Reply #11: dealing with the suppliers [View All]

[humus]

"a people who are entirely lacking in economic self-determination,
either personal or local, and who are therefore entirely passive in
dealing with the suppliers of all their goods and services, including
political goods and services, cannot be governed democratically--or
not for long."
Wendell Berry

"We assume that we can have an exploitive, ruthlessly competitive,
profit-for-profit's-sake economy, and yet remain a God-fearing and a
democratic nation, as we still apparently think of ourselves. This
simply means that our highest principles and standards have no
practical force or influence, and are reduced merely to talk."
Berry

"...our country is not being destroyed by
bad politics, it is being destroyed by a bad way
of life. Bad politics is merely another result."
-- Wendell Berry

The message is plain enough, and we have ignored it for too long:
the great, centralized economic entities of our time do not come into
rural places in order to improve them by "creating jobs." They come
to take as much of value as they can take, as cheaply and as quickly
as they can take it. They are interested in "job creation" only so
long as the jobs can be done more cheaply by humans than by
machines. They are not interested in good health--economic or
natural or human--of any place on this earth.