A Neo-Comm rant

OK, I've got a bit of anger to unleash today.

Check out this stupid article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2187213.htm

A summary of his argument for those who can't be bothered reading this tosh:

Spending is good, it's a matter of choice and because Australia is a thriving economy, we deserve our luxury goods. People should buy their plasma telly if they want it - it's good for them and they're keeping other people in jobs with their purchases. Environmentalists only hate spending on these sorts of items because they're inherently anti-capital, not because they are concerned about the impact of these products on the environment.

Some quotes from his article:

"But buying more does not make you a bad person. Sure, excessive consumption can cause the overall economy to overheat, but individuals choose to consume more because of myriad reasons."

(No reasons are given. We all know the reason though. It starts with G and it ends with D, and I don't mean him upstairs, either.)

He goes on to quote some US economist called Deidre McCloskey:

"'Countries are rich or poor, have a great deal to consume or very little, mainly because they work well or badly, not because some outsider is adding to or gobbling up a God-given endowment,' she says. Goods are not god-given, so consuming them is not immoral.

Australians have mostly been consuming more because they're wealthier (house prices, shares and profits have all been rising) and earning more."

Where to start?

Firstly - what is wrong with being anti-capital? Capitalism and environmentalism don't exactly go hand in hand. Of course environmentalists are concerned about the end game of first world greed! Shouldn't we all be, or don't we live on the same planet? I am by no means carbon neutral, but I'm not the idiot expounding the tired old 'greed is good' line.

This guy makes it sound like we in the West deserve our greedy lifestyle because we've earned it by virtue of our thriving economy. By extrapolation, the folk in the third world, who labour away to make most of the crap we buy, deserve their lives of privation (not that any mention is made of them, short of the insulting claim that we work harder - really? I know I don't!).

So, if your economy is going to the dogs, suck it up! Trouble with his argument, even on his own terms, is that the third world economies aren't the ones going to the dogs. In fact, his hubris is astounding given that the mothership already lies shredded ahead on the subprime rocks.

Now I probably have to get this disclaimer out the way, because I know people who own plasmas and I don't have any beef with them - some people save up and buy a plasma TV and enjoy it and they don't pollute the planet in other ways (like one commenter who said his trip to work produced zero carbon which offsets his plasma). I suppose it's all about balance.

For the purposes of this rant the plasma is just code for any big ticket, mass produced item that fat westerners enjoy, without considering the energy it consumes and the human and environmental costs of its production and eventual disposal. This guy thinks consumption of these items is fine, so long as we recognise a small caveat, and don't let the economy 'overheat'. But the economy, jobs, capitalism - all these terms are meaningless when the planet finally implodes.

He makes a weak concession to smarter consumption, a wan nod to environmentalism, but doesn't get that whether we consume 'better' or 'green' until we're blue in the face, everything on this planet is a finite resource (yes, even the raw materials that go into a plasma telly, and definitely the power required to make it work) and one day, one day quite soon, these resources will run out. Diddums if it hurts the corporations who are trying to flog us stuff all the time - the simple truth is that we have to consume LESS.

Add-on sales, use-by dates and built-in obsolescence are so often used to keeping people buying, and the nuff-nuffs that just keep trying to keep up with the neighbours are sucked in time and time again, whether it be the tech-head early adopters who go through two 'next-generation' mobile phones per year, or the McMansion/plasma/SUV craving couples with the brats who demand a better toy than little Harry.

Unfortunately the same principle applies to fuel production, which the consumer has to keep coming back for. Renewable technologies have been sidelined not because they are too expensive, but for the simple reason that it is not profitable for companies to sell a product only once (ie. a solar panel) and then let people get on with making their own energy.

For similar reasons everyone should regard the march of patented gene technology with alarm. Thanks to our myopic State Government, farmers will probably soon have to pay for the IP rights to sow certain seeds. Corporations have run out of things to flog us, so they're after the free stuff - air, water, grass, seeds. We don't need patents on our ecology. Anti-GM activism is not just about middle class mummies worrying about their children ingesting GM 'food' (though this a legitimate concern and there should be full product disclosure on all labelling), it is an environmental and political problem. Environmentally it is about fucking with the food chain. Politically it's about someone thinking they own the food chain! I am sure I have eaten GM products by accident, but that's not what I'm worried about (I've got a cast-iron constitution anyway). The monster is far scarier than that. As usual, caring about these things means thinking beyond what we, as individuals with our short, fat lives, want (or think we need) right now.

True sustainability can only occur when we free ourselves from the shackles of the purchasing merry-go-round. It is possible to achieve if we can stop getting dazzled and duped by all the glittering things out there that we 'must have', and all the accessories and add-ons that go with them.

This whole post is a collection of my edited-together rants from the comments section of that guy's article, with some extra babbling thrown in. Cos I'm lazy like that.