Tag: consumerism
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time...
“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the...
“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house. I got up...
Cultivating Gratitude
Blairsville, GA. Recently I was with a friend whose oldest son, having just completed his junior year, is home from college. The young man...
Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms
Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning...
New Dishwasher?
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. About a week ago our dishwasher started to issue a loud grinding sound from its hidden depths. After a few days...
Why we do not own a Television
April was "Media Awareness Month" at our sons' school. I took a couple weeks off from the Porch, and I also published a...
I Want to Be a Consumer
A bit of doggerel from Punch Magazine (25 April 1934).
I Want to Be a Consumer
“And what do you mean to be?”
The kind old Bishop...
The Wise Old Œconomist
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Before it became a science of supply and demand and the circulation of commodities, economics was originally understood as the...
Food and Freedom
RINGOES, NJ. Isn’t it interesting how quickly speculation becomes conventional wisdom? Back in the fall, when we began to hear rumblings of economic catastrophe,...