The Fink Can Take Care Of Himself
But the Green Party are still loons
So a little bit of a spat going on between Danny Finkelstein and Zack Polanski here. M’Lud, Baron Finkelstein, suggests that GDP is a pretty good guide to wealth. Hypnoboob™ insists GDP isn’t a good guide to heath and wellbeing. Which it isn’t because it doesn’t attempt to measure those things, rather it’s trying to measure economic activity at market prices - which is a pretty good guide to wealth.
All of which is fair enough, obviously, except the contention is that the second statement is taken as a refutation of the first - which it obviously isn’t.
This then leads Danny into having an actual look at the Green Party’s thoughts:
Which then brings the rejoinder that no, we should look at the whole thing. Which gives us this:
And that is simply insane.
It’s obvious where they are coming from, they’re being all Polanyi. Local transactions, transactions with people you know, create that web of mutual interdependence which is really lovely and wonderful that we’re all communal like. As opposed to impersonal transactions across continents where we’re using filthy lucre - mere gelt and pilf - as the intermediary. If you want to think that way then you go right ahead, of course.
But more domestic production increases - yes, increases - resource use and therefore leads to either a lower standard of living within those planetary boundaries or more breaching of them to reach the same standard of living. Because that’s just the way it works. The only way anyone can get a foreign made good to you that you’ll purchase in preference to a local one is if it’s cheaper. And cheaper really does usually mean “uses fewer resources”.
That is, globalisation gives us a higher standard of living for whatever resource use we can allow ourselves or, equally, whatever standard of living we’ll allow ourselves with less resource use.
The Green Party are calling the scarcity of resources into play as an argument against the efficient use of resources.
They’re mad. QED.
Do the localist types approve of Trump’s tariffs? Funny, if true.
(They don’t, of course.)
It’s all just a reflection of Western affluence.
Generations (in developed countries) have grown up used to a cornucopia of stuff, from the essentials of food to ephemeral tat, all at historically dirt cheap prices. From such a position one can afford to fantasise about an Eldorado of mutual exchange with the folks from the next village, just taking it for granted that the same goods will still be available no more expensively.
I fear we are going to need a period of hardship to disillusion young starry eyed greenies. I doubt the folks living in less developed countries without anything approaching a cornucopia lifestyle are so keen on keeping everything local in the interests of ideological purity.