I’d like to bring to light this quite remarkable documentary aired by the BBC during prime time earlier in the week. You’ll appreciate this no matter where on your journey libertarian you currently reside; newbie Austrians will throw stuff at their screens in frustration, the pros will chuckle at the clueless-ness of these “journalists”, while those in between like myself will be galvanised into another read of Human Action in the naive hope that one-day we might bump into these Keynesian degenerates.
The documentary is post-modern Marxist: Environmentalism. (Of course!) The jist is that evil capitalists, this time in the veil of manufacturers of bottledmineral water, are not only needlessly destroying the environment by importing millions of gallons of mineral from far-a field locales such as Fiji, with all its associated environmental damage (plastic to make bottles, crude oil for the tankers that ship the stuff, domestic transport once it arrives at the destination etc etc), but are exploiting local governments and communities who’re being underpaid and having their water stolen. Ergo we should all stop drinking bottled water (it doesn’t taste any different anyway, apparently) and drink copiously again from the tap.
This, of course, leads to glaring contradictions even at the most initial questioning: well, err, wouldn’t the poor people of have even less to export, reduced industrial infrastructure and smaller capital investment if we all drank from our Western taps? This is just one of the scores of ridiculous conclusions we can infer from this rubbish, but this programme is useful in illustrating just how overwhelmed Austrians and libertarians actually are – most people buy this sh!t. See the full programme here, really is an interesting watch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b0090bt9.shtml?filter=category%3AletterP&scope=iplayercategories&start=1&version_pid=b0090bsx
We doubtlessly live in depressing times. I remember reading about this bottled water nonsense on the Libertarian Alliance blog a few weeks ago: http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/
“This, of course, leads to glaring contradictions even at the most initial questioning: well, err, wouldn’t the poor people of Fiji have even less to export, reduced industrial infrastructure and smaller capital investment if we all drank from our Western taps?”
I dont see why, the people in Fiji can concentrate on serving the local market, not international ones.
What’s your point? I don’t know the economic conditions of the Fiji, and maybe they have enough natural resources to not dependent of the outside. That still doesn’t disprove lee337c33 's statement that restrictions in trade will result in a poorer country. The extent of the consequences are of course disputable.
If you are new to economic theory, I’d advice you to google the goold old David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage Theory, to understand why trade is also of benefit to poor countries.
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With regard to the topic, I think it may be of interest to mention that a few days ago, in the Who Wants to be a Millionaire on one of the public channels here, the host says that politiceans should be raised, because they governed the country. Pretty much out of the blue – it seems he was asking the guy if he’d spend the money in university tuitions to which the guy responded that he frequents to a public university so it was a no issue. The absurd part is that Portuguese deputies make more money than Spanish ones, which is country more than 5 times bigger in both area and GDP. Deputies here are also eligible for retirment after they complete their term.