L.M.H
FREEMAN
TỔNG HỢP MỘT SỐ BÀI
BÁO BẰNG TIẾNG ANH HAY
TRÊN MẠNG
Từ T11/2013 đến T8/2014
LỜI GIỚI THIỆU
Tác giả sưu tập những bài báo tiếng Anh về những chủ đề về kinh tế, khoa học, xã hôi, thể thao ở
trên những trang web báo nước ngoài (ví dụ: www.economist.com, www.asiasentinel.com,
www.wired.com, www.foreignpolicy.com).
Các bài báo là những sự kiện cập nhập nhất theo thời gian, ngoài ra cũng có một số bài là những
phát biểu của người nổi tiếng trên mạng xã hội (ví dụ: Facebook) bằng tiếng Anh.
Mục đích sưu tầm là để có thể luyện đọc tiếng Anh để chuẩn bị cho các kì thi tiếng Anh quan
trọng. Chú ý là đề thi IELTS thường lấy các bài báo ở trên trang economist làm đề thi của mình.
Thời gian sưu tầm các bài báo từ tháng 11 năm 2013 đến tháng 8 năm 2014.
Tác giả
2
CONTENTS
Gift-giving in rural areas has got out of hand, further impoverishing
China’s poor
Nov 30th 2013 | POPU VILLAGE, GUIZHOU PROVINCE
IT WAS a big week for Wang Wei. On a recent Wednesday she had two weddings to attend,
then on Saturday, two funerals. Each involved a banquet, and by custom she was obliged /bat
buoc, cuong bach/ to bring cash gifts. That was no hardship a decade ago, when the going rate
for four banquets was the equivalent of $5-10. And a decade before that, she would have just
brought rice or corn from the family plot.
It is a hardship now. The cost of gift-giving in rural China has gone up much faster than incomes.
This week Ms Wang’s outlays added up to 350 yuan, or close to $60—about a month’s income.
A pleasant, open-faced woman of 41, she says it is money she could have used to buy basic
appliances. A water heater would be nice, she says, so her husband, in-laws and two teenage
children wouldn’t have to boil water to bathe. A fridge would be splendid. But these are

The burden /trach nhiem/imposed by renqing is a painfully public one, since the giving is done
publicly. At a typical banquet guests line up to give cash at a reception table, where someone
records the amount and the name of the guest in the family’s gift ledger. No matter how little you
earn, you are expected to give the prevailing /chiem chu yeu/ amount. And if your guanxi with
the host is close, you must give more, regardless /khong quan tam/of income.
The careful record-keeping system also puts pressure on people to match previous gifts, a
dynamic that ensures the prevailing standard will only keep rising. Any factor that channels more
income to some in a village but not all—migrant workers’ remittances, a windfall from
government compensation for using local land, or, as with some of Ms Wang’s neighbours, from
farming a cash crop like tobacco—increases the obligations for everyone. In Popu village, where
4
the average annual income is less than $1,000, close friends and relatives must give at least 100
yuan ($16), compared with 10 or 20 yuan a decade ago.
There is not necessarily a benefit for those who host banquets either: the study on which Mr
Chen worked found that banquet expenses have increased too. They can cost the hosts several
times as much as they collect in gifts. Still, some banquets can be moneymakers, and in bigger
towns there are more of them, with many more guests, than in the past: 80th birthdays, one-
month birthdays for babies, parties for children going to college, housewarmings. (In the
mountains of Hubei province, some farmers hold banquets when their pigs give birth.)
If Ms Wang wants to try earning her money back, she is out of luck for now, lacking an
occasion. Her oldest son is 17, and sons are costly to marry off anyway: the bride’s family
expects a house in the bargain /khe uoc, keo uoc/. She has not held a banquet since 2005—when
her family moved into its new house—and the take was a pittance, a few hundred dollars before
expenses.
She expects she will give more in gifts this year (perhaps $1,000 in all) than she earns in income
from odd jobs and farming her third of an acre of corn and rice, and that she will have to borrow
to make up the difference. Attending banquets without giving is not an option, she says. Not
attending is the only way to avoid giving. That is possible in big cities, where relations are more
fragmented, but not in a village, says Ms Wang. The ties that bind more tightly can pinch more
tightly too.

