Freegans, we.

[bushpig 0]

RD

[thursday 1]

It seems such a waste to spend all that money on advanced weapson systems that will not be used. Shame to let them expire without so much as a splutter.

 

Here you go mister Mujahadin, have these at cost. Very effective but don't go pointing them at people, especially the Talaban. That'll be naughty.

[BagOfCrisps 24]

We're fine

 

Making report, need... more... time...

[thursday 1]

more time for your penicilin shots.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

 Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll

People who espouse the benefits of a course of action, encourage others to follow that course of action but then fail to live up to their ideas themselves are hypocrites. Living off the excess of our society, making use of its many advantages and privileges whilst condemning it is hypocritical.

I don't see it as hypocritical at all. They (properly, i think) see a problem with the waste. And until our society becomes more efficint and wastes less, one of the best ways to reduce waste while creating as little as possible for yourself is to reuse the waste from other people.

Of course, there are other ways of going about it too, building your own home from recycled materials, growing your own food, shopping as little as possible, etc.

But these people practicing freegan values don't strike me as the type that have a lot of money to follow those pursuits.

Besides, like i said before. If we didn't waste so much, there would be no base for freegan values. They would do something else.

 Quote:

They’re no better than anarchists because they reject the accumulation of wealth and capital when it is this together with private property, the pursuit of profit and gain that drives innovation, development and scientific enquiry which in turn produces the many benefits of our modern society.

yes, but that doesn't mean there are't other ways of organizing people (in a non-hierachical manner) where you can get similar results.

besides, all the lovely trappings of a profit-based economic system won't mean much of it destroys the every planet we depend on.

and besides, aren't hunman impulses like innovation and scientific inquiery totally seperate from capitalism? Haven't they been going on long before capitalism?
And doesn't a profit-based system enforce some areas of science (prescription medicine for depressed animals) while ignoring other, less profitable but perhaps life-saving fields (like sustainable living)?

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It is only in situations of excess that individuals are freed to pursue long term goals and intellectual endeavors that result in improvements for the entire society.

I wouldn' say excess, but merely a level of living where one is freed from perpetually worring about hunger or sickness)

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These parasites live off the excess but give nothing back.

woah there, some would say the same thing about lawyers and politicians! At least these people are not using very many resources in general, which in the long run may be VERY useful.

Besudes, i hardly think groups like Food Not Bombs or dudes like Noam Chomsky and Leo Tolstoy are exactly parasites that give nothing back.

 Quote:

They don’t work so they don't pay taxes, they don’t provide employment, they don’t develop new ideas, they don’t conduct research etc,but if they get ill they expect to receive medical treatment which is paid for by others.

Other than paying for taxes, how many people do you know that contribute to society in the ways you said? Can you live up to any of those? I can't say with confidence that i do.

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They are able to receive medical treatment because there is excess in the system - that excess provides the system with flexibility. If there was no excess, the first drought, flood or other event that reduced production would result in people doing with less or going without entirely.

Excess, if stockpiled as insurance against disaster is a good thing, and i have nothing against it.

 Quote:

Waste in good years is insurance against bad years.

well, i see a huge difference between excess and 'waste'

Our current system of creating too much and the just trashing it is unacceptable for many reason, ones i don't think i need to point out, especially at this critical time when the Earth's resources are dwindling and millions are in poverty.

 Quote:

Ever wondered why people don't generally starve to death in democracies?

you happen not to be one of them. It happens though. There are peoples who tend to get neglected. The fact that it happens at all in such rich countries is wierd enough.

 Quote:

Why can Australia suffer one of the worst droughts in a century but still manage to feed itself? Without excess production what would have happened?

