posted
(Ales > lagers, for sure. Haven't tried any scottish ales, but I'll look out for that one. I tend to go for the belgian styles myself. Am just finishing up a bottle of Ommegang right now.)
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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quote:"The best things in life are free" is misleading, and I've always despised the cliche for that reason. "The best things in life have no monetary cost" might be less poetic sounding, but much more accurate.
...
The meaning of the phrase clearly intends the word "free" to mean "have no monetary cost", which is perfectly acceptable.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: No one can argue against the virtue of benevolence or generosity, but the factor that defines how much is appropriate for you to spend is; how much do you earn through honest work?
The problem that I have with this sentiment is it implies that the amount of money people have is proportional to the amount of honest work they produce. This is not true. In some places, it takes 12 hours a day of honest work to merely be able to eat. Different education levels substantially affect income and the quality/ amount of education a person receives is rarely solely up to that person's discretion. In other words, life is not fair.
I'm not saying I think its sinful to spend money on yourself, but to some extent I do think its ethically wrong to never spend money/ time on those less fortunte. I think that world poverty is a moral issue and that it is the responsibility of all to try and fight it. What an individual contributes to that fight is a matter for their personal conscience.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: The meaning of the phrase clearly intends the word "free" to mean "have no monetary cost", which is perfectly acceptable.
posted
(Current favorite is St. Arnold's Divine Reserve #3. However I just tried Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale and that might be a contender. In general, I'm a big fan of anything brewed mircro in America. C'mon, lets change the world's perception of American beer! Americans can make good beer too! Also, there's quite a good thread with many good brews here)
quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: I think that world poverty is a moral issue and that it is the responsibility of all to try and fight it. What an individual contributes to that fight is a matter for their personal conscience.
How can poverty be a moral issue? Are you saying the being poor is immoral??
Posts: 142 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
I believe he meant a moral issue for those who can help the poor, not for the poor themselves.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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If I feel powerless or frustrated, I tend to buy things that I do not need.
Why? Because spending money has become a viable show of power in our society.
I like to buy people nice gifts and I tend to give away things when I don't need them anymore or I am bored with them. I also tend to pay more on bills than my roommates because I can afford to. I think that buying people nice gifts they don't need is a materialistic thing to do, and I love doing it.
I think I am very materialistic. I base much of my relationships around material things and they probably play too important of a role in my decisions.
But I don't think people would call me greedy. I do not horde possessions. I tend to make a show of how much my money/possessions do not mean to me.
I am materialistic, but that doesn't mean I am evil or greedy. It just means that I base much of my concept of self on material things.
I guess I don't see why it's bad. What else am I supposed to base my concept of self on?
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
I also think that materialism is a natural result of humans adopting a sedentary lifestyle.
quote:Because spending money has become a viable show of power in our society. ... It just means that I base much of my concept of self on material things.
I guess I don't see why it's bad. What else am I supposed to base my concept of self on?
Well, there are many inner qualities that one can base his self concept on. Of course, these may not always be as readily apparent to observers as material things are, but I think they serve as a healthier foundation to one's self concept, with concern over how others perceive you serving as a layer upon that foundation.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I believe the complication comes when deciding when, if ever, the needs of the many outweight the wants of the individual.
Where that line is is an individual, personal decision, and to ascribe moral judgement to a person for making that decision differently than you is unfair, in the least. Not to accuse anyone in particular, but the use of the word 'materialistic' to me implies that moral judment.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I just don't understand why people feel the need to try to justify what they buy beyond "I wanted it." Does it matter if you buy for utility? In that case, how do you define utility? The brand name of something might have a utility to one person that it might not have to another. It's your money. Spend it how you want. If you want to give it to charity, fine. If you want to build a giant cell phone statue of a panda in your back yard, fine.
quote:Originally posted by pH: I just don't understand why people feel the need to try to justify what they buy beyond "I wanted it." Does it matter if you buy for utility? In that case, how do you define utility? The brand name of something might have a utility to one person that it might not have to another. It's your money. Spend it how you want. If you want to give it to charity, fine. If you want to build a giant cell phone statue of a panda in your back yard, fine.
So again I say: I buy things because I want them.
-pH
I often feel that this is one of the great traps of adulthood: the realization that if one wants something and has the means to acquire it, little else stands in the way of its acquisition.
Including alcohol, tobacco, fattening and nutrition-free food, pornography...
