Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Funny, I had a completely different take on this, one having no relation 
to whether I get to control what other people do.

I see the end of the gadget culture as being something mostly of their 
own making.  Nothing is ever what it's cracked up to be, it's always 
three times the real price.  And worst of all, it matters more nowadays 
whether you can be duped into buying something, than whether the widget 
really functions as it should.

When people get to be our age or older, they come to where they can look 
at, say, a guinea pig cage, and spot exactly where it will break.  I 
hope we can instill the younger generation with the same level of 
cynicism toward the retail menace, so that they can throw less money 
down a hole than I have.

Bill

Gene GeRue wrote:

> > http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-5om/Berry.html
> >    
>
> Classic Wendell Berry material but written more simply with short, 
> declarative sentences and therefore more eloquent and more powerful than 
> some of his earlier essays. Happy to see the adjustment. Where I was 
> earlier put off by the English professorshippiness, here I am enchanted by 
> the flow.
>
> Alas, I find Berry still a provincial romantic disconnected from national 
> and international economic reality. With the exception of a tiny percentage 
> of food produced by ecologically sensitive growers able to sell to upscale 
> markets, the preponderance of world food is produced for volume profit and 
> ecology and energy input be damned. I wish it were otherwise and I, like so 
> many members of this list, strive to be the husband and steward of my land. 
> But agribusiness will have no truck with such uneconomic should-dos until 
> it is forced by governmental regulation or energy shortages.
>
> In my lifetime I hope to see Jim Hightower, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and 
> similars on an advisory committee to the Secretary of Agriculture that has 
> real clout. I am breathing freely.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Homestead list and subscription:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead
> Change your homestead list member options:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/homestead/billj%40harborside.com
> View the archives at:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead
>
>
>
>
>