I Cooperate
27 October 2006
Editor, The New York Review of Books
To the Editor:
I've read few passages in your pages that are as mistaken as Bill McKibben's assertion that that "The technology we need most badly is the technology of community - the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.... We Americans haven't needed our neighbors for anything important" ("How Close to Catastrophe?" Nov. 16).
Each of us cooperates daily with countless others - neighbors, fellow citizens, foreigners - to ensure not only our prosperity but our very existence. My mind boggles at the number of people who cooperated to make available to me, for example, the shirt on my back. Cotton-growers in Egypt; fashion designers in Italy; textile workers in Malaysia; merchant marines from around the globe; investment bankers in Manhattan; insurers in Hartford; truck drivers along the east coast; department-store executives in Seattle; security guards and retail clerks in Virginia - these people and millions of others cooperated so that I might wear an ordinary shirt. Ditto for my house, my food, my subscription to The New York Review of Books.
For McKibben to say that "cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to be come extremely individualized, even hyperindividualized" is to be blind to the amazing and vast system of cooperation that today spans the globe. Clearly, we have, in spades, "knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The New York Review of Books
To the Editor:
I've read few passages in your pages that are as mistaken as Bill McKibben's assertion that that "The technology we need most badly is the technology of community - the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.... We Americans haven't needed our neighbors for anything important" ("How Close to Catastrophe?" Nov. 16).
Each of us cooperates daily with countless others - neighbors, fellow citizens, foreigners - to ensure not only our prosperity but our very existence. My mind boggles at the number of people who cooperated to make available to me, for example, the shirt on my back. Cotton-growers in Egypt; fashion designers in Italy; textile workers in Malaysia; merchant marines from around the globe; investment bankers in Manhattan; insurers in Hartford; truck drivers along the east coast; department-store executives in Seattle; security guards and retail clerks in Virginia - these people and millions of others cooperated so that I might wear an ordinary shirt. Ditto for my house, my food, my subscription to The New York Review of Books.
For McKibben to say that "cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to be come extremely individualized, even hyperindividualized" is to be blind to the amazing and vast system of cooperation that today spans the globe. Clearly, we have, in spades, "knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday June 8, 2007 at 2:41pm