(And I'll say from the forefront that it's perfectly valid to suggest that any or all of these things may be possible to consume in moderation without harm. But it's also true that a lot of supposedly rational adults screw up their lives by their consumptions of same.)
There are a couple of computer games sitting on my shelf right now that I truly wonder if I will ever actually have the opportunity to install and play. I just don't have that much time to devote to such things, and when I make time, it often comes at the expense of sleep. Yet I enjoyed buying them, and I felt good about the potential to enjoy myself in playing them, and in a weird way, I'm still glad to have bought them. It's a little reserve of potential fun up on my shelf.
But I pass a store that's selling computer games, I still get drawn in, even as I'm going, "No, idiot, you don't have time for the games you have now."
"I wanted it" can be wonderfully liberating. And perhaps one shouldn't have to keep justifying that sentiment to every idle passer-by. But I suspect at least a casual "Why do I want it?" and even "Is it good for me to have it?" to oneself is probably a good idea.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I think this attitude ignores the infrastructure that allows for you to have money to spend on luxuries. Your success depends on the success of your society, and as we saw yesterday the success of the world. I think it's foolish, as well as narcissistic, to absolve yourself of responsibility for the things that led to your success. There’s nothing wrong with buying things you want. In my opinion, there is something wrong with not giving back to the world.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: Should you buy, say, diamonds that were mined by slaves?
Short of flying to Africa to check the working conditions for yourself, how would you know?
Americans buy a six pack of tube socks for $2.99, which is the result of sweatshop like conditions for workers in China making 50 cents an hour. Without your purchase, they'd likely have no job at all, but at the same time you're contributing to a system only a couple steps up from illegal diamond mines. Yet it's this same contribution that technically "gives back" to the world at large, by participating in a world economy.
I buy some of what I want, and all of what I need. More often than not I try to keep most of my money in the bank whenever I can. I'm not a miser, by and large I'm just a lot more frugal than most people my age. It's not out of a sense of charity, but rather financial responsibility. Far too many people my age spend and spent, living way beyond their means, racking up debt. I'm not frugal because I'm not materialistic, though I don't really think I am, I just prefer to be responsible.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: Should you buy, say, diamonds that were mined by slaves?
Short of flying to Africa to check the working conditions for yourself, how would you know?
Americans buy a six pack of tube socks for $2.99, which is the result of sweatshop like conditions for workers in China making 50 cents an hour. Without your purchase, they'd likely have no job at all, but at the same time you're contributing to a system only a couple steps up from illegal diamond mines. Yet it's this same contribution that technically "gives back" to the world at large, by participating in a world economy.
Maybe. I'm nothing like an economist, but I'm pretty sure that your second example doesn't have much bearing on the first. That is, slaves see no profit from anything they produce. The idea that slave labour is somehow beneficial to the economy is really frightening to me just in principle, whether or not it is, actually, true. Though, I guess, as you know, the same tired arguments that get tossed around about cheap labour were used in the 19th century to justify slave labour.
Anyways, as to your first question, there are any number of organizations that keep track of such things. And, yes, I understand that at least one, that I know of, says that boycotting stuff produced by slave labour is not the answer for the exact reasons you give.
In any case, I'm not sure that the above isn't somewhat tangential to the point that I was obliquely raising, which is that buying stuff has consequences. To go back to the slavery example, how can one company compete against another company that uses slave labour? To support the company that uses slavery, to me, is incredibly problematic, and it should cause all thinking people to at least consider whether they want to support such a company.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Sorry, after the diamond comment I wasn't referring to you, it was really geared more towards Amancer.
What I meant was, conflict diamonds have in the past, and still are, routinely smuggled into the legal diamond supply. It's a much, MUCH less serious problem than it was befor the Kimberly Accord (or whatever it's called).
Most of what is left is smuggled and sold as a legal diamond, by the time they make it to diamond processing centers around the world, they've already been cleaned, much like money laundering. You'll never be able to know for sure which ones are legal and which ones are conflict unles you literally buy them from the source. What I mean to say is, there's no way you can really boycott Jared's or Zales or Tiffany's, because likely, they don't even know for sure what they are getting. They do the best they can, and the best they can keeps all by 4% or so of the world's diamond supply free of conflict diamonds, but you can never be sure.
