Hyman's response to "infinite wants"

["Gregoire de Nowell (ci-devant)" <GN842@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The response went back to categorizing all economics in the same
way, which of course, as McFarling points out, is inaccurate
and sure to marginalize the proponent.

To come back to the automobile example.

You have a bunch of folks sitting around considering an internal
combustion engine.  They all know there are environmental problems
with it.  Some are more or less reformists:

1.  Cars are a good idea designed to satisfy efficiently a real need
so let's make them better through catalytic controls and what have you.
(As a matter of fact, Honda has pushed conventional pollution to
extraordinarily low levels on the Accord, meeeting the squeaking
clean standards of the California Ultra-Low-Emission-Vehicle standard).
Most of the deficit-spender types on this list wousld be the
economic equivalents: make capitalism better able to meet universal
needs by making sure that everyone has the chance to be productive
(to have a job).

2.  Cars are intrinsically environmentally evil.  Even if they
don't make smog (like the Accord) they have plenty of other problems:
their fuel creates oil spills, they use up valuable land with freeways,
they create a socially unjust spacial distriubtion of society.  So
even if yo make a better car it still stinks.  Tear up the suburbs,
build higher density housing, make cleaner cars, and move to mass
transit.  This is a more "radical" position.  PKT correspondents
to this position exist.  This goes beyond mere reform.

3.  Other people are intrinsically interested in finding out as much
as they can.


Then there is the guy runnning around shouting "The wheel!  It
all comess down to the wheel!  Now that we KNOW how to make
WHEELS, all transportation problems are solved."  This is the
equivalent of reducing everything about distribution to food,
air, and water.  I for one think such a list is woefully
inadeqauate and would add to it, housing, clothing, education,
and medical care.

It is TRUE that the Wheel is important.  In fact, everyone involved
in looking at the car knows that it is.  Without it, nothing would
roll.  But that is not the central focus, even though, alas, it is
true that there are people in the world with too few or no wheels.
The transportaiton problem goes beyhond that.  So does the production
and distribution of wealth problem.

It is FALSE that the people interested in alternative fuels and
mass transit are the SAME as the people who design gas guzzlers
for Detroit, EVEN IF THEY WENT TO THE SAME SCHOOLS AND HAD THE
SAME EDUCATION.  For it is quite clear that they are doing something
altogether different with their time.  Hammering them
about the wheel does nothing to stop what is going on in DEtroit
nor does it address the dialog in any constructive way.

It so happens, however, that I have the book for you

Lappe, Francis Moore (1979).  Food First: Beyond the Myth of
Scarcity.  N.Y.: Ballantine.

This book makes some serious arguments about distributive
inequality.  If you could talk like Lappe, you might actually
get taken seriously.

Greg Nowell