated than they need to be, and will ultimately be fatal for us or our planet. My ideal society would use technology, but it would use technology wisely and not let the masses with their selfishness decide how to use it.</p>
<p>Whew. I could go on but i'm done for now.</p>