Read Professor Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" for an idea why. Apparently, Austrailia is eating itself, and may very well not be able to continue to magically grow crops in deserts for much longer (unless you want to get into costly and environmentally scetchy technologies like sea-water desalinization)

 Quote:

Look at any benefit available in a modern functioning society be it education, transport, food, public safety, public infrastructure, economic stability etc. – the same arrangement applies. These people reject the very type of system that allows them to exist.

i think you may have a slightly skewed view of anarchist philosophy. Sure, there are people who even go as far as to say that we should give up all technology and live 'primitively' again.

However, they are in a minority. I have several friends who hshare 'anarchist' views, and they hardly see socialized services (like the ones you have been listin) as evil. They are quite in favor of them. They are generally much more environmentally sound and universally-accessible than privatized services.

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They live the way they do by choice and dress it up as some sort of noble environmental exercise when in reality they’re just dole bludgers with a webpage. They live the way they do by choice and then attack the society that allows them to do so.

if you see no problems associeted with our first world societies, then perhaps we will have to end the conversation now.

Like i said, they see that the only way they can live in an urban society without contributing to the massive problems of waste is to use the waste.

If there was no waste, this philosophy would not exist. Simple as that.

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Suggesting that these losers are in any way similar to the unfortunate hundreds of millions around the world who suffer because they don’t live in a stable democratic society is an insult. And before some poor sole pipes up with the usual clap trap that the West is the cause of the suffering of the impoverished, please give some thought to the numerous dictatorships, autocracies and theocracies which are the real cause of misery.

And who monitarily supports these dictatorships? If the 'first world' actually belived its own crap about freedom and democracy, a good number of these governments would cease to exist if out countries didn't trade or sell arms to them. Not in all cases, of course. I have no clue what to do with North Korea.

But many of the regimes in Africa recieve supprt, whether tacit ot implied theough trade with out own counties. And why is that? I dunno, maybe because brutal regime can keep costs down (human as well as environmental), making them appealing to those who follow a PROFIT-BASED SYSTEM.

[Rag-Doll 0]

I wonder, has anybody ever been convinced or had their views changed as a result of these forum debates/discussions? Eventually they all seem to end up either breaking down into acrimony or agreeing to disagree.

You make some good points there OY, but some others are about as outlandish and unsubstantiated as mine were. I’ll just highlight some of the really way out ones:

 And until our society becomes more efficint and wastes less, one of the best ways to reduce waste while creating as little as possible for yourself is to reuse the waste from other people.

 

Perhaps one way they could reduce waste is to actually buy the product when it is on the supermarket shelf. This would not only reduce the waste, but also reduce the overall cost of the product because the producers wouldn’t need to build in loss of revenue from unsold product. I know practically it makes no difference but so do the environmental actions of these fringe dwellers. It’s a matter of principle. By electing not to buy and waiting for the product to be discarded they’re actually contributing to the waste – oh the irony!

> Of course, there are other ways of going about it too, building your own home from recycled materials, growing your own food, shopping as little as possible, etc.

 

Exactly, and if these people were doing all of that they would worthy of admiration. Are they doing this or are they just living off the excess? They’re a little bit like a member of PETA wearing a second hand fur coat on the basis that, well they didn’t cause the animals to die and throwing the coat away would be a waste. Maybe not the best analogy but hopefully you get the picture. The hitch hiking thing and getting a ride in car that would otherwise have empty seats is a bit like that. If they were serious about reducing waste as opposed to simply taking advantage of waste they would ride on public transport which would help make the service more cost effective which in turn would help the service expand and enable other people to take advantage of it. There are many ways they can actively help reduce waste as opposed to taking advantage of it and then condemning us for it.

 

>But these people practicing freegan values don't strike me as the type that have a lot of money to follow those pursuits.

Well if they bothered to get a job, even an environmentally friendly job – park ranger, zoologist, biologist, tree doctor etc. They might not only help provide employment, they would pay taxes which would benefit the community as a whole, whilst possibly even helping find solutions to some of the problems instead of, again, living off the excess and being self righteous about it whilst contributing nothing to helping find a solution.

 

> Besides, like i said before. If we didn't waste so much, there would be no base for freegan values. They would do something else.

