*What I said was rhetorical, it's up to you and everyone else to hopefully "think about it" and make your own minds up--*

That is wonderful Squeers, but sadly so many other Marxists in
history have had the habit of making things compulsory.
Anyone can choose to live a frugal and simple life right now,
we know that.

Poirot, my point is that your environmental footprint includes
you children and childrens children, their consumption is as
much part of your environmental footprint as your consumption.

All that we know is that most of them only lack opportunity
in terms of consumption and much as you claim to, you cannot
predict the future.

Who predicted that Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan
and all the rest, would be living a Western lifestyle today?

Fact is that plenty of Indians are already far wealthier and
consume far more, then you ever will. The same with the
Chinese and members of every single developing country.

So my point remains. Your global footprint is not just about
what you consume, but also what your offspring consume, so
if you want to limit consumption, you'll have to limit breeding.

Yes Steve Keen it should be about fair trade not free trade.

There is a greater problem we should all now address, ie this debt based money creation system in which even inflationary money gets expressed as debt.

New money to equal increases in productivity,population and inflation should not be expressed as debt by private banks.In the West,the more productivity we have,the more debt we incur.This is why we have the cycles of boom and bust which destroy real growth and prosperity.

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI 'The Secret of Oz' by Bill Still gives us an insight into the history of money and how the banking elites have subjuated people for centuries via this debt based monetary system.

'The Secret of Oz' is about the hidden meaning of L Frank Baum's book,'The Wizard of Oz'. This was written in the deepest of depressions in the 1890's when the elites in 1873 replaced readily available silver with their gold.The money supply was reduced by 80%.

Dorothy with her sliver slippers in the book had the power to create from nothing, the money to equal their toil.The wicked witches of the east & west were represented JP Morgan and Rockerfeller,the two major banking powers of that time.

L Frank Baum is the voice from our past telling both children and adults of the evils of power without representation from the masses that matter.

We are witnessing this evil now with the stealing of our wealth and creative soul with impunity by central banking cartels.

The issue of free trade is just an aside compared to the big issue of debt based monetary creation.Prof Michael Hudson knows the reality.

Yoy flatter yourself, stevenlmayer; you haven't said anything worthy of even a strawman argument. I've made nothing so grandioss as an argument; I merely contradicted you.
As you say, "we do not strictly speaking have a free trade regime. We have a liberal, rule based, trading regime regulated by the WTO". Absolutely correct. We thus enjoy none of the putative benefits of genuine free trade. According to Mises "With perfect mobility of labor, capital, and commodities all over the earth's surface there would be a tendency for an equalization both in the rate of profit and in wages for labor of the same kind". This is objectionable to nationalists and protectionists because they want to maintain the disparities--which is the only way they can maintain their lifestyles and superiority complex. There's no way the planet can sustain everyone in Western style, so Mises "equalization" would be at a wretched level for the vast majority. Of course in Mises utopian vision self-sufficiency is a sin and national borders would be completely open to migration; indeed a state of global anarchy and unimpeded exploitation would prevail. Real free trade isn't going to happen, but the point is that quasi-laissez faire has no such putative tendency to finding equilibrium, but remains an utterly volatile and politicised paradigm prone to cronyism.
Small and non-wealthy countries that haven't already gone to the devil would be much better off being self-reliant and cultivating their own interests and sustainable subsistence, and developing according to those means and produce, and no more. Gloabalisation, or the "new international division of labour", has not only meant the loss of manufacturing in countries like Australia with high labour costs (though at least we still have "the pit", and a small share of the proceeds), but the industrial disease is moving offshore so that all the negative effects continue to accumulate.
Quasi-free trade is an instrument of global exploitation and all its pretence to humanitarianism and sustainability is a crock.

stevenlmeyer,

I read Prof. Keen's article as a another critique of economics' intellectual underpinnings, it's a theme he expanded in his book 'Debunking Ecomomics'. Anyone who has studied economics must have experienced some scepticism as to the validity of, at least some, of its 'laws'.

You're really drawing a longbow by claiming that Keen or any of his 'groupies' are advocating a regime of economic autarchy.
The Japanese, Koreans and Chinese didn't develop their ecomomies through free trade, they employed mercantilist policies.

Yabby,

Are you positing that people who have yet to exist possess a footprint?
I don't agree. I believe that we can project and predict their footprint, but footprints are only measurable by what it materially taking place. For instance, the average American consumes about eight times the amount of resources per hectare as those in developing countries. That is happening now.

Your other point is that those in the developing world only lack opportunity has no impact on their future footprint. As Squeers, pointed out, these people are so engrossed in manufacturing crap and trinkets for the West that they have little resource left to plan and work on their own sustainable industry. Most are still living a hand to mouth existence. How do you ever think a country such as India is going to have a comparable consumption rate to the U.S.?...where are the resources for such a paradigm shift going to come from?

Besides, the West can't even keep it's own house in order. Everything has been bought on credit and sovereign debt in Europe is only the latest sighing breath threatening to teeter the house of cards. We've already entered the double-dip recession - watch this space.

*but footprints are only measurable by what it materially taking place*

Poirot, if you want to claim to measure the effect that a persons
life will have on the environment, that effect will be dominated
by how many children they have. So if you don't allow for that
in your calculations, you are frankly peeing into the breeze.

*where are the resources for such a paradigm shift going to come from?*

where did the resources come from to create 850 million Indian mobile
phone subscribers or half a billion Chinese on the internet? Do you
think that they will just stop at that?

*Everything has been bought on credit and sovereign debt in Europe is only the latest sighing breath threatening to teeter the house of cards*

I agree with you. We have shocking polticians and the market has
finally decided that even countries will fail, if they keep borrowing
more, so they have stopped lending to them, thus the present crisis
in Europe. It just once again shows that Govts can't really run
anything too well.