Letter: Poverty and trade

Sir: The "explanatory" box by Clare Garner ("Who are the protesters?", 2 December) says they suffer from "successophobia". That is her opinion. It could equally be called voluntary simplicity or "downshifting", that is the deliberate refusal of promotions at work and of greed for more than one's needs.

The problems of the world are greatly contributed to because people never say, "I have enough." On the same day, Hamish McRae wrote ("Five reasons to worry about free trade") that the whole world aspires to the lifestyle of North America and Western Europe, "but if the world tried to live that way we would place an impossible burden on the resources of the planet".

Let us shift from outer values to inner values, secure in the knowledge that we will be freeing up the poor and the planet by making life more and more uneconomic for industrialists and for the owners of vast estates in South America and Asia on which they grow cash crops. Let the poor have land.

MARK KINZLEY

Ilford

Essex