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!