Weekend Economists: What Goes Up....June 1-3, 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

66. it's that word again

Mondragón

Mondragón

Mondragón

Mondragón

Mondragón




You asked: could generations who've grown up so detached from the production of real goods - from food, shoes, and spontaneous song - generations who've been taught that doing is shopping - can we even experience joy anymore from reality?

The simple answer is we won't know until we try. But it's been my experience doing art shows that yes, people DO appreciate The Things That Are Made, and people do understand the Joy of Making.

The more difficult answer is that it takes time. As I was explaining to the BF the other day, so many of the changes we see from the vantage point of 60+ years seem to be sudden or they seem to have easy explanations. Most of those "explanations" are RW bullshit, because history and sociology and anthropology tell us that all these changes have a long string of causes behind them, and no one wants to look at how complex those chains of cause and effect are. So is it just consumerism that made people think of shopping as doing? Well, yes, but it was a whole lot of other things, too.

And of course it's all like the Medusa -- too many heads to be stopped all at once, and if you cut one off, a dozen grow in its place. The only way to stop the corporate snakes is to starve them.