Re: consumption

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Dorman wrote:
> I guess I'm more and less libertarian than Jim. On the one hand, I think
> any decent society would have an enforceable meta-rule (like a
> constitutional guarantee) carving out a private space for personal choice
> in consumption, use of one's body etc. beyond the purview of even the most
> democratic of majorities.

I agree with this. But where do these meta-rules come from? if they're not
a result of democratic decisions by the majority in making a constitution
(as I would prefer under the principle of democratic sovereignty), who
would make them? a Rousseauean Legislator, who intuits the essence of the
General Will? or will they spring up spontaneously?

> On the other, the world faces an impending crisis of over-consumption: the
> pattern of consumption now dominant in the "developed" world cannot be
> generalized to all 6 billion of us.  What do we do if all the nice
> post-revolutionary stuff still leaves too many people gobbling too many
> resources?  Price 'em out of it with draconian green taxes?

To my mind, the democracy has to be world-wide, so that such decisions can
be sane, instead of us seeing the richest countries making decisions for
everyone without suffering the consequences.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine