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Re: John Hagelin: Old vs New Approach in Agriculture
adam@eis.net.au (Adam) wrote: Institutional (read international
>economic) structures maintain a system of united nations where the dominant
>paradigm of consumption is forced upon any country wishing to become a
>member of the United Nations. An international economic system drawn from
>a paper by Keynes called something like "The War and How to Pay for It"
>gives a zero value to subsistence farming and the unpaid work of women thus
>rendering over half of the world's population as "unproductive".
>
>Adam Lippiatt
This is certainly true of such organizations as the IMF, World Bank and
even USAID, but what's the United Nations connection? I wish I had saved
some titles (I'm starting to think I should build a bibliography) but I
know I have seen some UN reports supporting women's work and the
importance of subsistance food production. It was a UN publication where
I read that in this century all the famines not caused by wars resulted
not from a lack of food, but from food hording by the wealthy, sometimes
after a bad harvest, sometimes just because of hysteria or a concious
desire to jack up prices (This was the reason explicitly given by the
Conservatives for not distributing Irish grain during the famine: it
would interfere with the "free market" and bring down grain prices).
--
Karen Stark
ks36@cornell.edu
We are like a big fish that has been pulled from the water and is
flopping wildly to find its way back in. In such a condition the fish
never asks where the next flip or flop will bring it. It senses only that
its present position is intolerable and that something else must be
tried.
Chinese saying
quoted by Perry Link in "China in Transformation"
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