Woodburn Company Stores -- Oregon tourism Noam Chomsky

    1. Woodburn Company Stores -- Oregon tourism Noam Chomsky   Time 2008-05-29 18:42
  • A quote from Noam Chomsky read against a picture of Woodburn Company Stores, the hellhole I worked at for about a year and a half. Chomsky's quote is taken from the Z Net sustainer's forum. His statement was in response to the following question: "Professor Chomsky,I recently had a couple of arguments with some people about Capitalism. They claimed that Capitalism was the best and only viable system, I argued that Capitalismis a horrible system that is the root of all the problems. However, I was at a loss to refute some of their claims. Below are some of their main points. Maybe you could give me some fuel to beef up my arguement?1. Capitalism gives people incentive to produce, innovate, work, both monetarily and in class status. Other systems do not and cannot produce good incentive.(Is there any viable alternative source of incentives?)"NOAM CHOMSKY'S RESPONSE TO ABOVE QUESTION: "Has great science, art, music, etc., beenproduced by people working for money? Is that what was driving Einstein when he was working on relativity theory in the Swiss patent office, or later at the Institute for Advanced Study? Or artists strugglingfor years on crusts of bread in garrets? Or artisans throughout history, and today, trying to create objects of beauty and perfection? Or parents devoting time andenergy to raise their children properly (creating "human capital," in the terminology of economists, a major factor in economic growth)? Or in fact justabout anything worthwhile or constructive? The unargued claims that you are being asked to disprove -- a framework that makes no sense in the first place -- are apparently being put forth by people who do have not had even the slightest experience, direct or indirect, with creative work, now and in the past -- and by "creative" I do not mean only the peaks of humancreativity, but the lives of most decent people who are not utterly pathological."FOR MORE INFO: http://www.zmag.org/
  • Tag: »anti-capitalism »chomsky »company »noam »oregon »stores »tourism »woodburn
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