Slave labor is IMMENSELY beneficial to an economy. I was actually kicked out of a model UN conference for a day whilst bringing up this point in a global warming debate (my point then was that slavery was economically beneficial, but morally bankrupt, and that a carbon based polluting economy is much the same way). Slave labor wasn't gotten rid of in American because it wasn't profitable, it was gotten rid of because it was immoral (at least, that's why it's detractors wanted it gone). Slave labor in America made us one of the richest countries in the world, and it took us from relatively minor colonial breakaway to that position in less than 100 years. I honestly don't think there's much to the argument that it isn't profitable if money is all you care about, but it's not moral, and that's a price we estimate in a totally different manner.
The ideal of a middle class, of saving workers from oppression from rich tycoons, those were moral imparatives. But really there's an economic advantage to it too, probably as best presented by Henry Ford. The model of his $5 day, which was a VERY high wage at the time, ushered in a new working class. They had money to spend, having money to spend means more people can create and sell products, which means more jobs, more workers, more money, and the whole thing snowballs. Of course if a small portion of that population works for nothing, people can get rich a whole lot faster. But there's the moral imparative for you.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Americans buy a six pack of tube socks for $2.99, which is the result of sweatshop like conditions for workers in China making 50 cents an hour. Without your purchase, they'd likely have no job at all, but at the same time you're contributing to a system only a couple steps up from illegal diamond mines. Yet it's this same contribution that technically "gives back" to the world at large, by participating in a world economy.
I'm not certain which part is geared towards me. By giving back I did not mean participating in a world economy, although I have no problem paying $2.99 for socks. I meant charity- contibuting to the improvement of the lives and opportunities of others.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I wasn't totally sure what you meant by "giving back to the world," but in hindsight I think I really overthought it.
Usually I donate items to charity rather than write a check, which I think for people with less money than others, is just as good. But when I'm older and have more money, I'll likely set aside a fund every year for charity, as I think those who are able, should.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Short of flying to Africa to check the working conditions for yourself, how would you know?
You can buy certified diamonds that are laser-etched with their (usually North American, IIRC) origin. You can buy synthetic diamonds.
Not impervious to fraud, I know, but better than nothing.
Also, there's a big difference between the evils perpetuated by textile sweatshops and the evils perpetuated by conflict diamonds. I've never heard of tube socks playing a factor in wars where children as young as eight years old are recruited into armies and forced to perpetuate war crimes (such as, in one instance I recall, forcing an 8-year-old boy to amputate his sister's hand with a machete) on their homes, eliminating from them the chance of ever quitting the army and going back home.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Slave labor is IMMENSELY beneficial to an economy. I was actually kicked out of a model UN conference for a day whilst bringing up this point in a global warming debate (my point then was that slavery was economically beneficial, but morally bankrupt, and that a carbon based polluting economy is much the same way). Slave labor wasn't gotten rid of in American because it wasn't profitable, it was gotten rid of because it was immoral (at least, that's why it's detractors wanted it gone). Slave labor in America made us one of the richest countries in the world, and it took us from relatively minor colonial breakaway to that position in less than 100 years. I honestly don't think there's much to the argument that it isn't profitable if money is all you care about, but it's not moral, and that's a price we estimate in a totally different manner.
The ideal of a middle class, of saving workers from oppression from rich tycoons, those were moral imparatives. But really there's an economic advantage to it too, probably as best presented by Henry Ford. The model of his $5 day, which was a VERY high wage at the time, ushered in a new working class. They had money to spend, having money to spend means more people can create and sell products, which means more jobs, more workers, more money, and the whole thing snowballs. Of course if a small portion of that population works for nothing, people can get rich a whole lot faster. But there's the moral imparative for you.
Your second paragraph seems to contradict your first to some degree?
I can think of at least a few other countries which had something like slaves besides us. I believe some Eastern European countries, notably Russia, had slaves in everything but name. I believe Britain had slaves in the form of prisoners at various points. Yet, did all these countries profit from their slavery?
I agree that slavery can, to some degree, be seen as beneficial to slaves in the U.S. because it forced their owners to take care of them out of a sense of noblesse oblige.
That said, I think that when you look at the overall picture, the lost productivity, the cost in physical and mental health for, if not slavery, then underpaying people, I think it calls into question whether or not slavery, or underpaying people, is really profitable.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Oh I know you can try your hardest, and trying your hardest is 96% or so likely to get you a legal diamond for your efforts.
Storm -
Britain had what I'd call a relatively tiny slave prison population, for the most part black slaves never really made it to Europe in great numbers. They were taken by and large to the Caribbean, and to the US south. Europe's part in the Triangle Trade was just to collect money, and like the US north, be a facilitator of the business.
