Slraep said:
Oh yeah, we are guilty as sin. ....We are the consumers of junk. ... In fact, besides being the world's biggest polluters, we are also responsible for a huge chunk of China's pollution.
Ha! Well.... yeah... I am neither American, not living in the US, or in a particularly high-consumption society, but I do not feel particularly righteous because of that either. Just consider:
- US demand for imports transferred more wealth into developing economies (particularly S-SE Asia, Central America, and a few others) than direct aid or investment ever could. It didn't even ask for the usual diplomatic B.S. of 'democratic standards', 'freedom of press' - nothing. Just anything it takes to crank the cheap labor gear up and swallow the dirt of progress for good measure: i.e. he most wise gift of nation-building from grass-roots up.
- US loss of whole manufacturing sectors helped invent entire industries elsewhere. Economic imbalance between manufacturing and knowledge economies resulting from the the accumulation of such transfers over decades are heating up innovation everywhere... much of it paid for by US trusts, companies and brain power. Amen!
- American consumers are taking up debt under increasingly hard conditions to support upstream industries throughout the low-wage world. I mean, these good fellows keep the giving going even of wealth they do not have!
- If it wasn't for all the easier jobs and lives of the consumption stricken American youth, thousands of brilliant, driven foreign students brought in each year by the best universities in the world - US based, most of them - would still be grazing cattle somewhere. I am not even guessing here.
- And when the slow-motion gears of a democratic, egalitarian society would just not bleed away fast enough, this country went one better and allowed some of his risk-takers get absurdly wealthy: just to make things go faster by their careless choices. No one even seem to care what such inequality would bring to every one's sanity and the nation's political will. What more meaningful sacrifice could one make, then throw themselves to experience the same dire straits as the unfortunate they might want to help?
- Not to mention where the world would be if it wasn't for the silly military expenses of the US - I mean, that's one good sector where a hearty imbalance of power really pays! There's terrorism alright, but cross-border war has become quite rare for the first time in history. That ought to count for something.
- And if it wasn't for the bloody foreign policy of the US, could Europe possibly look so good infront of its own old and new-found allies by comparison? Nooooo.... No way.
- More still: without the fast-food, fast-fashion and fast-gone-life of the American nation to measure against, how many would have never learned to value the benefit of their expensive public goods, seemingly absolete traditions, slow-motion existence and small-sized selves, raw-milk cheese and other FDA-banned goodies? How much poorer the world would be...
What other nation would have sacrificed so much to the rest of the world? Other do rank up there for good will, good example and good deeds on the international arena, but I couldn't name any other nation who would have sold its own soul, fouled its own heritage, surrendered its hard-won liberties, lent away its very future and corrupted its citizens just to make the rest of the world look good.
I am not sure what the 'thank you' might be for that, but it may well come sometime during my life time: from where I am standing, it should make a good show, Coke and popcorn provided appropriately.
Sad. Just ask any American expat in continental Europe. They should have a story or two worth telling. I still hear every now and then someone uttering that 'America is the Greatest Country in the World', but that's a joke nowadays. Dark humor. Like the dim gags from the time of the late Cold War.
Wanted to let these 2c loose for a while, just not polished for the fine nose of the press. 
