Editors, the Gauntlet,
Thank God someone finally saw the glaring fault in the whole "Buy Nothing Day" premise other than me! Thank you, Mr. Marriott, for opening eyes out there on campus. As the traditional nation-state of government collapses and the market driven corpoarcy replaces it, via a socio-economic Darwinism, the citizen becomes the consumer. As consumer, the greatest contribution we can make to our economic society is to consume the microwaves, the Gap and Tommy Hillfiger clothes, Microsoft, McDonald’s and Nike. It’s not just our right as the wealthy Western middle-class, but our duty as patriotic consumers to the abstract "Global Market"–the same market that exploits the five-year-old children who make these lovely products for our consumption.
After all, the use of child labour in countries where it’s cheapest is a fine example of the new global economy at work. Just 40 years ago, tariffs and trade regulations made sweat shops next to impossible, but now, with the help of the WTO, companies can go wherever the labour and other resources are cheapest and pass the savings on to us. Don’t let old fashioned, nostalgic sentiment get to you, they’re not anything more than "labour" and "resources" any more than we’re more than the "consumer body." In fact, if Canada as a nation wants to survive economically we’re going to have to take definite steps to lose the lazy, unproductive "human rights" and "labour laws" that hold usback. If we can’t start using the revolutionary "sweat shops and children working 16 hour days for pennies" system of production, then we, like the dinosaurs, are doomed to histories dust bin.
Thank you, Mr. Marriott, for opening some eyes.