The Only Thing That's Scarce is the Burrito
The biggest problem with moving across the country (well, really just moving) is that sometimes you get cravings for things that you just can't have. This morning, it's the Kiva Han Hangover Cure Burrito. A simplistic but delicious combination of egg, shredded potato, salsa, and cheddar cheese, neatly wrapped in a tortilla and grilled. I prefer it wrapped in tin foil (to-go style) rather than knife and forking it on the plate. The closest such burrito is approximately 2500 miles away, and my craving is so strong that I don't think I'm going to eat breakfast today. Someone go get one so I know that all is well in the world. Other similar cravings I can't fulfill:
1) Franco's Tomato Pie (though I've recently been told that Trenton's tomato pies are better, this will always top the list)
2) Mad Mex Burritos (apparently out here they have real mexicans and so real mexican restaurants, but it doesn't do me any damn good)
3) Pad Thai from Spice Island Tea House (did you know some places just use ketchup as Pad Thai sauce? Sound disgusting? Cause it is)
4) Pittsburgh Public Theatre (still my all time favorite theatre)
Shifting gears entirely...
I went to a lecture the other night given by a woman whose name I can't now remember, but she was the author of "Diet for a Small Planet" and the place was packed so she must have been pretty famous. Her opening line was "How can we make sense of a world that we, as societies, are creating but that we, as individuals, abhor?" I was pretty skeptical on some of the numbers in what she said, but she made an interesting point on the concept of scarcity. Basically, we're taught to believe that the reason we can't feed everyone in the world is that we start with an assumption of scarcity, because that's how we are all taught economic theory. There's scarcity, and so there's demand because at a societal level it's a zero-sum game and if others get theirs then we won't get ours. Us or them. And if you go with this logic, the rest of the distribution of wealth and food makes sense.
Problem is that it's not really true. The resources are there. Would it require a central shift in attitude and behavior? Of course. This is where she gave numbers on how much food and water it takes to create one pound of beef that I really don't believe. It's pretty much undeniable in general however that the U.S. (and probably Canada too, they're not off the hook at all) levels of consumption of resources do create an unsustainable situation, and I can certainly believe that we could feed a lot of people on the resources we feed to cows instead just to slaughter (technical term, not meat is murder nonsense) and eat them. Now I'm not a preachy vegetarian, y'all are free to do as you want, but sustainability is kinda nice.
Point is, that if we start from a premise of scarcity of resources, it feeds into an ethic of zero-sum grab-what-you-can, create surplus in case things go bad, and now look! Those people over there don't have food or energy or stuff! We must have been right in our scarcity premise! gotta keep doing it.
But if we start with a premise of sufficiency (her word was plenty, but I think that sounds stupid), then it all falls apart. And really, does anyone actually think that in this scientific age, where we've mastered the arts of farming in excess and know the exact chemistry of rotating crops and so forth and so on, that we couldn't reallocate resources and effort in such a way that no one would have to starve in this world? Isn't that something worth going for? Of course, we can ship food to impoverished war-torn nations all we want and the warlords will still steal it and starve the people, but the "think-globally-act-locally" idea is that if we start with a different premise, one of sufficiency, one of "it's not okay for people to starve or live in poverty while others control all the wealth," then we end up thinking about solutions in a different kind of way.
This is where she gave a whole bunch of current efforts going on, like rejuvenating dead space in poor parts of cities, making it nicer, and then inviting farmers to sell food their so long as they keep the prices at a level that the surrounding neighborhoods can afford. Solves the problems of both farmers and poor cityfolk. And other such goings on. Basically, if we started thinking of eating and food as a right, there are all kinds of changes we can make to our system that could alleviate suffering. And people are suffering. There's the obvious counter-argument of "well they worked harder and have done better in their lives so those rich people deserve all their wealth." I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that people who get babied by trust funds and family wealth through an MBA and have family connections and end up in a backstabbing office job have ever worked as hard as a single mom working 80 hours a week across three jobs. Just don't buy that. She also made a really good point in which she said that she really believes in the power of the market, it's just that when all the wealth is controlled by a handful of multinational corporations not answering to anyone but their shareholders, there isn't really a market at all. She also (again, not sure about her numbers, but it seems believable) claimed that it costs the world much more in money and resources to clean up the mess of an unfair system (to pay welfare, the cost of crime that happens when people can't meet basic human needs legally, the cost of the criminal justice system [which is freaking gigantic, by the way, look into that some time]) than to simply set fair rules and protect the market from those who abuse it.
Anyway, this post isn't to convince people away from an ethic of accumulation to an ethic of helping people. If I somehow managed that, awesome, but the actual point was for those of us who are already in an ethic of helping people to shift our thinking about how we're going to go about doing it. To be value-driven people instead of dogma-driven people. Frances Moore Lappe. That was her name. She's written lots of books, though I haven't read any of them. Maybe interesting enough to go to the bookstore and pick up.
I've now typed through breakfast time, still wanting a damn burrito, but now late for a curriculum group meeting. Damn.
1) Franco's Tomato Pie (though I've recently been told that Trenton's tomato pies are better, this will always top the list)
2) Mad Mex Burritos (apparently out here they have real mexicans and so real mexican restaurants, but it doesn't do me any damn good)
3) Pad Thai from Spice Island Tea House (did you know some places just use ketchup as Pad Thai sauce? Sound disgusting? Cause it is)
4) Pittsburgh Public Theatre (still my all time favorite theatre)
Shifting gears entirely...
