Equal Shares?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Wednesday July 20, 2005 22:13

by Jim Dixon

jdixon at iolfree dot ie

The 2 big issues today are Poverty and Global Warming - both caused ultimately by
Western consumerism (Mandela: poverty is not natural - it is man-made. Bush: Our
American way of life is not negotiable.) But if the rest of the world must catch up to
American levels of consuming there would be a total environmental disaster - so how
can we persuade American - and European - consumers to cut their ever-increasing
greed? What if we just shared out equally over the whole world everything we already
own or produce - would Western lifestyles really fall to a terribly low level? Details
and statistics of such an equally-shared world for each of us.

EQUAL SHARES?
George Bush recently declared: "Our American way of life is not
negotiable." But that consumerist lifestyle cannot be matched by the
rest of the world, there isn't remotely enough wealth or resources - and
besides the resulting pollution would soon destroy our planet. Problem!
But if the cake can’t be made bigger maybe we could share it out better?
So how bad would it be if we did in fact "re-negotiate" this American
(and European) lifestyle by simply sharing out absolutely equally only
the wealth that the people of this planet already produce each day?

Taking a few examples and doing the calculations we would still
have a family car for 2 days each week and a motorcycle for another half
day. We will also own a bicycle, useful for the non-car days of the week
- and after that it is car pooling, car sharing, public transport ...

FOOD: Again sharing equally the world’s production, each of us can
eat every week a reasonable dinner of pork, one of fish and one of
either beef or chicken. A glass of milk per day, one egg per week, one
portion of mutton or lamb each month, and one jar of honey every year...
There are plenty of carbohydrates produced in our world - wheat
products, rice, potatoes etc.[there are about 4 acres of good land for
each human being on this planet and for example a year's supply of
potatoes for 1 adult can be grown on a 20ft X 30ft patch - the area
taken up by only 5 parked cars]. There are also plenty of green
vegetables, plus a weekly ration of 4 tomatoes, 1/2 kilo sugar, 3
apples, 2 oranges – and every 2 weeks a banana!
DRINK: We each have available daily 3 cups of tea plus 2 of
coffee, also 1 cup of cocoa each week served with a small chocolate bar.
Alcohol limit will be about 5 pints of beer per week (or equivalent
wine, whiskey etc.)
There are over 7 million tons of tobacco routinely produced in
this world every year – which means that anyone so foolish can smoke 20
fags per day.
World newsprint production however would limit us each to 4
smallish newspapers per week (without adverts) plus 1 book per month (or
use public libraries...)
SERVICES: on the plus side in a shared-out world all
service-based economic benefits will of course not change (except
wealthy nations might stop poaching doctors and nurses from needy poor
countries) – plumbers, teachers, postmen, musicians, bank staff etc.
would be unchanged as would sports clubs, restaurants, hairdressers,
pubs, etc.
HOUSING: most communities traditionally simply used available
materials to erect a mud hut, igloo, tent, stone + thatch, brick +
slate, even a large wooden house often just building on the edge of
presently existing villages. As noted above services - builders,
carpenters, help of neighbours etc - would not change in a shared-out
world. A house in Ireland and Britain now sells for 250,000Euro yet
costs only about 60,000Euro to build [or to import in wood] and a large
quarter-acre agricultural site is worth at most 3,000Euro - a crazy
situation: in fact if any traditional non-Westerner was told that both
husband and wife in Ireland or Britain paying capital and interest will
spend up to 1/3 of their next 25 years of working life towards acquiring
something as ordinary as their dwelling they would be amazed - and
absolutely appalled - at such penury and exploitation!
CLOTHING is a variable item being so personally labour intensive
and so much a matter of care, taste and attention that, for example,
most poor villagers in Africa – both men and women – seem to turn
themselves out in a much more interesting, clean and colourful way than
the average Western crowd plump and carelessly track-suited wandering
their local shopping malls.
AIR TRAVEL: the world's equally-shared ration of air travel is
one trip per person every 2 years. Of course travel can be undertaken
by train, bus, boat etc. which are much greener. A crucial problem is
the massive pollution of air-travel: fuel burns @ 3 litres
/100km./passenger, e.g. a couple flying London-Miami return create more
environmental dirt than their average car use does for a whole year.

This brief summary indicates that except for rapid personal transport
a simple and comfortable lifestyle would still be available in a shared
world, with a healthy food supply and a secure home with at most a few
years' mortgage.
But there is one more issue: if the world's goods were better
shared there would be no need for massive armies to impose corrupt
regimes on weaker countries to plunder oil, minerals, cheap labour,
coffee, fruit, etc. The economic bonus from avoiding this immoral
military waste is immense:- every person in the world (assuming they
already enjoy a fair share of the world’s goods) could EVERY YEAR also
purchase for example either a large TV, a cooker, a good guitar, plant
hundreds of trees, take an extra holiday -- or we could all just stay as
we are and let the working week diminish to 4 days...
We must rethink our lifestyle of greedy consumerism and accept the
justice of taking only a fair share - as described above - of our
world’s abundance: just for a start we could reduce our leisure
consumption by flying only once per year, supporting public transport by
taking the bus or train once per week and having one car-free day in
that week. We could limit our food consumption to a fair level perhaps
eating maximum 4 meals per week of meat or fish, and if possible aim to
work a little less...We could also campaign for a global minimum wage of
say 4 Euro/day.
And if we can’t accept this challenge and put increasing pressure
on our politicians, well next time you hear of global temperatures
rising, people starving, bombs being dropped, know that whatever you
believe in, your lifestyle makes you part of the problem!

