"It's a stability thing, not a Western greed thing" seemed to encapsulate your comments. - Edit 2
Before modification by Joel at 22/08/2011 03:11:55 PM
You want to see nothing but abuse by the corporations and their 'western pawns' so you find it and see it and ignore the rest where it contradicts your ideology.
I don't have to find it; the challenge is ignoring it. Since I only referenced China and Africa in my last response, here's a long time personal favorite from India. Between the three that's 3.5 billion people who've yet to achieve "decent comfort" with the aid (and despite the presence) of technology AND corporate America. So once again, when we haven't achieved that comfort for the majority of the world with fossil fuels I fail to see how we'll do it for three times as many without them.
You spin my remarks to make it sound like I was implying the west and capitalist interests are pristine clean when I've made it clear on numerous occasions and in that most recent post that I merely view them as a lighter shade of gray in comparison to most of the existing powers that be in those places.
Where exactly did you make that clear in your last post? Your most corporate-critical comment was that they don't spend thousands of dollars traveling to overseas to make loans they know won't be repaid, and that's not much of an indictment; even I wouldn't fault that. Of course, Western multinationals and banks DO make those trips--because it's highly profitable as long as they take more than they give (almost the definition of "profit", which may be the "root of all evil" here).
You even managed to twist my remarks to make it sound like I was implying the people in those places were somehow inferior.
You said most Iraqis live in mud huts and suggested it was because they lacked a work ethic; what did I have to twist there? I ran with that more than I should've because it smacked of the classic "only people too good to work want welfare" argument, but cushioning the shot you took by saying it's different in places you have't visited isn't exactly "all men are created equal".
It's like you're so attached to your worldview that you absolutely refuse to read anything that might show you a contradiction. You ignore all numbers, you object to the claim that standard of living in many of those places has risen even though all data says it has, even the HD index you previously used to cite to show the glories of socialist Europe.
That's a rather ironic statement when I've cited multiple examples of Westerners using technology to exploit rather than improve the Third World, a region I only referenced because "the numbers" show most of the world doesn't live in "decent comfort" even with fossil fuels, and thus it's dubious that three times as many people will do so without fossil fuels. Again, to the debatable extent the developing world IS developing it's mostly Chinese and Indian development that would be impossible without increased fossil fuel usage.
How can you claim that technology has not helped humankind? and that's what you're doing though I'm sure you'd deny it, you just cover it in thin aspersions to capitalism. Well a centralized egalitarian society would do the same things, move it's assets to where they can do the most good, bypass the $50 hammer in favor of the functional equally $5 one. You despise the primary method for improvement so you attempt to deny the improvement has taken place. In a world of 6 billion people you invariably seize on the always present and numerous bad things over the good to reinforce your beliefs. You could look at some place and pick out the mineshaft for blood diamonds and look right past the hub of a center-pivot irrigation system because you don't want to see anything that will screw up your comfortable millenarian outlook on life and it would distract you from a good rant about corporate corruption and campaign donations.
The bad outnumbers the good in most of the world; just because there's less entropy as well as poverty in the West doesn't make poverty any less prevalent on the planet than entropy is in the universe.
Has technology improved things? Sure, when used positively, but not when it's been used negatively. Technology isn't inherently good or bad any more than people are, it just is (I think I said that already.
) The same thing can be said of corporations, actually; if multinationals were subject to the same kind of oversight and accountability as their much smaller but equally corporate competitors I'd complain about them far less, mainly because I'd have far less cause. Technology and corporations are both tools, positive when used for constructive ends and negative when used for destructive ones. If you're using your hammer to smack old ladies in the head and steal their purses, I'd prefer you use the less effective $5 one--but blaming the hammer is ignoring the real problem. Likewise, is doing CONSTRUCTIVE work more efficiently with a $50 hammer really an "improvement" if you still can't feed yourself or your children and live on the street in fear of being arrested for complaining about that? Does a bad post get better or worse by adding more words of greater complexity?The problem is human nature, which is not evil but IS flawed. I don't expect it to significantly improve things for most of the world at any time, because it never has at any time. The West has generally done better by prioritizing individual freedom while recognizing it can't be universal unless we stops short of allowing individuals the "freedom" to deny each others freedom. Unfortunately, we've done a sorry job exporting that rubric because it has to be taught by example rather than by rote, and we're allowing it erode at home because treatment and behavior that would cause mass revolts if it came from a PUBLIC collective (i.e. government) is somehow sacrosanct if in a PRIVATE collective (i.e. multinational corporations). That's a special case of the deeper and more fundamental problem I've cited in this thread, but is definitely a real problem for the West as well as its colonies.