which is why he became a symbol of tolerance and justice across the globe.
Perhaps even more important for the future of his country was his ability to think deeply, and to
change his mind. When he was set free, many of his fellow members of the African National
Congress (ANC) remained dedicated /cong hien/ disciples /mon de/ of the dogma /tin
nguong/promoted by their party’s supporter, the Soviet Union, whose own sudden /thinh
linh/implosion/am khep, su dinh huong vao trong/ helped shift the global balance of power that
in turn contributed to apartheid’s demise/su chet, ket thuc/. Many of his comrades were
simultaneously members of the ANC and the South African Communist Party who hoped to
dismember /chia cat/ the capitalist economy /nha kinh te tu ban/ and bring its treasure trove /vat
tim ra/of mines and factories into public ownership. Nor was the ANC convinced that a
Westminster-style parliamentary democracy/dang dan chu/—with all the checks and balances of
bourgeois institutions/thiet lap giai cap tu san/, such as an independent judiciary /tu phap/—was
worth preserving, perverted as it had been under apartheid.
Mr Mandela had himself harboured /nuoi duong (y nghi xau)/such doubts. But immediately
before and after his release from prison, he sought out a variety of opinions among those who,
6
unlike himself, had been fortunate /tot so/ enough to roam /di choi rong, di lang thang/ the world
and compare competing systems. He listened and pondered /tram tu, suy nghi, can nhac ve/—and
decided that it would be better for all his people, especially the poor black majority, if South
Africa’s existing economic model were drastically altered but not destroyed, and if a liberal
democracy /dang ty do/, under a universal franchise /quyen tham chinh/, were kept too.
That South Africa did, in the end, move with relatively little bloodshed to become a multiracial
free-market democracy was indeed a near-miracle for which the whole world must thank him.
The country he leaves behind is a far better custodian of human dignity than the one whose first
democratically elected /duoc chon/ president he became in 1994. A self-confident black middle
class is emerging. Democracy is well-entrenched, with regular elections, a vibrant /chan dong/
press, generally decent /dung dan/ courts and strong institutions. And South Africa still has easily
sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest and most sophisticated /nguy bien ?? having a lot of experience and
knowledge about the world/ economy.
But since Mr Mandela left the presidency in 1999 his beloved country/dat nuoc yeu quy cua ong/

Education in Vietnam
ON SATURDAY morning, December 14th, America's secretary of state, John Kerry, will travel
to Vietnam. One of his talking points, according to the State Department, will be the
"empowering /tang them /role of education”. But it seems like Vietnam has already taken the
message.
On December 3rd, the OECD released the results from its Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA), an exam administered every three years to 15- and 16-year-olds in dozens of
countries. Vietnam recently joined the test for the first time, and it scored remarkably well—
higher in maths than America and Britain, though not as high as Shanghai or Singapore. Nguyen
Vinh Hien, a deputy minister for education, characterised Vietnam's overall 17th-place ranking
out of 65 countries and economies as a pleasant “surprise.”
The PISA scores, as they are known, measured how a half-million students from randomly
selected schools answered written and multiple-choice questions in a two-hour test. Mathematics
was the primary focus, but students were also evaluated on reading, science and problem-
solving. Coverage /viec dua tin/ of the scores by the Western news media suggested that the
impressive maths performance by Vietnam, where per-capita GDP is only about $1,600, was
8
perhaps a bit humbling /xau ho/ for education officials in Washington, London and other self-
regarding world capitals.
What explains Vietnam's good score? Christian Bodewig of the World Bank says it reflects,
among other positive things, years of investment in education by the government and a "high
degree of professionalism /trinh do chuyen mon, nghiep vu/ and discipline in classrooms across
the country”. But Mr Bodewig adds that the score may be impressive in part because so many
poor and disadvantaged Vietnamese students drop out of school. The World Bank reports that in
2010 the gross enrolment rate at upper-secondary schools in Vietnam was just 65%, compared
with 89% and 98% in America and Britain, respectively. South Korea's rate was 95%.
A chorus of Vietnamese education specialists say that Vietnam's PISA score does not fully
reflect the reality of its education system, which is hamstrung by a national curriculum that
encourages rote memorisation over critical thinking and creative problem-solving. "Every child
in this country learns the same thing," and nationwide tests merely reinforce the intellectual

