[extropy-chat] Seven cents an hour? (was: Riots in France)

[The Avantguardian]

--- John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> Do me a favor and honestly ask yourself one
> question, what is really your
> top priority in this matter? Is it solving the
> problem of world poverty or
> is it showing off to the world what a caring
> empathetic man you are?  No
> need to tell me your answer because I don't need to
> be a psychic to know
> what you will say, but tell yourself the truth. And
> don't worry, I won't
> hear.

My top priority was simply to engage you in a rational
discourse regarding Wal-Mart's business practices.
Nothing said by me is going to put the slightest dent
in world poverty. But neither is Wal-Mart's seven
cents an hour. All that is doing is bringing poverty
back from the third world to our own shores. As if the
Waltons were even the slightest bit concerned with
anybody other than themsleves. Poverty itself is an
artifice of materialistic culture that Wal-Mart
epitomizes.

Mankind has did without money for 95% of the million
or so years that he has been around. It is only
because people with huge amounts of money insist that
EVERYBODY needs it, and refuse to allow people to live
in peace without it, that poverty even exists. That
these privilaged few seize land in undeveloped nations
at gun point and coerce the common people in those
lands to squander the precious years of their lives in
servitude to them in exchange for getting minute
quantities of it doled out to them, is why world
poverty has even become an issue at all.

So how can you possibly alleviate world poverty with
the very same system that created it in the first
place? Animals can exhibit selfishness, greed, and
violent territoriallity. So show me why the Waltons
are not animals? Show me how sweat shops prevent more
hunger than simply tearing them down and cultivating
the land upon which they stood with crops? Show me how
Sam Walton is more humane than Mother Teresa? Or is it
simply a matter of faith for you with no reasoning
behind it? Pardon me for being an infidel in your
money worship.


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"If you fear death, you are not living right; if you don't want to live forever, you are not living well." - a sparrow outside my window.


		
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