 

So they don’t really want to do this, but they feel they have to? Really? I reckon they do this because they can, because they live in an affluent society that can afford to feed and care for even the most non-productive members.

 

> yes, but that doesn't mean there are't other ways of organizing people (in a non-hierachical manner) where you can get similar results.

 

besides, all the lovely trappings of a profit-based economic system won't mean much of it destroys the every planet we depend on.

 

and besides, aren't hunman impulses like innovation and scientific inquiery totally seperate from capitalism? Haven't they been going on long before capitalism?

And doesn't a profit-based system enforce some areas of science (prescription medicine for depressed animals) while ignoring other, less profitable but perhaps life-saving fields (like sustainable living)?

 

I could go into a long and boring and probably error ridden explanation as to why market economies and simple economics prove the above to be a complete pipe dream but I won’t. The whole equality thing is a crock.

 

> I wouldn' say excess, but merely a level of living where one is freed from perpetually worring about hunger or sickness)The only way to do this is by letting the market regulate itself with moderate guidance from government. Command economies try to do this and largely fail. A market economy does this better than any other system we’ve come up with. I agree it is not perfect, but everything else is a lot less perfect. This is an old economics issue dating back centuries. Really.

 woah there, some would say the same thing about lawyers and politicians! At least these people are not using very many resources in general, which in the long run may be VERY useful.

They are using resources, they’re just not paying for them. They take the benefit of people’s labor and give nothing back, no taxes, no employment, no development, no contribution of any kind.

 

>Besudes, i hardly think groups like Food Not Bombs or dudes like Noam Chomsky and Leo Tolstoy are exactly parasites that give nothing back.

Ok, you show me a photo of Chomsky eating out of a bin at the back of a super market and I’ll concede the entire issue.

 

 

>Other than paying for taxes, how many people do you know that contribute to society in the ways you said? Can you live up to any of those? I can't say with confidence that i do.

I agree. Most people can do no more than be a good tax payer. But by paying my taxes (however grudgingly) I enable the government to provide facilities whereby people much smarter than me can get trained so they can then be employed (either by the government or business) in the development of a cure for, I don’t know, things like malaria, aids, sids etc. How does consuming expired food help?

 

> well, i see a huge difference between excess and 'waste'

 

It all comes back to market efficiencies. No system is able to perfectly allocate resources to absolutely remove waste. But the market economy does a better job of allocating resources than any other system. What do you do with excess that can’t be immediately used or that has a very limited shelf life? It becomes waste.

And yes, people do starve in democracies but I’m not talking about unfortunate individuals who become disconnected from the community. There is a vast difference between that situation and large communities starving to death because their government or armed bandits highjack aid convoys or forcibly move them from their homes etc. or they simply live a hand to mouth existence (no waste there!) due to a lack of investment in technology (there is that grubby capital issue again) and there isn’t the flexibility or excess in their food production system to accommodate a production shortfall.

 

> Read Professor Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" for an idea why. Apparently, Austrailia is eating itself, and may very well not be able to continue to magically grow crops in deserts for much longer (unless you want to get into costly and environmentally scetchy technologies like sea-water desalinization)

I have. It’s a very interesting book. Maybe you should read it again because he also explains why modern Australia hasn’t and isn’t likely to go the way of the Greenland Vikings.

 

 I have several friends who hshare 'anarchist' views, and they hardly see socialized services (like the ones you have been listin) as evil. They are quite in favor of them. They are generally much more environmentally sound and universally-accessible than privatized services.

But the trouble is, you only get these services in a functioning modern society. Do away with the evils of capitalism and you’re left with some pretty dire alternatives. If people want to spend money to by anti-depressant drugs for their dogs then let them. That says more about the people than the system. The alternative is to dictate how resources are allocated and then you’re on your way to a command economy at best (who gets to do the allocation?) and at worst you end up with a Stalinist/Lenin state because ultimately it is human nature that people care more about having three cars or two houses or their dog’s wellbeing than the suffering of some poor schmoo on the other side of the planet who they’ll never meet and the only way to change that is to force them.

