Disposable Society
I have to say that my ire is rising higher and higher about this disposable society the American Homeland has become. I know all of you watch television, so you probably watch the commercials too. Unlike some I do not tune them out mentally, but watch them.
I am also bit of a Galbreathian disciple. Galbreath was a radical economist, and I've always liked radicals. Well anyway, one of Galbreath's concepts was that in certain economic situations, demand is created out of thin air by advertisers. We don't need a product per se, but we really WANT IT once we see that it exists. Now a days this seems self evident but it was a radical theory at the time.
Anyway what got me going on all this is the pile of garbage we are creating because as Americans we are too lazy to do things that have served mankind for anywhere from a few years to literally hundreds of years. The latest one I saw today is some sort of disposable toilet bowl cleaner head, use it once, and pop it off to the trash.
Then there is the whole swiffer concept. Obviously its too hard to use a mop and water now a days, instead we need chemically enhanced plastic products (I cannot imagine what the decomposition rate of these things is) to clean our floors. So toilet bowl brushes ( or god forbid using a sponge and your Hands - sponges are biodegradable) (AND YES I clean toilets), are out. Mops are out. Matches are out, we need little plastic capsules of non renewable petroleum products to light our whatevers.
To me this just another symptom in the sick materialistic mentality this country suffers from. Gas prices are 2.00 a gallon and SUV's still out sell every vehicle on the market today. As a country our recycling initiatives are a joke. This wave of disposable products to fill our land fills. It's all just wrong. This country consumes more resources per capita than any other nation on the planet, and we contribute more to greenhouse warming and depletion of non renewable resources than any other. Yet our population as a percentage of the Planet is ridiculously low.
We cannot entrust corporate America to make the right decision and NOT produce disposable products and non renewable resource guzzling products. Corporate America has no ethics or morals unless they are legislated. It is up to individual consumers to do the right thing. And the average consumer will not do the right thing as long as they think that it is ok to just consume without remorse as if it is their god given right as Americans.
And you know what? It only gets better......... Imagine how much more damage Corporate America can do with 4 more years of their CEO's running the country? Of course I do mean the Bush administration.
OUT
I have to say that my ire is rising higher and higher about this disposable society the American Homeland has become. I know all of you watch television, so you probably watch the commercials too. Unlike some I do not tune them out mentally, but watch them.
I am also bit of a Galbreathian disciple. Galbreath was a radical economist, and I've always liked radicals. Well anyway, one of Galbreath's concepts was that in certain economic situations, demand is created out of thin air by advertisers. We don't need a product per se, but we really WANT IT once we see that it exists. Now a days this seems self evident but it was a radical theory at the time.
Anyway what got me going on all this is the pile of garbage we are creating because as Americans we are too lazy to do things that have served mankind for anywhere from a few years to literally hundreds of years. The latest one I saw today is some sort of disposable toilet bowl cleaner head, use it once, and pop it off to the trash.
Then there is the whole swiffer concept. Obviously its too hard to use a mop and water now a days, instead we need chemically enhanced plastic products (I cannot imagine what the decomposition rate of these things is) to clean our floors. So toilet bowl brushes ( or god forbid using a sponge and your Hands - sponges are biodegradable) (AND YES I clean toilets), are out. Mops are out. Matches are out, we need little plastic capsules of non renewable petroleum products to light our whatevers.
To me this just another symptom in the sick materialistic mentality this country suffers from. Gas prices are 2.00 a gallon and SUV's still out sell every vehicle on the market today. As a country our recycling initiatives are a joke. This wave of disposable products to fill our land fills. It's all just wrong. This country consumes more resources per capita than any other nation on the planet, and we contribute more to greenhouse warming and depletion of non renewable resources than any other. Yet our population as a percentage of the Planet is ridiculously low.
We cannot entrust corporate America to make the right decision and NOT produce disposable products and non renewable resource guzzling products. Corporate America has no ethics or morals unless they are legislated. It is up to individual consumers to do the right thing. And the average consumer will not do the right thing as long as they think that it is ok to just consume without remorse as if it is their god given right as Americans.
And you know what? It only gets better......... Imagine how much more damage Corporate America can do with 4 more years of their CEO's running the country? Of course I do mean the Bush administration.
OUT
Comments