Centre for Education and Development says that a basic reform package might begin with the
younger age group, by including parents in a decision-making process that has long been
dominated by the education ministry. Nearly two years ago, she was among a dozen senior
educators who submitted paperwork to the ministry requesting permission to establish a national
parent-teacher association. Their group still has not received an official response. Perhaps the
ministry is afraid of what Vietnamese parents might say, if they had a platform.
(Picture credit: AFP)
http://www.cenedella.com/leonardo-da-vincis-resume/
Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume
On January 29, 2010 by Marc Cenedella
“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who
proclaim /tuyen cao/ themselves skilled contrivers /nguoi phat minh/ of instruments of war, and
that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in
common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice /phien dien/to anyone else, to explain myself to
your Excellency/cac ha/, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best
pleasure and approbation /n. phe chuan, tan thanh/to work with effect at opportune moments
/thoi gian thich hop/on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.
1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and
with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and
indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning
and destroying those of the enemy.
2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless
variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining/quan he/ to
such expeditions./quan sat/
3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is
impossible, when besieging a place, to avail /loi ich/oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have
methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.
4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling
small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the
enemy, to his great detriment/ton hai/ and confusion/hoang loan/.

glaciers of the Himalayas could melt by 2035. This was complete fiction. It also said global
surface temperatures would go on rising by about 0.2°C a decade for the next 20 years. They
have been more or less flat since 1998. The IPCC has now issued its sextennial check-up on the
health of the global climate (see article). Why would anyone believe what they say?
Because there are climate facts—and facts are stubborn things. One is that the upper 75 metres of
the oceans have warmed by 0.1°C a decade in the past 40 years and there is no sign of this
slowing down. Water expands, and ice melts, as temperatures rise, so sea levels have risen 19cm
in the past century and the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about 500,000 square kilometres a
decade since 1979.
These facts matter because the oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface and are its
primary heat sink (90% of the extra warming over the past 40 years has gone into the oceans).
By most measures—though not all—global warming is continuing.
But what about the pause in air temperatures? Isn’t that a fact? Indeed it is. But right now it
matters more to climate science than climate policy. The extent of the pause is sensitive to the
starting-point chosen when defining it. The recent temperature peak was 1998. The world has
warmed by 0.05°C a decade since then, only a quarter of the rise the IPCC forecast. But in 1998
El Niño, an occasional warming of the Pacific Ocean which boosts temperatures around the
planet, was unusually large. If you start in 2000 and compare the decade of the 2000s with the
1990s, you find that the IPCC estimate was close. This does not mean the pause does not exist.
But it is more or less striking depending on where you view it from.
More important, it is not clear yet how much weight to give to a 15-year period. Half a
generation is long enough to come to a judgment on most things. But climate cycles last
12
hundreds, or tens of thousands, of years. It used to be a rule of thumb that climate scientists
wanted 30 years of observations before judging that something was a trend, rather than a
fluctuation. Partly for that reason, they were slow and reluctant in taking the temperature hiatus
seriously.
The decade-and-a-half to 2013 was unusual because it also saw a big rise in carbon-dioxide
emissions, which, all things being equal, should have pushed up temperatures everywhere, and
didn’t. And that raises important questions: why have sea temperatures risen but not air

defeat in 1945 control fell to the Americans, who used the islands for bombing practice. In 1972,
at the end of the American occupation, the Japanese government resumed responsibility for the
Senkakus.
By then, however, oil and gas reserves had been identified under the seabed surrounding the
islands. China, which calls them the Diaoyu islands, asserted /tuyen bo/ its claim, as did Taiwan,
which is closest to the islands (and which is also claimed by China). China’s claim is vague/ho
do/, and is based on things such as a Chinese portolano from 1403 recording the islands. It all
speaks to an earlier world in which China lay at the heart of an ordered East Asian system of
tributary states—an order shattered /vo vun/ by Japan’s militarist rise from the late 19th century.
What this history tells you is not—contrary to modern Chinese claims—that China controlled the
Diaoyus, for it never did. Rather, the islands were known to the Chinese because they served as
navigational waypoints for tributary missions between the great cosmopolitan/mang tinh the gioi/
Chinese port of Quanzhou and Naha, capital of the Ryukyu island kingdom, China’s most loyal
14
vassal. In 1879 Japan snuffed out/ket thuc/ the ancient kingdom. Naha is now the main town on
the main island of Japan’s archipelago prefecture of Okinawa/dia hat cua Okinawa/. Some
Chinese nationalists call not only for the Senkakus’ return, but for Okinawa too.
In the late 1970s China and Japan agreed to kick the dispute into/dam phan, tranh luan/ the long
grass. But China’s attitude has hardened, especially since September 2012, when the Japanese
government bought from their private owner three of the islands it did not already own. It was in
order to prevent them falling into the hands of an ultranationalist/chu nghia dan toc cuc doan/,
Shintaro Ishihara, then governor of Tokyo. But China saw it as a provocation /tuyen chien/and
sent vessels and aircraft to challenge Japan’s control of the Senkakus. China’s announcement on
November 23rd of an East China Sea “air defence identification zone” which covers the
Senkakus is further evidence of its attempt to alter the status quo. Much more than presumed/gia
dinh/ oil and gas reserves, emotion is now driving China’s actions, in particular notions of
national honour and a desire to regain the centrality in East Asia that it for centuries enjoyed.
This dispute is a microcosm of that desire, which makes it so potentially dangerous.
A surprise appointment by Angela Merkel hints at who may succeed
her one day

