So how do convince people in the developing world that they shouldn't strive to be like Europeans or Americans?
It isn't so difficult to convince people that they shouldn't hate themselves. That they shouldn't have disrespect for their own food, their own skin color, their own clothing. People actually like to hear they're okay. So I think the problem is that there are very few people and very few organizations doing what we do. I have found very often that the message is very, very welcome. Especially backed by the statistics on the epidemic of depression in the West, the problems we have with crime, all of our problems.
People in the developing world see tourists coming and spending large amounts of money every day, but they don't know that we pay 10 or 50 times as much as they do for a cup of coffee or even for a glass of water. They don't know that most people in America don't own a house, especially one without a mortgage, without being indebted. Everyone in Ladakh owns a house without being indebted.
How do you convince everyone in the developed world to turn their back on the outrageous waste inherent in the consumer culture system?
I believe that if there were more written and shown on television to discuss these issues as part of a broader and deeper analysis, I think there would be a lot of people who would be in agreement. The problem is that the framing of issues today is too narrow and too fragmented and that that fragmentation is linked to the growth of bigger and bigger concentrations of wealth that continues to promote this particular growth model. And I don't think that the CEOs of big corporations, banks, and finance institutions are at all aware of the ultimate impact of what they do. I think ignorance is the main driving source of the system. So in contrast to persuading people, I think we need a holistic analysis of where this system is taking us. Some people like to call it capitalism, and say that word capitalism is incompatible with sustainability, and in a way I'd say that's true, but I don't like to use the term capitalism because I think it implies that socialism or communism are a better way. The framework that lies outside of, and beyond communism, socialism, and capitalism is discussing the scale of economic activity and looking at the fact that for most people, in most parts of the world, more human-scale businesses closer to home providing for basic needs—food, clothing, and shelter—is the model that really makes sense for all people around the world, and it's a model that can't bend left or right.
How do we create the proper balance between supporting localization, which you are at pains to say doesn't mean closing borders to imports or economic isolationism, while acknowledging the need for some international trade?
The structural issue is: how big, and how global, should businesses be? I would maintain that when a business is more powerful and wealthier than government, we're in trouble. That means we are ruled by for-profit institutions that we don't vote for, or often don't even know about. What we need to ensure is that business comes under the legal and cultural framework that has been set up by nation states. In order to have international trade, we don't need multinational businesses or banks. What has to happen is that the social and environmental movements need to become economically literate about a few basic issues that can help us understand why we're in such dire straits—not just environmentally and socially, but also politically.
People may not realize that even in Scandinavia, and certainly in India, it's essentially giant corporations that are ruling. They are determining the shape, not just of the economy, but of our mindset.
I think it's key that we don't demonize people inside global corporations. They are born of the blindness that all of us have similarly suffered from in allowing this process to continue. Both the left and the right have fostered a model of growth that subsidizes, regulates, and taxes in such a way that not only favors big business, but essentially pressures them to become bigger and more global. We all have to take responsibility for that and start an incremental process of re-regulating global business and shifting taxes and subsidies to support a shift toward more localized business.