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"Reason" gets it wrong

by Niel BORNSTEIN

Monday, 17 January 2000

.....

Here's one small example of how they get it wrong:

Not to be outdone rhetorically, the [anti-GM group the Bolt] Weevils declared, "We see what the corporations give back to the public." They give back "houses we cannot afford to live in" (notwithstanding that home ownership is at an all-time high) and "jobs our bodies cannot do for long without breaking" (notwithstanding that fewer jobs than ever consist of manual labor and occupational accident rates are at an historic low).

Ok, let's analyze this a bit.

"Houses we cannot afford to live in" is not about the cost of buying a house or the number of people who own houses, it's about the cost of living in the houses corporate developers build today. Developers create enormous castles that cost too much to heat, with crappy workmanship that costs too much to repair. There's nowhere for the average Joe to live at a reasonable cost. See Sarah Susanka's The Not So Big House for more.

"Jobs our bodies cannot do for long without breaking" is not about back-breaking manual labor, it's about finger- and arm-breaking keyboard work. Why are we still saddled with the QWERTY keyboard and monitors that emit high levels of radiation into our brains? It's about time the corporate megaliths that run this country realized that they're killing their workforce, slowly.

Whew. That turned into a major rant ;)


This is "Reason" gets it wrong <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/61>

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