 

> if you see no problems associated with our first world societies, then perhaps we will have to end the conversation now.

Here is the thing. I agree the world can’t go on like it has been but ONLY the first world societies have the means of solving the problem. Only they have the social organization, the technology and the systems to drive innovation and motivate people to finding solutions. Going back to Diamond’s book, he gives plenty of examples where traditional societies have consumed their resources to the point of self destruction - the problem lies not in capitalism but in human nature. Changing the system won't change the people. Clearly the answer to feeding and housing and providing a modicum of medical care to billions upon billions of people doesn’t lie with traditional communities or low tech societies (which tend also to be superstitious and quite backward but that’s beside the point). Certainly capitalist societies a major cause of the problem, but only the first world capitalist societies are going to get us out of this mess.

 

Anyway, my money is on the system staying pretty much as it is.

 

[soubriquet 0]

 Originally Posted By: Oyuki kigan

and besides, aren't hunman impulses like innovation and scientific inquiery totally seperate from capitalism? Haven't they been going on long before capitalism?
And doesn't a profit-based system enforce some areas of science (prescription medicine for depressed animals) while ignoring other, less profitable but perhaps life-saving fields (like sustainable living)?

Scientific enquiry and all the benefits that flow from that have only happened since the Age of Enlightenment. That, by definition, is since The Church and The State stopped enforcing their beliefs on others. It's very capitalist. It is also why Islam produces jackshit.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

 Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll

I wonder, has anybody ever been convinced or had their views changed as a result of these forum debates/discussions? Eventually they all seem to end up either breaking down into acrimony or agreeing to disagree.
You make some good points there OY, but some others are about as outlandish and unsubstantiated as mine were. I’ll just highlight some of the really way out ones:
 And until our society becomes more efficint and wastes less, one of the best ways to reduce waste while creating as little as possible for yourself is to reuse the waste from other people.

Perhaps one way they could reduce waste is to actually buy the product when it is on the supermarket shelf. This would not only reduce the waste, but also reduce the overall cost of the product because the producers wouldn’t need to build in loss of revenue from unsold product. I know practically it makes no difference but so do the environmental actions of these fringe dwellers. It’s a matter of principle. By electing not to buy and waiting for the product to be discarded they’re actually contributing to the waste – oh the irony!

i'm not seeing the logic of buying the product. For one, someone concious about living environmentally-friendly is not gonna buy the same food they scavange. Freegans are also usually vegetarians as well, and i imagine given the choice, they would buy locally-grown, organic produce.
There might be a small mark up because of this minority's actions, and i don't pretend that i am an expert in market dynamics, but i imagine the main reason the food is wasted is because it is more profitible to have some product wasted than to chance not selling to a full market of customers.

For example in Japan, i have read that up to a full 1/3 of produced food is wasted. And it certainly isn't due to the massive population of freegans here.

But i admit, i may be wrong.

 Quote:

> Of course, there are other ways of going about it too, building your own home from recycled materials, growing your own food, shopping as little as possible, etc.

Exactly, and if these people were doing all of that they would worthy of admiration. Are they doing this or are they just living off the excess? They’re a little bit like a member of PETA wearing a second hand fur coat on the basis that, well they didn’t cause the animals to die and throwing the coat away would be a waste. Maybe not the best analogy but hopefully you get the picture. The hitch hiking thing and getting a ride in car that would otherwise have empty seats is a bit like that. If they were serious about reducing waste as opposed to simply taking advantage of waste they would ride on public transport which would help make the service more cost effective which in turn would help the service expand and enable other people to take advantage of it. There are many ways they can actively help reduce waste as opposed to taking advantage of it and then condemning us for it.

i agree with you, and i don't know many people that would disagree with your statement. But i think you are over-reaching in your mision to find fault with their lifestyle. everyone has hypocracies, and i don't think that hitch-hiking is a big one.

