Is Empathy only present if you are well and well fed?

Starvation Diet. What is it?

Mmmmmm chocolate, Mmmmmm sandwich, Mmmmmm doughnuts, Mmmmmm beer. Spoilt for choice. Trying to resist. When I resist I put the money in a pot. When the pot is full I send it (the money, not the pot) to somebody who needs it to survive. The art comes about through the documentation of the process, here and in other places. There is no end to this project.


28 Jun 2011

Economic Rationalism

The true evil of economic rationalism
Vast amounts of value, of jobs and long term sustainability of communities have been destroyed across the world in the name of economic rationalism.
It is economic rational to build "super stores" in small and medium towns to destroy local commerce, drive down prices and create greater levels of consumer debt.
It is economic rational to sell international brands in high spending consumer markets at outrageous mark-ups, while paying children in third world countries a few cents and item to make them under slave conditions;
It is economic rational to make naturally grown pain killer crops illegal in major regions such as Africa, the forcing governments to purchase vast quantities of out of date synthetic pain killers from US and European pharmaceutical companies that remain ineffective and too expensive for 90% of the population.
In all cases, economists argue that these are just extreme cases and that the "free market" has produced phenomenal amounts of wealth and raised the standard of living of countless hundreds of millions.
But is this even true? Does living in a non-de script cul de sac two hours from work with neighbours you don't even know quality of life?
Is a large screen TV, the latest gadgets and internet porn really improving the minds of your children or the closeness of your family?
Are we really happy with everything we buy and still find ways to purchase more? or dow e convince ourselves we are happy, to make sense of a system that seems to lose a little more morality every day?
In the absence of morality in decisions concerning the lives of human beings and its acceptance, it is only "rational" then to conceive of a time in great disasters that governments claim it to be "economically rational" to give up on great numbers of people and let them rot.
When these times approach, the true nature and evil of economic rationalism will reveal itself to be one of the great evil acts of history.

From here:http://one-evil.org/acts/acts_economic_rationalism.htm

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