In my studies, I've seen noblesse oblige applied far, far more often to poor whites than to slaves. The thought that the noble obligation of the rich to take care of the poor didn't always extend to the south and their slaves because they weren't always or even often viewed as poor, because they weren't people, they were slaves, and slaves can't be poor.
But you're also right in a sense. What many people don't know is that the major slaveholders, the farms that had 200+ slaves working them, were in the EXTREME minority of estates, probably less than 5% (I can't remember the exact number). The overwhelming majority of slaveholding southerners had less than five slaves, and were smaller farms. Many of the people on these smaller farms viewed slaves as part of the family, and they were very well treated by their owners in the sense that they might be taught to read, were well fed, they might not sell their children off to far away farms, but instead to a neighbor's farm so they can still visit, or they might even allow them to stay.
Are you talking just in terms of money?
The second paragraph only contradicts the first when you add the moral imperative to do what is right.
You don't have to install expensive safety measures, you don't have to limit them to an eight hour day, you don't have to waste money on healthcare. Why? Because they are to a degree disposable. I don't mean their lives would be just thrown away, a slave back in the 1860's cost something equivilant to what a midpriced car costs today, so they won't just throw that away, but at the same time, cars can't reproduce with each other to give you more cars.
Owners only had to take care of their slaves so far as their moral and economics demanded. If they were injured and couldn't work the fields, fix them up so they can, if it's too expensive sell them to someone else, maybe either as breeding stock or to do household chores, something they can do sitting down. There's no mental health costs, if there's no moral problem with slavery, they're just property. And who cares about the mental health of property? Whip them until they get back in the fields, and if they still don't respond, sell them.
Look at it from the point of view of the owner. If he has employees, and follows modern restrictions, his workers can only work so many hours a day, children can't work, they must be paid a certain wage, etc. Now remove all that, and all you have to pay for is their food and a minimum of care. That's a lot of money you don't have to pay, and that kind of free labor made the US perhaps the richest country in the world in the middle of the 19th century.
What I don't know is how slavery would work in TODAY'S world. In the 1860's, the US was largely still an agrarian nation, a gleam in Thomas Jefferson's eye. After we fed ourselves, and clothed ourselves, we shipped massive quantities of food and other farm products overseas. We could charge less than most, because production costs were nil, and we could produce them in massive quantities. But even though we retain an agrarian base, today farms make up less than 3% of our workforce, from probably something like 70% back then, and 90% probably in the 1770's. Slavery would be nearly impossible to profit off I think now, because our economy is consumer driven, and without cash flush consumers, nothing moves.
Hoarding wealth today, like it was done back then, would hurt the economy. A restaurant with 12 unpaid servers and 5 unpaid cooks will reap HUGE benefits for the owners, but that's 17 people who aren't out there buying products made by other companies. If you assume those companies are also using slave labor, it's entirely possible it could be a wash, but for it to really work, our entire work force would have to be made up of slaves, and the slaves would have to be owned by people who used them to work by proxy so they could rent them out and still earn an income. But even then, so many jobs these days require a lot of skills slaves never had to know before, making teaching them very expensive. I don't doubt there could be a place for a slave in every home, like in the docudrama CSA, but I think it would be more trouble than it's worth, ignoring the moral problems inherent with it. The US and world economy has changed too much. For farms I think they'd still be very, very profitable, to the US especially, but the moral cost would be too high.
Of course the flipside of that, would be that even though we'd be selling much, much less domestically, slavery would allow us to outsell China, India and other low cost labor countries, which would cause a massive upswing in exports, and would dramatically lower costs in the US for products. If there were no moral problem with it, we could flourish. But Europe would be hard pressed to trade with a slave holding US. Hell, even in the 1860's Europe didn't want to support the political independence of the US South publicly, even though France and Britain both supported the south during the war under the table.
posted
50 cents an hour, even at only 40 hour weeks (which is unrealistic; 50 to 60 would be more likely), would be a perfectly respectable income in China. That's over $1000 a year, and the average urban salary was about $1500 in 2005 ( http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/30/content_3702898.htm ).
To compare, two thirds of the average income in the US (for the entire US, not just urban areas like the China figure) is about $24k.
At 50 cents an hour for 60 hours a week (which is a number of hours many people in the US and around the world work), a person would be making the average urban salary in China.