I went to a lecture the other night given by a woman whose name I can't now remember, but she was the author of "Diet for a Small Planet" and the place was packed so she must have been pretty famous. Her opening line was "How can we make sense of a world that we, as societies, are creating but that we, as individuals, abhor?" I was pretty skeptical on some of the numbers in what she said, but she made an interesting point on the concept of scarcity. Basically, we're taught to believe that the reason we can't feed everyone in the world is that we start with an assumption of scarcity, because that's how we are all taught economic theory. There's scarcity, and so there's demand because at a societal level it's a zero-sum game and if others get theirs then we won't get ours. Us or them. And if you go with this logic, the rest of the distribution of wealth and food makes sense.
Problem is that it's not really true. The resources are there. Would it require a central shift in attitude and behavior? Of course. This is where she gave numbers on how much food and water it takes to create one pound of beef that I really don't believe. It's pretty much undeniable in general however that the U.S. (and probably Canada too, they're not off the hook at all) levels of consumption of resources do create an unsustainable situation, and I can certainly believe that we could feed a lot of people on the resources we feed to cows instead just to slaughter (technical term, not meat is murder nonsense) and eat them. Now I'm not a preachy vegetarian, y'all are free to do as you want, but sustainability is kinda nice.
Point is, that if we start from a premise of scarcity of resources, it feeds into an ethic of zero-sum grab-what-you-can, create surplus in case things go bad, and now look! Those people over there don't have food or energy or stuff! We must have been right in our scarcity premise! gotta keep doing it.
But if we start with a premise of sufficiency (her word was plenty, but I think that sounds stupid), then it all falls apart. And really, does anyone actually think that in this scientific age, where we've mastered the arts of farming in excess and know the exact chemistry of rotating crops and so forth and so on, that we couldn't reallocate resources and effort in such a way that no one would have to starve in this world? Isn't that something worth going for? Of course, we can ship food to impoverished war-torn nations all we want and the warlords will still steal it and starve the people, but the "think-globally-act-locally" idea is that if we start with a different premise, one of sufficiency, one of "it's not okay for people to starve or live in poverty while others control all the wealth," then we end up thinking about solutions in a different kind of way.
This is where she gave a whole bunch of current efforts going on, like rejuvenating dead space in poor parts of cities, making it nicer, and then inviting farmers to sell food their so long as they keep the prices at a level that the surrounding neighborhoods can afford. Solves the problems of both farmers and poor cityfolk. And other such goings on. Basically, if we started thinking of eating and food as a right, there are all kinds of changes we can make to our system that could alleviate suffering. And people are suffering. There's the obvious counter-argument of "well they worked harder and have done better in their lives so those rich people deserve all their wealth." I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that people who get babied by trust funds and family wealth through an MBA and have family connections and end up in a backstabbing office job have ever worked as hard as a single mom working 80 hours a week across three jobs. Just don't buy that. She also made a really good point in which she said that she really believes in the power of the market, it's just that when all the wealth is controlled by a handful of multinational corporations not answering to anyone but their shareholders, there isn't really a market at all. She also (again, not sure about her numbers, but it seems believable) claimed that it costs the world much more in money and resources to clean up the mess of an unfair system (to pay welfare, the cost of crime that happens when people can't meet basic human needs legally, the cost of the criminal justice system [which is freaking gigantic, by the way, look into that some time]) than to simply set fair rules and protect the market from those who abuse it.
Anyway, this post isn't to convince people away from an ethic of accumulation to an ethic of helping people. If I somehow managed that, awesome, but the actual point was for those of us who are already in an ethic of helping people to shift our thinking about how we're going to go about doing it. To be value-driven people instead of dogma-driven people. Frances Moore Lappe. That was her name. She's written lots of books, though I haven't read any of them. Maybe interesting enough to go to the bookstore and pick up.
I've now typed through breakfast time, still wanting a damn burrito, but now late for a curriculum group meeting. Damn.
posted by Fraggle @ 11:01 AM
3 Comments:
At 14:07,
dth said…
Not that I think any of these ideas are good or bad, but they are really hard to impliment, especially incrimentally.
Think of it this way: every change is going to change the real income of some group. If it is a reduction in the criminal justice $, cops and judges and construction companies lose money. If it is a tax or something on beef (sin-ish tax), ranch owners lose $. A small group of people have a large decrease in $, and lots of people get a very small increase in $ (or standard of living, etc).
The problem becomes that the small group of people losing $ will fight much harder to defeat whatever measure it is than the large group of people will fight to gain a small benefit.
A bunch of economists have been making this argument for years, their agenda seems to be that all subidies for everyone be thrown out at once. I don't think that is a good solution either, but their previous points still make sense to me.
At 19:07,
Fraggle said…
None of this is solutions, didn't mean to get at any of that. It's just a different way to think of solutions. The idea isn't to cut funding from some places and put it elsewhere; it's to come up with new solutions and programs that make the old solutions less necessary and new solutions more economically sound. You don't cut funding from criminal justice, you alleviate the situations that lead people to resort to crime. People don't choose crime because it pays better, they choose crime because other doors are closed to them and they need to eat.
For instance, as long as fossil fuels and gasoline cars and pesticide treated foods are less expensive, we won't trade em in. But when we come up with ways to make the sustainable replacements more economical, the choice becomes easy, right?
At 20:34,
misterjamo said…
there's definitely an underground movement that's gaining momentum in nyc (and i assume elsewhere) of people who are trying to create a sustainable food source within, say 100 miles of the city. basically the way it works is people grow what they can on their city property (and a large part of this movement is using apartment rooftops as growing places)and then buying the rest of their fruits/veggie/meat (in small numbers) from food co-ops that buy in large quantities from local farmers and then sell the goods for zero profit. this works to alleviate the issue of poorer urbanintes who can't afford to spend much on their food while also giving them a sense of community and value (everyone who buys food from the co-op must volunteer some amount of hours per month at the co-op).
anyway, this is the kind of stuff vanessa's sister does in brooklyn (she's the head of this movement there) and it seems like a worthwhile cause that's gaining steam.
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