As for taking advantage of it and condemming us for it... i have read the writings of some freegans. And they are mixed, some relish the poverty and options available from the waste (and are indeed hypocritical when they criticize it).

But the second variety come to the conclusion of freeganism reluctantly, and practice it as a kind of stand against overconsumption. They do not relish the lifestyle, and only practice it as a way of removing their own contribution to the system as much as possible. And short of moving into the mountains and living in a hut, i see that lifesyle as least hypocritical out of those options.
Certainly much less hypocritical than someone like myself, who bitch and moan about overconsumption but nonetheless still participate and support it with my own money.

 Quote:

>But these people practicing freegan values don't strike me as the type that have a lot of money to follow those pursuits.
Well if they bothered to get a job, even an environmentally friendly job – park ranger, zoologist, biologist, tree doctor etc. They might not only help provide employment, they would pay taxes which would benefit the community as a whole, whilst possibly even helping find solutions to some of the problems instead of, again, living off the excess and being self righteous about it whilst contributing nothing to helping find a solution.

most of those jobs require a university education, which in my country of Canada, costs a fair bit of money.
While they bitch about the system, i don't see how they contribute to the problem they profess in any significant way. And like i said, many freegans are involved in Food not Bombs, a program to help feed homeless people with discarded food.

 Quote:

> Besides, like i said before. If we didn't waste so much, there would be no base for freegan values. They would do something else.

So they don’t really want to do this, but they feel they have to? Really? I reckon they do this because they can, because they live in an affluent society that can afford to feed and care for even the most non-productive members.

like i said, some people enjoy the freedom a lifestyle without being tied down to materialistic things (and responsibility, to be fair) affords. And i imagine those people would exist regardless of how much excess is created. Like the Hobos who live to travel by rail.

But from what i have read, for many people it is the reason. It is a logical way to live within the system of capitalism, if your aim is to contribute to it as little as possible.

 Quote:

> yes, but that doesn't mean there are't other ways of organizing people (in a non-hierachical manner) where you can get similar results.

besides, all the lovely trappings of a profit-based economic system won't mean much of it destroys the every planet we depend on.

and besides, aren't hunman impulses like innovation and scientific inquiery totally seperate from capitalism? Haven't they been going on long before capitalism?
And doesn't a profit-based system enforce some areas of science (prescription medicine for depressed animals) while ignoring other, less profitable but perhaps life-saving fields (like sustainable living)?

I could go into a long and boring and probably error ridden explanation as to why market economies and simple economics prove the above to be a complete pipe dream but I won’t. The whole equality thing is a crock.

maybe without diving into long and boring explanations, could you briefly explain about equality being a crock?

Are you talking about economic equality (like i assume you are, and by the way, Gandhi admitted the same thing), or a more fundamental idea of equality?

As for the former, while gandhi believed that total economic equality was an impossibility (and perhaps even undesireable), he could forsee a society where the rich did not exploit the poor.

 Quote:

> I wouldn' say excess, but merely a level of living where one is freed from perpetually worring about hunger or sickness)The only way to do this is by letting the market regulate itself with moderate guidance from government. Command economies try to do this and largely fail. A market economy does this better than any other system we’ve come up with. I agree it is not perfect, but everything else is a lot less perfect. This is an old economics issue dating back centuries. Really.

here is where i admit total ignorance. I have read only a couple of economic theories, and i am at a loss to know which ones would be more effective than others. I do know however, that the current system is dangerously flawed (whether or not it is true capitalism is another issue) and is putting the planets health in danger.

Perhaps you call this normal human greed, and that the current problem is just a larger scale of what we have experienced for millenia.
the problem is, this modern system rewards greed and promotes it. That is what makes it so much more capable of massive problems than perhaps `pure capitalism` the way the early Englisg philosophers described it.

