[Oe List ...] Wal-Mart and the weapons of mass destruction

[R Williams]

Of course it's not just food that sustains us.  We need clean water and air, clothing, shelter, health care, education and whatever else one might add as necessities of life, and clearly all these cannot be locally produced.
   
  As I remember, the 5th of those economic principles to which Marianna referred had something to do with the local entity relating to the regional economy, and in the 21st century the viable economic region seems to be the planet.  (This is part of the meaning of globalization.)  No one can, or needs to, live in economic isolation.  Can we replace the dominant paradigm of scarcity with a paradigm of abundance so that gratitude rather than greed becomes the attitude and cooperation rather than competition becomes the action?  And can we begin to live the story that there is indeed enough for everyone as long as no one has more than her/his share?  "All of the goods of the earth belong to all the people" is a beautiful economic vision, but if the goods are in fact to be distributed equitably, gratitude for the abundance must replace the greed of presumed scarcity so that resources and products are interdependently shared from family to family, village to village, business to
 business and nation to nation.
   
  Some may remember that Paulo Friere in Education for Critical Consciousness related that the peasant farmers with whom he worked in Latin America labored not to demonstrate their worth as human beings or to earn their way, but to express gratitude for the fact that everything was already theirs.
   
  Randy

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