and then practising gynaecology and having seven children. Since Mrs Merkel became
chancellor in 2005, Mrs von der Leyen has had stints as minister of families and women, then of
labour and welfare.
During these years, she has proved herself unfailingly loyal to Mrs Merkel, even after a personal
disappointment in 2010, when the chancellor did not nominate her for federal president as she
had hoped. She also cultivated an image as the social conscience of her party. With rare bravura,
she demonstrated personally how to combine work and family but also pushed policies that
would help other women do the same. These views have made her popular with voters but at
times less appreciated by conservatives in the CDU. To become a plausible candidate to succeed
Mrs Merkel, she will first have to shore up her support within the party’s base.
Women are gaining a higher profile in Mrs Merkel’s government more generally. Four of the
SPD’s cabinet positions have gone to women, with some of the portfolios dearest to party
members: labour, women and integration of foreigners. In another surprise, Jörg Asmussen, a
Social Democrat who has the German seat on the board of the European Central Bank (ECB),
will return to Berlin. Mr Asmussen will be missed in Frankfurt, having acted as a bridge between
the bank and the German government and voters in the euro crisis. The candidate to replace him
at the ECB is another woman, Sabine Lautenschläger-Peiter, the number two at the German
Bundesbank. She belongs to no party, but is an expert on bank regulation who often talks out
against bankers with big bonuses.
16
Mrs Merkel has given no hints about her own career plans beyond denying some speculation that
she might step down in mid-term, around the time of her tenth anniversary as chancellor. The
previous CDU chancellor, Helmut Kohl, served four terms but then lost the 1998 election.
Thinking of him and Konrad Adenauer, Germany’s first post-war chancellor, Mrs von der Leyen
has in the past evaded questions about her ambitions by saying that in the CDU “each generation
has its chancellor,” and hers already has Angela Merkel. If Mrs von der Leyen does her new job
well, she may reconsider.
China’s new air-defence zone suggests a worrying new approach in
the region
Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition

of commendably radical domestic reforms. The new zone will appeal to the nationalist camp,
which wields huge power, particularly in the armed forces. It also helps defend Mr Xi against
any suggestions that he is a westernising liberal.
If this is Mr Xi’s game, it is a dangerous one. East Asia has never before had a strong China and
a strong Japan at the same time. China dominated the region from the mists of history until the
1850s, when the West’s arrival spurred Japan to modernise while China tried to resist the
foreigners’ influence. China is eager to re-establish dominance over the region. Bitterness at the
memory of the barbaric Japanese occupation in the second world war sharpens this desire. It is
this possibility of a clash between a rising and an established power that lies behind the oft-used
parallel between contemporary East Asia and early 20th-century Europe, in which the Senkakus
play the role of Sarajevo.
Seas of troubles
Tensions are not at that level. Japan’s constitution bans it from any military aggression and
China normally goes to great lengths to stress that its rise—unlike that of Japan in the 1920s and
1930s—will be peaceful. But the neighbours are nervous, especially as the establishment of the
ADIZ appears to match Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
Chinese maps show what is known as the “nine-dash line” encompassing all the South China
Sea. In the wake of the global financial crisis, perhaps believing its own narrative of Chinese rise
and American decline, it began to overreach in its dealings with its neighbours. It sent ships to
disputed reefs, pressed foreign oil companies to halt exploration and harassed American and
Vietnamese naval vessels in the South China Sea. These actions brought a swift rebuke from
18
America’s then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and China appeared to back off and return to
its regional charm offensive. Some observers say that the government is using the ADIZ to
establish a nine-dash line covering the East China Sea as well. They fear China’s next move will
be to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea, to assert control over both the sea and the air
throughout the region.
Whether or not China has such specific ambitions, the ADIZ clearly suggests that China does not
accept the status quo in the region and wants to change it. Any Chinese leader now has an excuse
for going after Japanese planes. Chinese ships are already ignoring Japanese demands not to