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Comments (4 of 4)

Ta Mike

Mon Jul 25, 2005 00:40

Well dunno Mike-guess my idea makes few waves. But at even Irish levels it would need 3 planets. And in America schools are like shopping malls with giant parking lots cause kids get cars now routinely at 16. School trips from e.g. Vancouver are to feckin Paris! Hurricanes increase- Chinese want a just share- London bombs because we need Iraq oil for the lifestlyle? So do we tell the Happy Shoppers to read Das Kapital? or maybe say look share a bit, for justice sake, it wont hurt too much, here's the fig's... Anyway thanks for your suggestions, keep the faith (I might edit and chance the Vancouver indymedia site...?)

radius

by Mike Novack

Fri Jul 22, 2005 14:24

The Earths radius is around 3.5 K miles. That's what you square when calculating the surface area of a sphere.

And no, I am NOT missing the main point. You are saying " we can just about manage with the planet as a species if we don't increase our consumption" as a matter of FAITH -- not as the result of a calculation. Please understand, I would be perfectly happy to see somebody produce a reasonable estimate which did allow us to conclude that we could come to sustainable subsisitence at a human population of ~6 billion because if this is not true the alternative is terrible to contemplate.

Do you understand what I am saying? It's beside the point HOW we humans got into our current mess, how the trade (ability to move materials in bulk) and learing to mine the mineral resources laid down over many millions of years was the result of capitalism. Eliminating the cause not change the fact that in just a couple hundred years we have just about reached the end of what can be so mined and in the meantime the human population grew as the result of the availability of these non-sustainable inputs. PLEASE -- I am NOT saying that we shouldn't end capitalism and begin to share, just that perhaps, sadly, that's not going to be enough.

LOCALLY we humans may be able to manage. I think you might perhaps be able to describe a sustainable solution for the island which is Ireland. But you are FAR better placed in that regard than average and you should be able to see that by comparing yourselves with the neighboring island which is Britain. You need to understand the consequences of what you discover. If you can BARELY describe a solution for Ireland, then there is no solution for Britain that does not include reducing their population to about a quarter of what it is presently > If you CAN manage to descirbe a sustainabel soultion for Britain at their current population density, then your solution for Ireland can be a couple times more generous in consumption -- will you then WILLINGLY share that with your neighbors? Sorry, but I think not -- our species doesn't act that way.

re Mike's spuds

Fri Jul 22, 2005 02:04

Thanks for your point re figures for the spuds - I forgot the need for the 10-10-20 to produce 15 tons/acre. Note dia. earth is 8k not 3.5 k miles as you say. (my figs from UN/FAO mostly). But you skip main point-- I think/guess/am I right? - we can just about manage with the planet as a species if we don't increase our consumption - but the Chinese etc. expect a decent life too - so either we share it out (reducing our own) or we kill kids...

It will help if you face the REAL facts.

by Mike

Thu Jul 21, 2005 01:39

In other words, do not START with your ideological faith "if we share there will be enough to ga around" but do an HONEST presentation of the numbers.

For example "there are about 4 acres of good land for each human being on this planet"

NO my friend, there are NOT 4 acres of good land per human. There are about 4 acres of land if you count every bit of desert, arctic tundra, glacier covered rock, swamp, etc. The calculation is so simple to make that only the blinders of ideology acting as religious fauith could have caused you to get this wrong (the area of a sphere is 4 pi r**2 but this sphere is 3/4 ocean. A diameter of 3500 miles gives a TOTAL land area of about 40 million sq miles and that is where some idiot got the 4 acres per person -- 4 acres in toto, not 4 acres GOOD land).

Might I humbly suggest something. You try to work out the solution for your little island which IS (compared to the average planetwide) good land -- enough rainfall, not too cold for growing crops, etc. and you do have about 4 acres per person -- though push come to shove, you'll be hard pressed to fend off the teeming starving hordes from just across the narrow sea >

"and for example a year's supply of
potatoes for 1 adult can be grown on a 20ft X 30ft patch" Well sort of. When you are down to subsisting on just potatoes, that's barely enough. I agree that you CAN get a pound of poptatoes per square foot in an intesive garden but that's less than 2# per day . Only one hitch. To sustain potato yields like that takes a source of fertility and you ignored the ground where that is produced. So quadruple the area -- except that the land on which you are growing the clover or whatever that you compost and spread on the potato patch can be land too hilly/rocky for potatoes.

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Equal Shares?

Comments (4 of 4)