Re: Capitalism and monopolism: "Obvious" it ain't.
James Donald wrote... "Used to be that in the third world most people were skinny, so fat was a status symbol. Now diet books are outselling cookbooks, and Rubenesque women are everywhere out of fashion." Uh, where? In China? In India? Indonesia? RIght there you have almost half the world's population, and what you've written has almost zero applicability. ANd despite the economic advances of, say, China, outside coastal regions acquiring enough calories is still a challenge. And the occasional floods in central China make it extremely difficult every few years. Overall, however, it would seem that the standard of living and life expectancy of both China and India are increasing (and not just for a small number). Based on this I cautiously agree, but it's not exactly "obvious", and a few natural disasters in the most populated parts of China could put a dent in the curve. -TD
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> To: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Capitalism and monopolism: "Obvious" it ain't. Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 07:49:19 -0700
-- James Donald:
"Despite the fact that the trend has been in the other direction for the past two hundred years, despite the fact that what Marx wrote was obviously false then, and has become more obviously false in the 150 years since he wrote, Marxists repeat Marx's prophecies with the more confidence, the more obviously the facts contradict them."
On 6 May 2003 at 10:28, Tyler Durden wrote:
A lot of people living in the US make this kind of mistake. Actually, developed nations make up a minority of the world's population (though with China and India this may change wihtin our lifetimes). When one considers the abverage living standard for the entire world its been debated that it may actually be going down.
Dont be silly.
Used to be that in the third world most people were skinny, so fat was a status symbol. Now diet books are outselling cookbooks, and Rubenesque women are everywhere out of fashion. There are a bunch of statistics that supposedly show people have more stuff and eat better, but just walking around, you can see the beggars are fat. Used to be there were famines all over the place, but for the past fifty years, the only really serious famines have been those produced by socialism or war. These days, that means North Korea, though for a while there was massive malnutrition in Cuba, producing widespread deficiency related blindness.
--digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sSOEbbSEJGo81S1JHNPpZ5ibmlEOAgb/1acJD04s 491VtSnlEEh03icnNCWM5sIy+8k9imCCYe3WnCgs9
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-- James Donald:
Used to be that in the third world most people were skinny, so fat was a status symbol. Now diet books are outselling cookbooks, and Rubenesque women are everywhere out of fashion.
Tyler Durden
Uh, where? In China? In India? Indonesia?
Yes.
ANd despite the economic advances of, say, China, outside coastal regions acquiring enough calories is still a challenge.
A challenge that these days most people meet, and a distressingly large number of people more than meet. iIt used to the be that the third world was visibly getting less skinny. Now it is visibly getting fatter. I could post statistics, but better still, you should look through the photos posted by a chinese introduction agency. Search for Indonesian and Chinese. They are not as fat as us westerners, but they are still too damned fat. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG u7MUgz0PmLBdrqWGV2kE4UCthb6a5Sy2PBf9bEbL 42S4QEWW/Lu0b55LEaa86Qc82eSdITP6tswo9H4eI
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Tyler Durden