parameters for Colorado's marijuana regime, including maximum tax rates and the rights of cities
and counties to exclude pot shops from their jurisdictions. But the details were worked out by
officials and legislators over the course of 2013. Unlike many states (including Washington,
which has also legalised marijuana but not yet licensed recreational outlets) Colorado's medical-
marijuana system is well regulated; not only did that make full legalisation an easier sell to
voters, it provided a foundation for the recreational industry. Until October only licensed medical
outlets "in good standing" can serve recreational customers, which is why lots of the shops that
opened on January 1st have names like Citi-Med and Medicine Man. Colorado's system of
"vertical integration", under which retailers must cultivate most of the stuff they sell themselves,
will also remain in place until October; this makes monitoring easier for the state, even if one
irritated observer likens it to a supermarket owning apple orchards.
One challenge is to set prices at what Mark Kleiman, an analyst, calls the "Goldilocks point": too
low and you encourage excessive consumption and out-of-state exports; too high and you leave
room for illicit dealers. The market has not settled in yet, but prices for recreational marijuana,
currently around $250-$300 for an ounce of good weed, will be significantly higher than the
20
medical stuff, thanks to hefty taxes: a 15% excise tax levied on "average market rate" and a
special 10% sales tax (the state's general 2.9% sales tax will also apply). Only those aged over 21
may buy, possess and use marijuana in Colorado; they may consume it only on private property
with the consent of the property-owner, and they may not transfer it across state lines. Residents
may purchase up to an ounce at a time; out-of-staters are limited to a quarter-ounce, and, if
buying weed rather than edibles, face the extra challenge of finding somewhere to smoke it:
Amsterdam-style "coffee shops" are banned. Locals can grow up to six plants at home, and give
away (but not sell) the proceeds. (The full rulebook extends to 136 pages.)
Implementing all this will be hard enough. But Colorado's officials must also keep the federal
government happy. Marijuana remains illegal under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, and the
feds have been more than willing to crack down on some medical-marijuana operators in recent
years. In August James Cole, the deputy attorney-general, issued a memo suggesting that the
federal government will allow the experiments in Colorado and Washington to proceed so long
as they do not impede eight "enforcement priorities", including the diversion of marijuana to

zoologist and ecologist. But when I went into the field, I hit reality. What I’d been taught just
simply wasn’t making sense. It didn’t match with what I was seeing. To give you an example:
We were taught that overgrazing caused desertification. More specifically, that desertification
was due to too many livestock, and that the answer was reducing the numbers of animals and
burning the grass to keep it healthy.
Well, I was soon engaged in burning massive areas of land to keep the grass healthy. This was
land that was to become our future national parks. I couldn’t help but observe the fact that we
were baring the soil, and that the bare soil was subsequently being carried away by the rainfall.
And as I mention in my TED Book, I actually took to walking in the rain so that I could see what
was happening for myself. And just found it was wrong, you know? Of course, I didn’t have
answers, but I began very seriously looking for them.
Then came one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Because the land degradation was so bad, but
there wasn’t any livestock on it, I proved the problem must be that there were too many
elephants. And the government, after investigating my book and approving, shot 40,000
elephants. But the desertification only got worse, and it’s still getting worse to this day. As I look
back, one my biggest findings came from trying something, making a mistake and saying, “Well,
why did it go wrong?” So actually some of the biggest findings came from the failures.
Another big finding for me was when I happened to pick up a farming magazine off a coffee
table in a farmer’s house and read an article by John Acocks. John was a botanist studying the
extension of the Karoo Desert bushes taking over what had been grassland. He had concluded
that the land was understocked—was carrying too few animals—but was overgrazed. So he said
South Africa was deteriorating because of overgrazing and understocking. This caused a furor in
the scientific community. Acocks was ridiculed, but to me it was brave new thinking. I actually
drove all the way down to the Cape to go and see him personally and was able to visit some of
the ranchers he was working with.
Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
Now, I’m always looking for places where something different is happening. Some people call
that “positive deviance.” I spotted one such deviance while I was visiting a ranch: A patch of
land that was visibly much better than the rest. I got very excited and asked the rancher what had
happened in that spot. He told me the sheep he was using had crowded there for a short time.

sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry?
A good tracker is interpreting a lot.
Allan Savory gave a talk with a solution for land degradation that set TED2013 abuzz. Today, he
releases the TED Book, The Grazing Revolution.
GS: It certainly led to good work! Can you tell me a little bit about your TED Book? Your
earlier works have been specifically targeted to land managers. But of course TED casts a
much broader net, and I’m wondering what do you think urban dwellers can bring to the
land-management table? What’s your intention there?
AS: Urban dwellers are the only ones that can save the situation. Let me explain that: The bulk
of the populations of almost every country have moved to the cities, or are moving there. That’s
where the voting power is — the mass of public opinion is. Now the stuff I talked about at TED,
we’ve talked about for years. Now you might ask: Well, why did nothing change? At first, I too
23
could not understand. It did not seem logical. But as I grappled with it, I went back to
researching other fields to see if there was any reason for this, and I found there was.
Hard systems are everything we’re using right now — computers, phones, planes, the clothes
you’re wearing, the room you’re in. Everything there involves 100% use of technology and
expertise to make it, and nothing we make — including space exploration vehicles and so on —
is complex. Everything we make is complicated. Nothing is self-renewing. If the computer is
missing a part, it doesn’t work, or the plane is missing a part, it doesn’t work. It can’t self-
organize.
But if we look at human organizations, they are complex. In other words, they do what they’re
designed to do, and can be very efficient, be they a university, a hospital, etc. But they—because
they’re complex, self-organizing, composed of hundreds of individual humans all interacting—
they have what are called emergent properties, things that emerge that weren’t planned or
intended. And these can result in what system science calls “wicked problems.” This doesn’t
mean they’re amoral — just that they’re extremely difficult to solve.
There are two wicked problems of human organizations. One is that they cannot—they simply
cannot—accept new scientific insights ahead of society in general. And so that is why my TED
Talk in 20 minutes did more than 50 years of struggle within the scientific community. Because

coordinated action not simply impossible but despised and distrusted.”
GS: I remember back in the ‘80s, as ranchers we were under a lot of pressure from
environmental groups—they really wanted to remove all livestock from public lands.
AS: Yeah, “cattle-free by ’93.”
GS: Exactly. The idea that industrial agriculture could somehow save us: Could you
comment on that at all?
AS: Those environmentalists, they’re trained in the same universities. I understand them,
because I also once believed that if we could get rid of the livestock and return to just wildlife,
we might be able to stop the degradation of the land. But again, I was wrong, because that
became a major multi-billion dollar industry, mainly in places like Texas and South Africa. But
every single game ranch without exception that I’ve been on, the land is still deteriorating. I held
those same beliefs — that we just had to get rid of livestock — so I understand those
environmentalists. In my case, I just saw that I was wrong. And I loved the land and wildlife
more than I hated livestock. So I changed.
GS: I have a personal question to ask. Most of us who are involved in agriculture, who are
not landowners, have kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that the rewards come in other
than financial ways. It seems to me like the best thing about being able to manage livestock
on a big piece of land is that every day you get a chance to appreciate just what a gift it is to
get to come and live on this planet, you know? And it seems like we operate under this
economic system that measures everything in terms of dollars and cents. I mean, most
economic theory would say we could measure all goods in those terms, and that doesn’t
appear to be a defensible assumption. And the other assumption is that all growth is good,
the more the better. It seems like a holistic approach would require that we rethink those
things, particularly the one that equates happiness with dollars and cents.
AS: You’re absolutely right. But again, we will not solve this by just taking a holistic approach,
although that is necessary. We’ll only solve it by actually developing policies holistically. The
things you mentioned just cannot go on. I mean, constant growth in a finite world is just simply
not scientific. The use of fiat money — where money makes money—and wealth is
accumulating ever more in the 1% — that’s inevitable with the monetary system we have. And
then the development, or the measurement of growth on gross domestic product, is just