This is a great discussion - all the facets of it - and as the media cover it more I hope it proliferates. I agree with Andrea that a reflexive "buy American" policy is not necessarily the point, but that the question really is one of changing our culture to one that values quality over quantity. The self-esteem movement notwithstanding, it seems like we've moved away from genuine pride in ourselves and respect for one another to some core insecurity which drives this crazy, competitive consumption.

As I mentioned to a friend after coming back from a weekend in a tourist town in Mexico - the place was bursting with useless, soon-to-be-thrown-away souvenir-type crap - the sheer waste of it broke my heart: surely they wouldn't be making the crappy crap if people weren't buying it.

The disrespect the tourists appeared to have of the local culture and local pride saddened me, but the disrespect went both ways: the shopkeepers clearly believed we wanted the junk they were selling.

I'd love to think this mutual disrespect could be replaced by what Andrea alludes to, a renewed sense of national (or simply individual) pride on everyone's part. It's difficult, though, to picture big, corporate manufacturers taking this kind of pride - there's no connection anymore between the management and the product.

The obvious disrespect of importers essentially selling the U.S. poisons and garbage *as food* is chilling and might require more drastic steps, possibly government intervention. (I recently posted a link to an interview with an ex-FDA commissioner and questioned whether at the very least we could mandate food manufacturers to identify the source of their ingredients on their labels.)

But bottom line, perhaps, is for individuals to have a little pride, and to choose not to hang crap on their backs, or to put crap in their mouths; to understand the difference between fashion and style; and to understand how much power we each have in the global economy. (We're just starting to 'get' how much impact we can have individually on the global environment, so maybe the shift is possible.)

I know - easy to say when you have the money to make those choices, but just as somebody's got to buy the first roll of overpriced Recycled Toilet Paper to develop the market for environmentally conscious goods, maybe those among us who can afford to opt for smaller tailors, local produce and all the rest of it can pave the way for these opportunities to become real for everyone.