In the early twentieth century the problem of production had been solved; after that it was the problem of consumption that plagued society. In the 1950s and '60s, consumer commodities and farm products began to pile up in vast towering mountains all over the Western World. As much as possible was given away - but that threatened to subvert the open market. By 1980, the pro tem solution was to heap up the products and burn them: billions of dollars of worth, week after week.
Philip K. DickRelated topics
begin burn century consumer consumption early farm given heap market open possible pro problem production subvert vast week western worth 1950s 60s 1980Related quotes
Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them, and then caught them, prosecuted them for not paying their taxes, and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs. The jails are full and the problem is getting worse every day.
Billie Holiday
The Society will live on into and through the twentieth century. It will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of thinking and intelligent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of Religion, Duty, and Philanthropy. Slowly but surely it will burst asunder the iron fetters of creeds and dogmas, of social and caste prejudices; it will break down racial and national antipathies and barriers, and will open the way to the practical realization of the Brotherhood of all men.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
The postwar [WWII] GI Bill of Rights - and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America's veterans - signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century.
We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.
Peter Drucker
Donald Judd spoke of a 'neutral' surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used 'non' or 'not' – expressive – this is an early problem – a negative solution or – expression of new sense – which can help one into – what one has not known. 'Neutral' expresses an intention.
Jasper Johns
Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances --all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal.
George Dantzig