 Quote:

 woah there, some would say the same thing about lawyers and politicians! At least these people are not using very many resources in general, which in the long run may be VERY useful.
They are using resources, they’re just not paying for them. They take the benefit of people’s labor and give nothing back, no taxes, no employment, no development, no contribution of any kind.

They are using resources, but comparitively few. Which is also one of the points of the idea. No one can live using zero resources.
Another point is they allow a larget population to live within the same ecological fotprint. By using resources that would otherwise go to waste, they allow a larger population to live within a smaller use of resources. Maybe not a contribution in the way of science or
employment, but not an evil thing, i think.

And quite few are involved in helping the homeless community.

I am ambivolent about using socialized systems without helping contribute to them financially. However, i am more angry at people like some snowboard instructors i know that work all winter, and the go on Unemployment Insurance in the summer. that is just laziness. At least scavenging your own food takes some initiative and effort.

 Quote:

>Besudes, i hardly think groups like Food Not Bombs or dudes l
ike Noam Chomsky and Leo Tolstoy are exactly parasites that give nothing back.
Ok, you show me a photo of Chomsky eating out of a bin at the back of a super market and I’ll concede the entire issue.

sorry, we were getting a little blurred about where the criticisms and rebuttals of anarchism and freeganism were going.
Chomsky and Tolstoy are/were anarchists, not freegans as far as i know.

 Quote:

>Other than paying for taxes, how many people do you know that contribute to society in the ways you said? Can you live up to any of those? I can't say with confidence that i do.
I agree. Most people can do no more than be a good tax payer. But by paying my taxes (however grudgingly) I enable the government to provide facilities whereby people much smarter than me can get trained so they can then be employed (either by the government or business) in the development of a cure for, I don’t know, things like malaria, aids, sids etc. How does consuming expired food help?

ecologically speaking, it allows a larger poplation to use the same amount of resources. Which is a moral issue for some as well. Whether or not that contributes to the overall happiness of the world, i don't know. But i don't see where it makes a significant negative impact.

 Quote:

> well, i see a huge difference between excess and 'waste'

It all comes back to market efficiencies. No system is able to perfectly allocate resources to absolutely remove waste. But the market economy does a better job of allocating resources than any other system. What do you do with excess that can’t be immediately used or that has a very limited shelf life? It becomes waste.
And yes, people do starve in democracies but I’m not talking about unfortunate individuals who become disconnected from the community. There is a vast difference between that situation and large communities starving to death because their government or armed bandits highjack aid convoys or forcibly move them from their homes etc. or they simply live a hand to mouth existence (no waste there!) due to a lack of investment in technology (there is that grubby capital issue again) and there isn’t the flexibility or excess in their food production system to accommodate a production shortfall.

i do not disagree with what you are trying to say here, i agree with it. But we create MASSIVE amounts of waste that have many negative effects. And in a society that can design a toilet that heats up and washes my bum, they surely can come up with a more efficinet system of resource management. Actually, i imagine that the fate of our species will depend on it.

 Quote:

> Read Professor Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" for an idea why. Apparently, Austrailia is eating itself, and may very well not be able to continue to magically grow crops in deserts for much longer (unless you want to get into costly and environmentally scetchy technologies like sea-water desalinization)
I have. It’s a very interesting book. Maybe you should read it again because he also explains why modern Australia hasn’t and isn’t likely to go the way of the Greenland Vikings.

true, they are different situations. But i though the overall point of the book was that trying to create artificial situations in environments that were not suited for it either fail, require massive resource allocation to keep it going, or wisely adapt to the environment. I think he was trying to get that we need to follow the third path. But that was just my impression.
And right now, Australia had to use a huge amount of resorce allocation to grow food in such an arid area.

