vobiblog

Last year, at the Students of Sustainability conference, I thought I would push my boundaries a little. Instead of going to a nice, safe, feel good session about sustainability, I went to one entitled: Living cheaply and contributing as little to the capitalist economy as possible. This fantastic little session discussed what most people would consider deviant behaviour – fare evasion, dumpster diving, squatting and shoplifting.

The seminar was divided into two parts, firstly they gave some moral justifications for engaging in such behaviour, followed by instructions on how to do it. I don’t know why they even bothered attempting to provide moral justifications. The best they came up with was that dumpster diving doesn’t really need a moral qualification. I tend to agree. However, this crazy woman, who was talking about shoplifting started ranting on about organic grocers, and how they were exploiting a market niche. Then moving on to the fact that they only really sell to rich middle-class types, and she coined the phrase “exploitative organic grocers!”, which she proceeded to include no less than 5 times throughout the rest of her speech. These exploitative organic grocers she speaks of actually just Joe Average market stall holders down at the Queen Vic.

I walked away shocked. In my book, shoplifting was bad, period. Someone tries to do the right thing by the planet and its people, and all the get is accusations of being exploitative. At an environmental conference no less! Once again, the anarchists prove they have no solutions.

Fast forward 9 months, I was reading Energy Bulletin and it had a link to an article titled “Is Whole Foods Wholesome?“. To save you from having to read it all youself, it is basically critical of the US organic grocery chain called Whole Foods. However, if Whole Foods is exploiting anyone, its their middle-class customers. Nothing shocking there. Down near the bottom of the article, the author claims that Wal-Mart is getting into organic produce. I think we have found the real exploitative organic grocers for the crazy to pick on.

For those of you who haven’t seen me for a while, I thought I would post a new picture so you can see what I look like these days.

I thought it was time for a new look. Comments are now posted automatically thanks to the addition of a Catcha! WTF is a Catcha? Post a comment and find out…