OT: rant about trees and pubic hair... (was Re: Welcome to Scotland)

[Kay C Lan]

On Dec 2, 2007 2:55 AM, Rob Cozens <rcozens at pon.net> wrote:

> Andre, yours is one of growing examples that money addiction is now
> afflicting populations living close enough to nature to know
> better.  The "benefits" of economic development were dramatically
> illustrated in a (LINK TV?) television documentary about the
> homecoming journey of several families from New Zealand to their
> native island home (Tuvi?, Tuval?) to show their children their roots.
>
> Money addicts promote "private enterprise" but really mean
> privatizing profits while socializing as many costs as
> possible.  Exxon has yet to pay a dime for the environmental damage
> done in Prince William Sound over two decades ago; Chevron & other
> oil platform owners have been dragging their feet and orchestrating
> end run tactics to avoid completely removing decommissioned oil
> platforms from the Santa Barbara Channel for 12 years.  And have you
> seen pictures of the environmental mess in the Ecuadorian rain forest
> left by Texaco...who employed drilling techniques that were illegal
> elsewhere?
>

I read this yesterday and swore I wasn't going to respond, it just makes
me.... not angry, I just can't understand how people can think this way -
they would sue the pants off anyone who fouled their own backyard but are
quite happy to go and destroy the backyards of others.

[getting up on soap box]

My personal pet peeve is 'globalization' and whilst I'm not an emotional
South Korean farmer, I do think the WTO has a lot to answer for. I just
don't understand how the Baby Bommers, who were so blessed by a generation
of people who 'fought for the American/Western way of life', can then go and
send jobs offshore to 'cheaper labour'.

What they're really doing is not buying cheaper labour, but avoiding all
cost associated with upholding their own 'way of life'.

I'm sure any CEO who's son or daughter came home and said, 'hey Dad I just
got a job at So & Co, I'll be working 12 to 18 hr shifts, 7 days a week, 365
days a year. If I want to take time off I can apply but it's unpaid leave.
I'll be working with lead based paints and DDT. If I want any Environmental
Safety Equipment I need to provide it myself but none of the other hundreds
of workers bother. There's no medical or pension scheme, but they do provide
meals. If I'm sick I don't get paid for days missed. I'll get paid
subsistance wages of which the boss will withold 65% for the meals provided.
There's lots of other kids working there as well, some as young as 13.' I'm
sure Western CEO Daddy would soon have a lawyer onto the case because no one
is going to treat his child like that, but CEO is quite happy to actually
take a job opportunity away and make some other poor underprivileged soul do
it.

I'm not wise enough to know the answer, because there is undoubtedly A LOT
of benifit associated with the richer nations puring bucket loads of money
into poorer nations, but I feel that some day Generation My ( I think it
goes Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Generation My) is going to
wake up and wonder 'who sold the farm'? They'll look back and see the
trillions of dollars Industry sent to offshore workers and realise that
whilst they may have Won the War, they failed to protect their Way of Life.

PS. I appreciate that the 'way of life' originally fought for is not the one
we must live in the future due to environmental change, and other factors.
But, paradoxically, it is precisely as some of us want 'greener' work places
and sustainable industry/development that we become more expensive which
effectively causes the 'money addicted' to look for cheaper $ alternatives
regardless of the 'real' cost.

[I'll now get off my soap box]