At 05:12 PM 07/26/2002 -0400, you wrote: >Grinding flour is a synecdoche for a society characterized by a large >pesantry producing very low-tech goods in households and small villages. >That style of production is inconsitent with being nonpoor. If people want >to stay poor, that's their decision. I think many wouldn't, if given the >choice. Even if the food is fresher.
I know that this is a complex issue. What people want, is to live! Good food, good fellowship, health, protection from natural dangers....these are not that expensive. What we have instead is a small part of humanity asphyxiating in their own glut...and the rest ....starving. Do people want to stay poor? Poor in what way? Given a choice between the poverty of the farmer and the poverty of the industrial worker, I think I'd choose the former; but I also think that at this point in history it's a false choice... For hi-tech to actually improve our lives (not our comfort, which is something different), we would need to be able to look at it separately from capitalism and separately from the ideology of technical progress. That would really be worth doing. Joanna
