<If people want to get a message of simplicity and less consumption out there, and you don't like it, hey, ignore them! You can do that, surely! If a bunch of adolescents can ignore a high-powered corporation with a massive advertizing budget, surely American adults can ignore Adbusters. I'm willing to bet that most of America has never heard of them, so ignoring them should be easy.

Good point. I can ignore them. Just as long as they don't get near a legislature. If I collected every person involved with Adbusters in a single room, and asked them how many thought it should be illegal to eat meat, how many do YOU think would raise their hands? Some people, and the leftists are not the only culprits, are never satisfied with leaving things optional.

By coincidence, I came across a copy of their magazine (called Adbusters) for the first time today. The article I read had to do with the marketing of spirituality in Japan, specifically, the difference between rushing through a tour of the sacred spiritual sights of Kyoto, so one could check each off the scorecard and say one had "seen Kyoto", and living and working in a small place and drawing satifaction from the garden and from throwing pots to sell. The irony of rushing through a temple's garden of contemplation to get to the next thing on the list, rather than drawing from the garden that for which it was designed, is the essence of modern consumerism. It has nothing to do with satisfaction, and everything to do with moving on to the next sale. This is the point of the "Black Friday" protest as well. And (oddly) it's what a lot of churches, many very conservative, have been saying for many many years now. I think you miss the point, big time.



Maybe these "haters of prosperity" want to make simpler living into a more fashionable thing to do. Maybe their definition of prosperity is different from the definition favored by the corporations that underwrite so many of our political campaigns and other scoreboards. Maybe this is a new and different way to attack the welfare problem -- if people's needs can be defined by what they are happy with rather than what sales pitches tell them they must have, those needs might be easier for them to fill without outside aid. Did you ever think of that?



Hmmmm...an interesting idea. Convince welfare recipients that they don't need as much as they think they do. You go first.

I thank God I live in a country where "simplicity" is optional. Where growing your own food is a hobby. Where you can come in from "camping out" any time you want. Where you can pick the wood your furniture is made from. Where throwing pots for a living is something you do for fun. Not because you have no choice. Where one of the biggest problems of the poor is obesity.

When conservatives speak up against things they don't like, that's free speech. When they organize, that's political activism. When liberals speak up against things they don't like, that's nascent dictatorship. When they organize, it's a threat to civilization. Have I about got this right?

I oppose both conservatives and liberals forcing their ideas on people at the point of a gun. I can't help it if it's just a lot more common for the Left to advocate this. The centralization of political power and collectivist economics that they support almost demands it.