Sunday, January 25, 2004
Global Disease:
Yet another new sickness is feared to be spreading rapidly. The Avian flu is the latest of the previously unknown bugs to strike. This is only a small sample of what is to come. We have become truly a global world in that whatever strikes one region quickly can spread world wide and this fact is making disease experts more and more nervous. Combine this with the damage to our ecosystem and our weakening ability to fight disease naturally and you have all the ingredients for a very ugly situation. I still feel that this globalization plan, as it has been applied, is a devastating failure in virtually every way. We would be well advised to properly develope macro-economies in order to minimize the affect humans have on the ecology (less transportation,energy,fuel, preservatives, and pesticide).
This is another example of our lack in determining the true cost of our actions. If companies were forced to include all costs associated with their products many of the prices would be much higher. Factor in clean-up, contaminated waste disposal, damage to the ecosystem and all the other hidden costs and suddenly it would be much cheaper to buy from your neighbor than from someone on the other side of the world. Of course this wouldn't make the big businessmen happy. Then they wouldn't be able to take advantage of slave labour rates, and easier environmental laws that exist in the third world. We must all realize that many of histories richest men have become so because they were able to identify some weakness of someone, somewhere and were able to rape and pillage gleefully and profitably until someone finally made it illegal. Greed is apparently an essential ingredient in the recipe for success in a capitalist society. I only wish the wealth obtained from this sort of business was passed along to the people who usually have to pay the price for it, the native peoples of any given area.
Yet another new sickness is feared to be spreading rapidly. The Avian flu is the latest of the previously unknown bugs to strike. This is only a small sample of what is to come. We have become truly a global world in that whatever strikes one region quickly can spread world wide and this fact is making disease experts more and more nervous. Combine this with the damage to our ecosystem and our weakening ability to fight disease naturally and you have all the ingredients for a very ugly situation. I still feel that this globalization plan, as it has been applied, is a devastating failure in virtually every way. We would be well advised to properly develope macro-economies in order to minimize the affect humans have on the ecology (less transportation,energy,fuel, preservatives, and pesticide).
This is another example of our lack in determining the true cost of our actions. If companies were forced to include all costs associated with their products many of the prices would be much higher. Factor in clean-up, contaminated waste disposal, damage to the ecosystem and all the other hidden costs and suddenly it would be much cheaper to buy from your neighbor than from someone on the other side of the world. Of course this wouldn't make the big businessmen happy. Then they wouldn't be able to take advantage of slave labour rates, and easier environmental laws that exist in the third world. We must all realize that many of histories richest men have become so because they were able to identify some weakness of someone, somewhere and were able to rape and pillage gleefully and profitably until someone finally made it illegal. Greed is apparently an essential ingredient in the recipe for success in a capitalist society. I only wish the wealth obtained from this sort of business was passed along to the people who usually have to pay the price for it, the native peoples of any given area.
# posted by Wil Smith : 12:46 a.m.
