Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Walking gently - what does it take?

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

Brian> price in dollars is generally the best measure of resource use

Catya> Sadly, This is really not true.  Look at the difference between
Catya> goods made locally vs goods made in China - clearly there is
Catya> more resource use simply to transport the goods from China, but
Catya> they are significantly cheaper.

No, that is NOT clear to me.  To make this argument you'd need to show
measurements of how much oil and human work hours it takes to move a
ship of containers from China.  Make sure you count every human being
who has ever touched any precursor of this ship, including all the
heavy and light industry, and all the metal back to the mines.  Do not
use money prices anywhere in your analysis.

This analysis is a fractal amount of work, and it is impossible to do.
The closest approximation we have to subtotals of resource use is
money prices.  See also:

        http://www.econlib.org/Library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

                                                        Brian