A Conclusion in search of an Argument

Journal TPFH's Journal: A Conclusion in search of an Argument 5

Journal by TPFH on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @02:05AM

This JE is in response to Ethelred Unraed's journal last week providing discussion on the article Feeling pure won't help the world's poor.

Yea, I often get into discussions late but this really struck me, and maybe it is ego-stroking, but I wanted more people to read this response than would probably happen if I simply posted comments to a JE that is almost a week old.

My primary problem with the article is that it starts with a conclusion that I agree with, and then uses arguments and examples that I disagree with. There is a fallacy in that, but I'm not sure if it has a name. It also has a few straw man arguments within it.

But maybe I should start off with what I agree with. What I agree with is that what Jello Biafra refers to as Fundamentalist Radicals is a bad thing. In nearly all cases being self-richeous is a bad thing. If you don't want to wear Nikes, then good for you, but you don't have to preach it to the world. Chumbawamba also pointed out the dangers of this in the song The Good Ship Lifestyle. (Great, now I've just made an appeal to authority, and an appeal to poetry. Well, Chumba explains what their songs are about and this webpage includes the notes.) I'll also say that Sillypixie made an excellent point in the comments of Ethelred's JE.

Where to start? I guess I'll start quoting the article and make comments on it.

Irrational prejudice against multinationals is connected to incoherent opposition to globalisation. Anti-globalisation campaigners seem blind to the irony that it was precisely the increased interconnectedness of peoples and trade characteristic of globalisation that allowed their worldwide opposition movement to flourish.

Maybe I have a different point of view because I listen more to the alternative media than the mainstream media, but first of all, if you pay much attention to the so called anti-globalization movement, you will discover that they are not against globalization pre se. What they are against is the concept that multinational corporations should be immune from local, state and federal laws worldwide. Second, it has been said many times "Our organization must be as global as their capital." or something to that effect. So, on the contrary, the so called anti-gobalization movement is very appreciative of the advances that have made global organization possible.

I should also post a link to an excellent article by Michael Badnarik on why the WTO, World Bank & IMF are not really about free trade called Free Trade vs. State Corporatism

Starbucks is a huge purchaser of coffee worldwide and should be lauded and encouraged to go further by ethical consumers. Instead, it is usually one of the first targets for anti-globalisation protesters' bricks.

From what I understand Starbucks has made great strides towards becoming more labor and eco friendly. I don't think that people throw bricks at Starbucks so much because of their policies, but because they find their ubiquitous nature to be obnoxious. I thought about having a sig like this after the Seattle WTO protests: Yes I'm an anarchist. No, I've never thrown a brick at a Starbucks. I can't say I don't find the idea amusing however. On a serious note I find most vandalism of this sort to be counter-productive, especially during an otherwise peaceful protest. I was especially peeved when the new Starbucks 3 blocks from my home had an attempted firebombing the night before the grand opening. Sheesh! Do you want to set the whole neighborhood on fire?

While the sins of multinationals are magnified, their better deeds are dismissed. Levi Strauss, for example, is a long-standing member of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which requires adherence to a base code setting out a "minimum requirement for any corporate code of labour practice". It is true that the ETI is pretty toothless and members' records are far from perfect. But is it more ethical to buy from a smaller, non-multinational that probably has no ethical standards at all?

There are some companies that do a lot of good stuff. There are also a lot of companies whose good deeds are little more than "greenwashing." That is to say, they only do good deeds for PR. YMMV. From Baggini's description, ETI sounds like greenwashing. There are worse companies out there than Levi Strauss, that does not mean that Levi Strauss is a good company.

Even if you are deeply sceptical of companies such as Monsanto, it is obvious that GM foods have the potential to improve yields and therefore the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries. This is not just corporate spin.

Sorry, but it is just corporate spin. Yes, there is the potential, but that is not what they are working on in the laboratories. I don't have the exact statistics in front of me (79.381% of statistics are just made up) but from memory about 80% of the GE Foods are engineered to be more tollerant to pesticides, and 15% are engineered to have built in pesticides. What about the Vitamin A rice? well, you would have to eat like 10 pounds of the stuff to reach the RDA. So much for low carb diets.

Opposition to GM has little to do with real ethics and everything to do with eco-narcissism. It is not concern for others that fuels most of the growth in organic, GM-free food. It is a desire to keep ourselves pure, to avoid ingesting what we perceive to be harmful toxins. Never mind that there is nothing wrong with most non-organic foods: the feeling that we defile the inner sanctums of our bodies by eating food treated by pesticides is rooted in an almost religious, superstitious worship of "the natural". Dressing this up as an "ethical" choice is self-serving self-deception.

Lots of fallacies in here. Starts off with Poisoning the Well, Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Strawman Argument, and Hasty Generalization. He is making an assumption that there is nothing wrong with GM foods. Where is the proof? This is a completely new technology and the FDA has done little more than rubber stamp GM foods. And even if there were thorough testing that is not going to account for allergies that affect a minority of the population.

If GM foods are not labeled then how is someone going to be able to identify what they are alergic to. It also does not account for the possible effects of combining more than one GM food, nor reactions that take a long time to build up in a person's system. I don't think we will know how safe these food are for at least another generation, and without labeling them we will be completely unable to trace which GM foods are causing problems and which are not.

With regard to Organic foods, avoiding the ingestion of poisen is not the only reason to eat organic. The fact is a lot of non-organic food does not taste as good, and is not as nutricious as organic food. What you get out of a plant is what the plant gets out of the soil. You grow plants in dead soil and you might as well be growing them in dirt. Dispite the claims of the "Green Revolution" artificial fertalizers are just not as effective as having a living eosystem in the soil. Many insects are bennificial to farming, and since the "Green Revolution" the attitude of many is to kill them all.

Connected to this is the deep mistrust of science which goes beyond reasonable suspicion. It's not just that we don't trust scientists or technology, we seem to feel that for any scientific fix there must be a price.

Again, a strawman argument. I am a geek. I like science. Science is cool. Science has given us great advancements. But just because something is new and technological does not mean that it is superior to the old traditional way. I suppose this is also the reverse of the fallacy Appeal to Tradition. I will call it Appeal to Technology.

Natural justice demands that cheaper, longer-lasting tomatoes come at a cost. Even the poor are not allowed to get richer, if it means using more technology.

Sorry, the poor in the third world are poor because their land was stolen from them durring colonization. They are told not to grow their own food, and instead to grow cash crops like coffee, sell it, and then purchase much more expensive imported food. Oh, and we don't have world hunger problems because of a lack of food. We have world hunger problems because of a lack of distribution. Heck, if people would just grow their own food in their own countries they would be a lot better off than growing cash crops.

Oh, and money embezzeled by corrupt politicians from World Bank loans. To say nothing about useless projects funded by World Bank loans.

Organic athletes would have to be regularly inspected and certified. This costs money, of course, but people will pay a premium to watch organic sports. They would insist that, even though the athletes are slower and less powerful, once you get used to it, it really is a much tastier spectacle. It's only if you've been weaned on artificially pumped-up versions of sport that your sensibilities are corrupted.

Do I sense sarcasm here?

Heck, I don't even care that much about sports. If they want to pump there bodies full of steroids that's their problem. But I'll tell you what I'd like to see: A reality TV show that shows in explicit detail the long term affects of extreme steroid abuse.

I'm tempted to start replying to the comments in Ethelred's JE, but I haven't read them all and maybe I should just leave this where it is, with a disgusting and humorous suggestion for a reality TV show. I wonder how many spelling errors I made?

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