Macrojack,
I must admit to being a bit shocked by the "our country [America] is being strip-mined" comment. Apart from the fact that the greatest environmental danger to American soil comes from American companies paying American lobbyists who effectively "pay" American politicians voted into office (not by the wealthiest few Americans, but by the other 90% of us (or the 50-odd percent of the other 90% of us who actually bother to vote) to make it easy to strip-mine vast tracts of currently un-inhabited land so the rest of us can feel better about driving cars (SUVs) which are often less fuel-efficient than the gas-guzzlers of 30 years ago.
In terms of American "being" strip-mined, it is we who are doing it to ourselves. It is not foreigners coming in to the US forcing us to buy more gadgets more often. Everyone wants their retirement nest egg to grow 10% a year (some 3-times GDP growth) but that only comes from less profitable enterprise dying out and more profitable enterprise picking up the slack. It is the American way. It is the way America became "great" - through a long prrocess of "strip-mining" other, more-developed economies (England, Germany, France). It did not help those countries that they accelerated their own relative demise through wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of those wars were started by groups looking to re-live or re-establish their declining greatness (hmmm... rings a bell).
The world is what it is. It is up to all of us to figure out how to make best use of it. If everyone wants American democracy and capitalism to become more of a social welfare capitalist economy like France, Germany, or Japan, then we will vote it into place. However, trying to get voters to address real economic issues (like education, science and development, and conservation - all of which challenge existing regimes and break out new, eventually highly profitable, technologies) is a real humdinger of a problem. Voters seem to appreciate sound bites and "feel good about America" speeches a great deal more than change. And very few seem to look to the greater good, despite the fact that a slightly smaller piece of a much larger pie that more people like is often a much better piece of pie to have.
I must admit to being a bit shocked by the "our country [America] is being strip-mined" comment. Apart from the fact that the greatest environmental danger to American soil comes from American companies paying American lobbyists who effectively "pay" American politicians voted into office (not by the wealthiest few Americans, but by the other 90% of us (or the 50-odd percent of the other 90% of us who actually bother to vote) to make it easy to strip-mine vast tracts of currently un-inhabited land so the rest of us can feel better about driving cars (SUVs) which are often less fuel-efficient than the gas-guzzlers of 30 years ago.
In terms of American "being" strip-mined, it is we who are doing it to ourselves. It is not foreigners coming in to the US forcing us to buy more gadgets more often. Everyone wants their retirement nest egg to grow 10% a year (some 3-times GDP growth) but that only comes from less profitable enterprise dying out and more profitable enterprise picking up the slack. It is the American way. It is the way America became "great" - through a long prrocess of "strip-mining" other, more-developed economies (England, Germany, France). It did not help those countries that they accelerated their own relative demise through wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of those wars were started by groups looking to re-live or re-establish their declining greatness (hmmm... rings a bell).
The world is what it is. It is up to all of us to figure out how to make best use of it. If everyone wants American democracy and capitalism to become more of a social welfare capitalist economy like France, Germany, or Japan, then we will vote it into place. However, trying to get voters to address real economic issues (like education, science and development, and conservation - all of which challenge existing regimes and break out new, eventually highly profitable, technologies) is a real humdinger of a problem. Voters seem to appreciate sound bites and "feel good about America" speeches a great deal more than change. And very few seem to look to the greater good, despite the fact that a slightly smaller piece of a much larger pie that more people like is often a much better piece of pie to have.
