Hi again,
Sent this to an Oz Labor Party chat list - wonder if anyone here can help
add some substance and detail - or just take issue ...
G'day all,
By way of intro: Oz has always been very hesitant about nuclear plant so
far - and, as far as I know, Lucas Heights is the only such plant we have
as a consequence (please correct me if I'm wrong). As a good source of
uranium, a land of unpopulated spaces, and a source of educated workers and
pretty good infrastructure, it's likely 'market forces' might have seen fit
to do what Oz politics wouldn't let happen: construct plutonium or
strontium (or whatever) all over the place.
Anyway, that's the introductory thought. As of today, we're talking the
very real possibilty that humanity is in the business of creating new
species from scratch. Now, let's do what civil society is here to do: put
this new technology in its contemporary historical context, and discuss it.
A world of untrammelled producers and consumers constitutes a context whose
social organisation and productive engine is predicated on the pursuit of
profit.
Now, should democratic negotiation determine whether new forms of life are
created, what new forms of life are created, and what forms should not be
created? Or should the market determine the whether and what, in a world
where (eg) Australians may not actively disagree with whatever the
apparently ineluctable laws of global supply and demand dictate?
As it happens, I suspect we're getting waaaay ahead of ourselves here - we
must not fail to contextualise recent developments in genetic research
within the untrammelled capitalism that potentially cometh, a context with
a predilection for eugenics (the sort of ideas for which we thought we were
fighting Hitler's mob) - after all, we haven't progressed so far since 1945
that most of the rich kids of the future wouldn't be very like the tall,
blond/e, heterosexual, addiction-resistant, obesity-resistant, intellectual
athletes with three-digit life expectancies of whom Hitler dreamed. At
least, 'class' might make a comeback in political discourse then, I s'pose
...
Add to that these new life forms, shaped exclusively by the anticipation of
annual shareholder meetings, and you have a rather fine example of why the
economic must globally be made subservient to the democratic, doncha
reckon? That's a topic to place under 'WTO Issues' innit?
Or am I reading too much into a WTO-shaped world?
Cheers,
Rob.
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