The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Another global warming story, another chorus, from right wing trolls (yes, I know) that it isn't true, and even if by some chance it turned out to be, the 'market would take care of it'. It is such a prevalent attitude on the right, that Alan Alda used the line in 'The West Wing' debate with Jimmy Smits. I forget what the market was going to take care of according to Senator Vinick (was it oil supply?), but the proposition has become a touchstone for respectable conservatism. It goes with the less respectable conservative attempt to drown government for the people by the people in the people's bathtub. It is a sentiment (the bathtub, that is) that is very similar to the Marie Antoinette proposition that the peasants could eat cake.
And Progressives go along with all this (rather as they do when dealing with other religious beliefs) by shuffling their feet and mumbling something to the effect that, well, of course the market takes care of just about everything, 99.9% probably, but we Progressives think there are just a few cracks here and there that a really tiny government might be able to help paper over. But yes, the market, the market, the market's the thing. We Progressives would never dream of interfering in the MARKET.
Well, just hold your hosses there. And if you are a non-respectable conservative you'd better take off your reading glasses at this point. I am going to commit heresy here. Right, are you all seated comfortably? Well here it is - the Market is no good at taking care of global warming, health, education, water supplies, housing, electricity, old people, agriculture, transport, forestry, fisheries, and many more aspects of our society. In fact the Market does these things so badly that it inevitably makes situations worse. The only thing the Market is good at is deciding which cola people prefer to drink, or what ice cream people like to eat. But when it comes to grown up questions the Market has no answers at all.
Why? Well this will come as a great shock to many of you, but the only thing the market is good at, the only thing it is really for, is taking care of business, and it does that very well.
So market me no more markets when next we sit down to talk about global warming. Let's have a grown up discussion instead about how best to govern for all the people. And the world they live in.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)