Friday, April 25, 2008

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but isn't the economic crisis and the soaring cost of rice and wheat really just the price the "civilized world" is paying for its greed? I know this is simplistic but no matter how many different 'analyses' I hear about these problems, it just seems to boil down to that doesn't it? This isn't the first time this happens either is it? Anybody who knows anything about anything care to enlighten me?

Posted by Maysaloon at 10:31 am

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1 comment:

ASDFGHJK said...

"isn't the economic crisis and the soaring cost of rice and wheat really just the price the "civilized world" is paying for its greed?"
Hmm, first of all it is mostly not the "civilized word" that is paying the price but the rest (ie. the bulk of the inhabitants of this world).
People in the "developed world" only pay a fraction of their income for food and additionally have the possibly to shift their expenses, but if you have just the proverbial 1$ a day and the price of, for example, rice doubles in a year you end up with hunger-riots. Being not an pundit on this complex topic neither I would like to point you to a story on: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/24/the_us_role_in_haitis_food
that gives a concrete example of the policy of "'Free' trade" where the developed world makes the underdeveloped world open its markets to subsidized agrarian-products to the point where domestic production isn't viable and makes a former exporter depended on imports.
An other currently discussed is the perverse production of bio-fuel where the cultivation of eatable crops is abandoned to that more lucrative one.
Then we have the problem that multinational-companies make people dependent on "their" seeds, fertilizers and chemicals keeping the countrymen in perpetual debt to the point where it creates phenomenons like mas-suicides in India..
This, obviously shows just a fraction of the larger problem of globalization in its today's form.

1:29 pm

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