Furthermore, many Chinese factory workers enjoy non-salary benefits. Large factories typically construct campuses, including dorms, food courts, and other amenities. Its hardly paradise, but it greatly helps worker retention and contentment, as well as increasing their effective compensation.
I see no problem with someone in China being paid a good wage in China and living in decent accomodations with decent food, who is free to quit and do something else, making my socks.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
They'll probably die by the age of 40 or 50 from all the pollution in the air, but other than problems such as that, it's better than barely getting by on one of China's ever diminishing inland farms. So I would have to agree.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
That page isn't working for me, but if it purports to say that the average age at death for Chinese people is 80, no offence, but I am going to have to take that with a huge grain of salt.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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A report made by China, for China, about a single Chinese city. Clearly that speaks for all 1.3 billion people.
With every passing month, more chemicals are dumped into their rivers, dozens of coal fired power plants with no safety measures at all come online and belch noxious fumes into the air. Especially where all these things come together, like factory cities, the haze is so thick that visibility is cut down to less than half a mile, and people wear those surgical masks in the hopes that it will offset the thick air.
And every day they are breathing it in, coating their lungs with it.
If China finally gets serious about environmental reform I'll believe a report like that, even if it is internally produced and limited to a single city, which really almost has to be the cleanest, else they wouldn't have used it as their Olympic bid, and even THAT city is coming under fire by IOC officials as being too dirty and too polluted.
Text of the article in case it isn't working for you:
quote:China's first urban life quality report recently released by Beijing International Institute for Urban Development (IUD) shows that average life expectancy in urban Beijing tops China at 79.6 years, growing by 26.8 years from 52.8 years at the founding of the People's Republic of China.
One may ask why Beijing citizens' life expectancy is leading China. Professor Lian Yuming, president of the IUD, said during interview that the prolonged average life expectance of Beijing citizens is mainly the result of two factors. First, the health care facilities in Beijing have approached international advanced level. Second, the comprehensive advance of social security such as those of basic pension, health care and industrial injuries provides vital guarantee for the health of Beijing citizens.
I'd like to see something a lot more comprehensive than that.
edit to add: CIA World fact book lists the life expectancy at 70.8 or so years. I'll admit to being sarcastic when I said "40 or 50," but the problems created by China's industry is only getting worse with no real end in sight. China keeps talking tough then never doing a thing to make it better, and it's going to have real, lasting effects on the health of their citizens. I'd love to see a breakdown on life expectancy done by an independent agency that compares urban to rural life expectancy, and details the manufacturing in urban areas.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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As we're talking about a factory worker, we're speaking specifically of urban Chinese, who enjoy longer life expectancies than non-urban chinese. You can see this effect dramatically on a provincial level: http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_lx_1a.htm (and that data's seven years old; expect several years extra on every figure, life expectancies have been rising dramatically).
Also, note that the life expectancy given is a figure for at birth. Infant mortality, while declining, is still depressingly common in China. Anyone who has survived to become a factory worker already has a higher life expectancy than the average.
It is entirely believable that the average life expectancy of workers in China's most important city is 80.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I'm very materialistic and spoiled. I have a bed that I sleep on, and almost never sleep on the hard ground. I have blankets to cover me while I sleep. I have clothes to cover me while I'm awake and walking around. I never spend a cold night out in the weather with nowhere else to go.
But this is just the start of the luxuries I indulge in. The biggest luxury of all, as I see it, is the fact that I'm literate and educated. I have had books to read from earliest childhood. I know enormous amounts of things about the world that I would never have known were it not for that. This makes me someone more than I would have been without it. It gives me abilities and insight into life that I could not have gained otherwise. I almost can't comprehend what a difference that has made.
Second biggest luxury I have is indoor plumbing. I lived for a week without it, once, and it's far and away the jewel in the crown of western technological civilization. Plumbing, waste water treatment, and the other side of that coin, clean running water and water treatment, are the most massively important and useful things I have.
Next comes medicine. If I get an infection, I can take antibiotics and cure it. I don't have to choose to cut off the pestilent limb or die. I have access to gatorade if I ever have bad vomiting, so that I don't have to die of dehydration and lack of electrolytes.
Next comes indoor heat. Then clean dishes to eat off of. Then the fact that I have soap to wash my body and my surroundings.
The list of luxuries in which I indulge is quite long. I'm very materialistic, and very very lucky.
posted
I've grown up in China, and been to many localities within the country. It does not surprise me AT ALL that their life expectdancy is higher then ours. I can accept even up to 20 years higher.
