Completely irrelevant news
Nov. 25th, 2005 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've been told that today is Buy Nothing Day. I'm not normally a consumer whore or anything, but I think I will celebrate it by being one. You know, just to be contrary. Also, I've already bought a coffee -- at the Second Cup, no less! It annoys me that a lot of people think that Adbusters' notions of switching one sort of consumer capitalism to a "better" consumer capitalism is actual activism.
The magazine has very pretty pictures, though.
In other news, career criminal and whiny baby Lord Black is asking for his Canadian citizenship back. I guess maybe he shouldn't have said those nasty things about us when he renounced it in the first place. Excuse me for a sec...
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh man, I hope they give his citizenship to the poorest Haïtian refugee they can possibly find -- preferably a poor Haïtian communist refugee. Who has converted to Islam. And is gay. And drives a cab. That'd be the best thing ever.
The magazine has very pretty pictures, though.
In other news, career criminal and whiny baby Lord Black is asking for his Canadian citizenship back. I guess maybe he shouldn't have said those nasty things about us when he renounced it in the first place. Excuse me for a sec...
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh man, I hope they give his citizenship to the poorest Haïtian refugee they can possibly find -- preferably a poor Haïtian communist refugee. Who has converted to Islam. And is gay. And drives a cab. That'd be the best thing ever.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 04:53 pm (UTC)I don't know -- I think there's a fundamental conflict between global capitalism and environmentalism. Businesses can certainly make ecologically minded decisions and possibly profit from a certain percentage of consumers, but the average consumer, given the current economic structure, is going to go with cheap and dirty over expensive and clean. Short of massive government regulations (everywhere; it can't just be in the First World), the companies that don't give a crap about the planet will almost certainly be more profitable than those that do.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 05:14 pm (UTC)Absolutely, which makes ethical consumerism a privilege for those who can afford to spend more money. Which is fucked up, because being ethical should not be the privilege of the rich.
I do try to buy organic and fair trade products whenever I can, but often the discrepancy in price between them and 'conventional' products is simply not economically viable on a small budget. as for household recycling etc, people will do it if councils make it easy to separate recyclables, but a household doesn't produce anything near the waste that a company does.
I remember
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 05:39 pm (UTC)I'd like to read
no subject
Date: 2005-11-26 10:35 am (UTC)Incidentally this is why I am not a Green. I am a Red. You can't be a Green and a Red at the same time. That doesn't mean you can't care deeply about the environment and be Red. Indeed you must: the workers have nothing to gain by shedding their chains in a ruined and filthy world. But you can't be Red and be a Malthusian, and I think that the global Green movement is exactly that. Marx's most bitter polemics were not against the Ricardians, they were against the Malthusians; the Marxist desire for justice is simply a mistake if scarcity is irremediable.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-26 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-26 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 05:24 pm (UTC)But then, I'm also of the opinion that corporations would flay babies alive as tributes to Satan if it would guarantee profits.
Actually, not just facesless corprorations. I'm pretty sure there are just plain assholes out there who would too (as long as they didn't have to do it themselves that is).
Boy, I'm sure down on peoples!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 07:05 pm (UTC)