 Quote:

 I have several friends who hshare 'anarchist' views, and they hardly see socialized services (like the ones you have been listin) as evil. They are quite in favor of them. They are generally much more environmentally sound and universally-accessible than privatized services.
But the trouble is, you only get these services in a functioning modern society. Do away with the evils of capitalism and you’re left with some pretty dire alternatives. If people want to spend money to by anti-depressant drugs for their dogs then let them. That says more about the people than the system. The alternative is to dictate how resources are allocated and then you’re on your way to a command economy at best (who gets to do the allocation?) and at worst you end up with a Stalinist/Lenin state because ultimately it is human nature that people care more about having three cars or two houses or their dog’s wellbeing than the suffering of some poor schmoo on the other side of the planet who they’ll never meet and the only way to change that is to force them.

well, this is where we really diverge. Caring about people on the other side of the world is also a kind of human nature, one that can be nurtured, if we choose to. Instead, we choose to nurture a kind of self-centeredness. I think it says alot that even though we are taught from birth to go after that big car, home, and vacation in Cancun, people still come back to thinking about the environment and how the people that grew their coffee or sewed their sneakers are treated. Hell, i am one of them i don't see anything wierd about it.
I find it wierder how people can go on and treat the world as if it was their personal trash can.

This mentality will change, perhaps by education or by circumstance. At the rate we are consuming resources, we may see this change within out lifetimes.

as for the economic side, please tell me you are joking. Is the scale of human innovation that small that we cannot dream up and put in a better system than now? Pehaps something more democratic that allows the people in a given country to decide how its resources are used, rather than corporations?

 Quote:

> if you see no problems associated with our first world societies, then perhaps we will have to end the conversation now.
Here is the thing. I agree the world can’t go on like it has been but ONLY the first world societies have the means of solving the problem. Only they have the social organization, the technology and the systems to drive innovation and motivate people to finding solutions. Going back to Diamond’s book, he gives plenty of examples where traditional societies have consumed their resources to the point of self destruction - the problem lies not in capitalism but in human nature. Changing the system won't change the people. Clearly the answer to feeding and housing and providing a modicum of medical care to billions upon billions of people doesn’t lie with traditional communities or low tech societies (which tend also to be superstitious and quite backward but that’s beside the point). Certainly capitalist societies a major cause of the problem, but only the first world capitalist societies are going to get us out of this mess.

we break it, we fix it!

 Quote:

Anyway, my money is on the system staying pretty much as it is.

nothing stays the same. it will change, i just hope for the better.

[bushpig 0]

This is certainly an interesting, but long, read. I mostly agree with you RD, and I agree with some of what you are saying oyuki. I agree somewhat with the sentiment behind it, not necessarily with the methods. But RD, your idea that the freegans, by taking the waste rather than paying for it are consuming the same amount of resources in the end, is not quite right in my mind. If they were to buy it, then the companies stocking and selling it would factor in more excess to cover their arses, therefore bloating orders and increasing the total output right? They generally try to cover estimated sales with a little left over. If they can get this left over as close to zero then great, but they generally go more. So the amount of waste wouldn't necessarily decrease as a result of freegans buying their stuff instead of scavenging. This particular argument is a circular one.

[gerard 6]

Ummm.....

 

Maybe a lot of the people who defined and practice freeganism are activists who contribute a great deal by highlighting the waste and inequity that exists in our democratic (more or less) capitalist societies. Democracy is about discussion and debate and they provide and important alternative voice.

 

But I think a lot of very troubled people who are NOT activists at all might hide behind that banner. I'm sure their frustrations are complicated and personal but misdirecting them by just hating society or just dropping out of society is more convenient and simple. While freeganism as a philosophy may have merit, I think squatters eating discarded food are much more likely to fit into this category.

[gerard 6]

 Originally Posted By: Bushpig

But RD, your idea that the freegans, by taking the waste rather than paying for it are consuming the same amount of resources in the end, is not quite right in my mind. If they were to buy it, then the companies stocking and selling it would factor in more excess to cover their arses, therefore bloating orders and increasing the total output right? .....

Yeah, I was thinking that too. (Of course it's easy to find holes when your (OK and RD's) contributions are as volumous as this.)

