>Buildings are the same way. We should treasure the unique, the artistic,
>the visionary. We should endeavor to improve our knowledge and skills to
>make us worthy of working on the extraordinary and wonderful preservation
>projects that feed our souls. But we all also make a living fixing really
>ugly buildings of little aesthetic interest or merit. Sometimes the job is
>just a job. Would we truly appreciate the good ones - -meals, buildings,
or
>jobs - -if we weren't also intimately familiar with the not-so-good?

>Mike E.

Now the utopian idealist in me comes out.

All that you have been saying, Mike, has been predicated on some
unquestioned assumptions about the economies of production and consumption
that I , for one, do not take as given.

 Rudy has pointed out that the advantage is all on the side of the Big Macs
of the world. But the environmental  and consumer product safety movements
have consistently shown us that this is a dynamic that can be reversed. At
almost every turn calls for regulations to improve the contributions that
industries make to the quality of the environment, or to product safety,
have been met with fierce resistance from concerned industries, and claims
of inevitable bankruptcy. In almost all instances where public support for
regulation was successfully mobilized the resultant changes in the
economics of those industries showed no deterioration, while the goals of
regulation were more or less met. I firmly believe that the same process of
consumer education and political action could result in a seachange in what
all of us expect and get in our material accumulations and fast foods.

On the other hand I could take the position that the great mass of
consumers are perfectly happy with what they are getting and any
educational effort to wise them up would be seen as elitist and
presumptuous. Ain't that a shame! Around here its called the "think that
they know better people from away". It took me a long time to catch on.
When I was involved in stopping some major local highway construction a few
years back I kept using the line "Next thing you know MacDonalds will be
moving in". Eventually I figured out that a lot of the native population
had felt pretty deprived having to drive 30 miles to the nearest MacDonalds
and would like nothing better for their children than to have one 4 miles
down the road. It didn't stop me from fighting to kill the highway
(successful), but I did have to stop kidding myself that I wasn't one of
those "from away" people.

I think that I'll go back to the position that its the economics of
standardization that creates the wealth that allows government and a few
individuals the luxury of employing us.

God. Its all so complicated.

Bruce
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