I personally believe that trend will change to some degree as China becomes more westernized.
1: The food they eat is overwhelmingly more healthy then most of the food Americans elect to eat. That, I think is the largest factor. I was probably at my MOST healthy when I was eating purely Chinese food and riding a bicycle everywhere. From my own observations they elect to eat little to moderate amounts of meat, and favor large numbers of vegetables especially green ones.
2: I would also argue that on the average Chinese people become more and more healthy conscious as they age. This is purely anecdotal evidence but my entire life, no matter how early I got up to go hike up a mountain or hike through China's beautiful locations, there have ALWAYS been lots of elderly people up at the same time hiking and exercising on those trails. I am never surprised to speak to one of those hikers and find out they are 80 years old and they hike several miles everyday. If you visit just about any park in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, you will find groups of people who are organized and meet regularly (as in daily, or at least 3-4 times a week). You might see a group of women doing Tai Qi. A troop of old people playing a game of croquet. Some men in a line stretching and alternately clapping their hands in front of them and then behind them. It looks silly at first glance, but it certainly improves flexibility and IMO being unable to move oneself is one of the WORST states a person can get themselves into.
While it is true our health care is better, I think Chinese people need less health care on the average because of these other factors. In the US we can take a 65 year old man with a heart that just won't function and keep him alive somehow until he is 70. Can health care take care of the personal habits that may have lead the man into that state?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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1. Eat well. (Japanese cuisine is often even lighter ) 2. Exercise daily. (no worries here if you're a farmer or a labourer of some kind) 3. Stay actively interested in the world around you. (read books, the newspaper, talk to people, talk to young people, learn what the new technology does, learn new cooking recipes...)
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
I'd wager all that I have, that as China's ever growing middle class gets bigger, you'll see their daily habits become less and less healthy. More fast food places open in urban China every day. Their air is toxic.
How long can their healthcare system soak up increasing negligence?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
A long time; their healthcare system is far below western society's, but a lot of that is in infrastructure -- my girlfriend's grandfather recently died of cancer. He had been treated by very competent doctors, but even in a very good hospital in China he was constantly exposed to cigarrette smoke, and was freqently left out in the hallway on a cot with lots of people with contagious sicknesses despite having a weak immune system (there wasn't space in the rooms). The hospital also lacked adequate air conditioning.
Infrastructure improvements will happen with increased capital, particularly with increased access to capital by the middle class. Middle class demand for improved healthcare will drive investment and infrastructure improvements.
There are also indications that the air situation may improve somewhat in the future; they're already having to let their economy restructure as low value-added manufacturing moves out, and both England and the US serve as object examples that air pollution can be greatly reduced.
Euripedes: oddly, there's a minor Japanese health crisis right now due to the consumption of too much instant ramen and similar. The high sodium content is causing serious deleterious effects as some people consume it daily for many years.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:There are also indications that the air situation may improve somewhat in the future
Sadly I've seen no sign of this. It's a country where the government can mandate that factories have equipment that cleans up waste products before they are dumped in rivers, but makes no law that says the equipment has to actually be turned on. So long as they buy it, they're in the clear, but running it is too expensive so they dump in the rivers. Even the US seems to be trying to take backwards steps, with moves like Bush's Clear Skies Initiative, which is actually worse for our air than the Clean Air Act, which had a dramatic improvement on the air. For some things, companies only do what you MAKE them do, they aren't altruistic for the sake of it.
More and more fast food and other Western food is finding its way into China. The younger generation is far more likely to eat western food and exercise less than their grandparents did. And while I've seen some talk about buying airscrubbers from western companies to modify the smokestacks on their factories and power plants, two things get in the way. 1. Like always, China wants technology transfer, they don't want to buy anything from us, they just want us to tell them how to make it so they can do it without us, and without the work that goes into discovering how something is made. GE, one of the top producers of said equipment, isn't happy about it, and are refusing to do so, as they rightly should. 2. The Chinese government. They aren't big fans of regulation.
It should also be noted that I've read recent health studies suggesting that this is the first US generation, ours currently, that will LOSE years off their life expectancy rather than gain, due almost entirely to lifestyle choices. One wonders how that and Westernization will jive with Chinese longevity.
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China's already used government mandates in attempts to curb air pollution, and for whatever reason per capita energy consumption and carbon admission have both declined: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chinaenv.html
If you've seen no sign, its because you haven't been paying attention.