[bushpig 0]

yep, and I agree with RD for the most part on the practical side of it all anyway. I don't think any of us disagree with the goals of conservation and reduced waste.

[Rag-Doll 0]

OY - I think we've probably reached the point of let's agree to disagree. You make some good points but equally I think you're missing some of mine. A discussion of this nature via email is about as productive and efficient as, I don't know, using a HumV to commute to the office or waiting for food to be thrown out before picking it up. Let me offer this as a compromise, when I'm driving my Lexus if I see a freegan crossing the road, I promise not to speed up.

 

Whether things will change and the human nature point though is interesting and it kind of relates to the equality thing and the regional rivalries thread. This is just my own crack pot view of humanity but I think we're hard wired to seek differences between ourselves and others, call it tribalism or whatever, but as a race we seem to have a remarkable perchance for setting up an us v them dichotomy. The ability of people to rationalize spending money on shampooing their dogs instead of food for starving foreigners goes deeper than marketing or capitalism or any other learned behavior. Most people are able to appreciate the wrongness of that arrangement when they think about it but the overwhelming amount of money spent on self indulgence, be it at the national, local or personal level compared to what is donated suggests the problem is very deeply rooted in what makes us human - maybe it is just a well developed capacity for self delusion. Even things like the Olympics, for all the nobility of its ideals, represents a grotesque waste of money and resources that could be better utilized in helping keep fellow members of humanity alive. I don’t think this situation is likely to ever change. Take yourself as an example, I know nothing about you but I’m assuming that despite your well developed sense of social and environmental justice you still spend money indulging in snow sports rather than forgoing that luxury and donating the money you would otherwise spend to charity. I’m not having a go at you. I’m just pointing out that even those with a very clear idea of what ought to be done can still justify/rationalize or simply overlook how the enjoyment of a recreational sport is more important to them than helping to save the lives of others. That to me suggests that the problem isn’t one of education or re-education but something that goes to the very heart of what makes us human. Was it Dawkins or someone else that pointed out that we have the genes that we have because they’re the ones that have lied, cheated, scratched and clawed their way through millions of years of evolution? When you’re cruising through the trees up to your knees in pow do you think about the starving hordes? I’m alright Jack – it’s the human motto.

 

Things do improve and there is a greater recognition of fundamental rights now than there has even been in the past but this is only because we have never been richer or more able to afford the luxury of such generosity. It’s a pretty bleak view of humanity, I know.

 

Oh and as for equality. You can have equality before the law but you can’t have equality between people. There will always be people who for whatever reason (intellect, endeavor, luck, strength, skill, desire, etc.) will have the ability to collect resources and others who will go without for the very reason that they lack those same traits. Again, it’s human nature.

 

 

This is all high minded crap and as I say it’s nothing more than my own crack pot view based largely on ignorance but as I get older I do find myself appreciating how constant and ultimately self serving human nature is.

 

The End.

[bushpig 0]

Encore! Encore!

[Oyuki kigan 0]

Great bunch of posts, every one. Especially you, rag-doll. I see human nature differently,but that is hardly the point of the thread.

 

i'm done for now, thanks for great conversation.

[spook 0]

yup. i've enjoyed reading this, thanks

[BagOfCrisps 24]

I'll be adding to this soon....

[Rag-Doll 0]

The party is over. You'll have to start a new thread!

[thursday 1]

See Bags? we have to amuse ourselves somehow with your laziness in writing up that so important report.

 

Rags, Oyuki, well done boys. Thoroughly entertaining.

both of you

[2pints-mate 0]

I'm afraid I am going to have to postpone this again. We are both just too busy to sit down and get it posted and it will be next week. Sorry, really.

 

However here's a brief spoiler:

 

Warning, spoiler!

I was better at it that BagOfCrisps.

 

And we're both ok. It was a fun experience, a few stories (so need to justify it with a type up).