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I highly recommend that you watch the film mentioned: "The Story of Stuff". It is a very detailed look at how companies drive consumerism to keep the economy g
by NathanKP 17y ago
I highly recommend that you watch the film mentioned: "The Story of Stuff".
It is a very detailed look at how companies drive consumerism to keep the economy going at the expense of third world countries.
- indiejade 17y agoLinkage: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ http://www.storyofstuff.com/ Have not watched the video, but this is a great article. I find downsizing living to be such a relief; it's almost like having a burden lifted. One thing that drives me kinda nuts to have too much "stuff" to worry about. Quantity of possessions grows to accumulate in the space a person lives; smaller space = less room for frivolous items. Makes a lot of sense.
- quellhorst 17y agoIt only grows if you have the wrong mindset. I love open spaces with less stuff!
- araneae 17y agoI started watching it, but then stopped when she started going through the "corporations are evil" bit. She deliberately chose to paint government as good and corporations as bad even though they are both only composed of people, who are just looking out for their self-interest, trying to get money from other people, who are also just looking out for their self interest. It's a intellectual shortcut to paint corporations OR government as evil, and not accurate or meaningful at all.
- sleepingbot 17y agoThank you for sharing your experience/opinion.
- sleepingbot 17y agoOr maybe I should say the ideas of Adam Smith and others on the pursuit of the self interest leading to happiness and wealth are an appealing and interesting notion, but difficult to work "out of the box"?
- sleepingbot 17y agoConfirmed. It's personal. Anyway.
- NathanKP 17y agoActually in my experience she painted government as evil as well. She clearly points out how governments give corporations the power to do what they do. In addition, I see no reason why painting government or corporations as evil is a bad thing because when it comes down to it, what they are doing to third world countries is evil. We execute murderers for killing people. Yet corporations are killing people overseas by poisoning and maiming them in dangerous factories. I see no reason why calling a corporation evil is not accurate or not meaningful.
- gcheong 17y agoIf we restrict the freedom of other countries to trade freely with us or each other we would be killing a lot more people.
- NathanKP 17y agoThat is a good point. However, trade doesn't have to mean abuse of third world countries.
- gcheong 17y agoYou're right and my argument is that most of the time it does not - certainly not to the extent of what this video would have you believe anyway. I'll even provide as much evidence for my argument as the video does for her argument by saying "I've researched it and it's true" ;^).
- NathanKP 17y agoOkay, fair enough.
- roqetman 17y agoI think the point the OP was making was that both corporations and governments are made up of people. I agree with this; a corporation and a government is not a physical entity, and can therefore not be evil. However, people can act evil in the name of that entity. Personally, I think that as soon as we try to brand a group of people, we lose the argument.
- by 17y agoRather than downloading the multi-megabyte video, which requires much more consumption of stuff, I found the PDF version here and read that instead http://www.storyofstuff.com/pdfs/annie_leonard_footnoted_script.pdf http://www.storyofstuff.com/pdfs/annie_leonard_footnoted_scr... I would have preferred an HTML version because PDF is a newer, more complex, format that forces us to use newer, heavier applications to read. PDF is incompatible with old and lightweight computers so it forces us to buy powerful new computers and throw away our old ones. Given an HTML version I could have consumed even less stuff.