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Euripedes: oddly, there's a minor Japanese health crisis right now due to the consumption of too much instant ramen and similar. The high sodium content is causing serious deleterious effects as some people consume it daily for many years.
Traditional Japanese cuisine*
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: China's already used government mandates in attempts to curb air pollution, and for whatever reason per capita energy consumption and carbon admission have both declined: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chinaenv.html
If you've seen no sign, its because you haven't been paying attention.
That article proves my point as much as yours.
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posted
Then you've misinterpreted my point. I said "There are also indications that the air situation may improve somewhat in the future". The article provides numerous indications of the possibility.
You said "Sadly I've seen no sign of this", and that there has been no sign is seriously undermined by the article. Just the presence of a reduction in per capita emissions is huge. I believe you haven't seen them, but it means you haven't been paying attention to the things in China that do affect the environmental situation for the better, and sometimes dramatically (in comparison to if they weren't in place, not the previous status quo).
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I guess I see irony in any of us arguing that we aren't materialistic. We have luxuries and enjoy privileges that even the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt didn't have. Books and learning, clean water to drink, plumbing and waste water treatment, medicine, grocery stores, modern materials like metals, plastics, fibers, modern clothing, dishes to eat off of, soaps to wash everything, beds to sleep in, gatorade to drink so we don't die of dehydration from diseases. We have forgotten these things are luxuries, and that they aren't givens. Most of the people alive today don't have access to them.
In Guatemala, for instance, (a place I know a little about), most villages in the countryside have no running water, only a well in the center of town, no plumbing whatsoever. People live in mud houses, and die of cholera and many other waterbourne diseases from lack of good separation between sewage and drinking water. They work long hours for very little pay. They have no medical care, inadequate nutrition, kids grow up with nutritional deficiencies which seriously affect brain development, and so on.
If you notice, I don't think materialism is necessarily a bad thing. I think some clean water supplies, books, and grocery stores would be great for these people. I am willing to give up some of the stuff I have to help them out. Should I do a lot more? Probably. The problem I see is not with materialism, but with the drastic inequalities that we have come to accept as inevitable. I don't think we should wash our hands of that and enjoy our luxuries without remembering that they aren't givens, that we're extremely lucky, and that most of the people in the world aren't so lucky as us.
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quote:The problem I see is not with materialism, but with the drastic inequalities that we have come to accept as inevitable. I don't think we should wash our hands of that and enjoy our luxuries without remembering that they aren't givens, that we're extremely lucky, and that most of the people in the world aren't so lucky as us.
I agree completely.
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I think you're right, ak, and we should all remember how lucky and privileged we are to live in a first-world country.
But I also understand the sentiments of the original poster, and I think his is a discussion worth having, even if the least materialistic person in the US would be considered pampered in an underdeveloped country.
The conception of "wealth" is relative, and I think it's more realistic to implore people in the US to avoid excess, rather than necessity, in an effort to help poorer nations.
People will be moved by those depressing Sally Struthers commercials, but people might be mobilized if we convinced them that, say, it was a moral gold star for them to save the money they'd normally spend on superfluous crap and instead spend it in poor countries as tourist dollars.
quote:I buy things because I want them.
Period.
I don't see how it should be any more complicated than that.
I don't think anyone's telling you that you can't buy anything that you can afford to throw money at. What I get out of the original post is that outside influences have convinced us that we want these things. That having things will make us better and happier. And you didn't use the word, but there are plenty of people out there who're convinced that they need things that couldn't possibly be considered needs.
I think I've brainwashed myself the opposite way. I'm convinced that the less stuff I have, the happier I am. It's much cheaper this way.
It was an easy decision, though. Having grown up without much excess (by American standards, of course), it was easy to remain relatively non-materialistic. Had I grown up with money, it would've taken much more effort to downgrade my lifestyle.
Really, though, it got to the point in my life where it felt more like the stuff I owned posessed me. And that's what made my decision.
I really enjoy the freeing feeling I get when I, every so often, go through my already scant posessions (everything I own could fit easily into a small bedroom) and give everything I'd lived without since my last purging to the Salvation Army.
I suppose I sound pretentious...but I also have an appreciation for people who have "stuff". It saves me from having to own things when I can just, for instance, go over to my brother-in-law's place and borrow a laser level for when I try and install shelves by myself and everything's sliding off one side.
You know, if I were to hypothetically do something like that.
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