13 October 2006
One day I will be crucified by libertarians
I've been thinking a lot about consumerism lately. I think about it when I see every other green blog promoting sustainably produced goods. It seems that a new "green" product comes out every day. All of these fair-trade, organic doodads made out of hemp and bamboo and organic resins are all fine and good, but they do nothing to deal with the runaway consumption that we perpetuate in order to create some ideal lifestyle.
I've got this peculating grudge against capitalism. It's an unbalanced system. A pyramid scheme is just a simplified model of the whole process. Much like we've been trained to accept that all democracy is good, we've been conditioned to accept that participants upstream in the flow of goods and services benefit more than those downstream. A consumer will always pay more for something than it's worth. This is the source of profit. It's sacrilegious to question this dynamic as anything less than fair or just. But because we have been trained to be willing participants in the system, with the ubiquitous spin that anyone can be "successful" with enough work and talent, we accept and even perpetuate the promotion of a market economy.
When you look at capitalism from your immediate perspective, you only see the capital already in the system. The goods on the store shelves and the money in your pocket are only a minute segment of a long chain of profit. Our own impact is only felt personally. Our immediate environment is the only thing we personally see changed as a result.
Follow the chain back through the manufacturing process, and you see the pilfering of natural resources from our global common-wealth. Subtract the cost of the overhead of harvesting those resources and you find that someone got something for nothing. In essence, we - humans, plants, animals and microorganisms - were robbed. A small minority of the inhabitants of the planet permanently subtracted a portion of our communal property for personal gain. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be changed in such a way that it will no longer be useful for the sustenance of life.
Follow the chain ahead, and we see those resources consumed, degraded and eventually disposed of. The tangible goods that are not recycled end up in landfills, flushed into our streams and oceans or vaporized and cast into the wind. Recycling even consumes resources. It takes machines and energy to get the job done. The reclaimed plastics, glass, metals or other substances will only be subject to this sort of renewal for a limited number of iterations. Eventually, it all ends up fouling the biosphere.
What's to be done? How do we escape the net we are so hopelessly entangled in? The first step would be to keep the big picture in mind. What makes up the things we use? Where do they come from. Where did the profit find its birth? Where will the resources eventually end up? Beyond that, let your conscience guide you. What mind set of austerity will you bear while all around you consume more than the planet can cope with? I haven't been able to find an answer that lets me sleep comfortably.
I've got this peculating grudge against capitalism. It's an unbalanced system. A pyramid scheme is just a simplified model of the whole process. Much like we've been trained to accept that all democracy is good, we've been conditioned to accept that participants upstream in the flow of goods and services benefit more than those downstream. A consumer will always pay more for something than it's worth. This is the source of profit. It's sacrilegious to question this dynamic as anything less than fair or just. But because we have been trained to be willing participants in the system, with the ubiquitous spin that anyone can be "successful" with enough work and talent, we accept and even perpetuate the promotion of a market economy.
When you look at capitalism from your immediate perspective, you only see the capital already in the system. The goods on the store shelves and the money in your pocket are only a minute segment of a long chain of profit. Our own impact is only felt personally. Our immediate environment is the only thing we personally see changed as a result.
Follow the chain back through the manufacturing process, and you see the pilfering of natural resources from our global common-wealth. Subtract the cost of the overhead of harvesting those resources and you find that someone got something for nothing. In essence, we - humans, plants, animals and microorganisms - were robbed. A small minority of the inhabitants of the planet permanently subtracted a portion of our communal property for personal gain. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be changed in such a way that it will no longer be useful for the sustenance of life.
Follow the chain ahead, and we see those resources consumed, degraded and eventually disposed of. The tangible goods that are not recycled end up in landfills, flushed into our streams and oceans or vaporized and cast into the wind. Recycling even consumes resources. It takes machines and energy to get the job done. The reclaimed plastics, glass, metals or other substances will only be subject to this sort of renewal for a limited number of iterations. Eventually, it all ends up fouling the biosphere.
What's to be done? How do we escape the net we are so hopelessly entangled in? The first step would be to keep the big picture in mind. What makes up the things we use? Where do they come from. Where did the profit find its birth? Where will the resources eventually end up? Beyond that, let your conscience guide you. What mind set of austerity will you bear while all around you consume more than the planet can cope with? I haven't been able to find an answer that lets me sleep comfortably.
Labels: economics
// posted by Parge @ 7:25 AM
