5.20.2006

All that STUFF

Ok, I usually try and refrain from making sweeping social judgements about the intelligent and hard working (yada yada yada,) students of Williams college. But when I see the mountains of crap that piles up in the dumpsters outside dorms this time of year, it just makes me feel awful inside for so many reasons.

How much stuff is getting thrown out that is in perfectly usable condition, only the owner was too lazy to find a new owner for it? How much of that was used once all year, and is now cast away as too old or no longer worth the space? How much does it really made your life better here at Williams?

Yes, I'm talking about extra rugs and funny looking pillows, blow up chairs and halogen lamps, strings of Christmas tree lights and garbage bags full of t-shirts, mountains of books and entire couches left out in the rain. Why are you throwing these perfectly good things away? Can it possibly be that we like the act of acquiring the stuff and the value that comes from bringing home something new and flashy more than we actually like keeping them around and dealing with the space they take up?

Its like this is the dirty little secret of our rampant consumer lifestyle, rearing its ugly head for one short spell of wasteful glory, getting it all out of the way in a few painful days, so that we can return next year with more 'cool new things' from home to fill up the new spaces we'll have. And what's worse is that Williams is just one of thousands of colleges and universities whose dorms are emptying in the same way as we speak, all carelessly filling up dumpsters and thinking about trendy things to bring to the dorm next year.

Well, I'm grossed out. I'm making a point of picking up as much as I can and saving it until it can be given or sold to someone who will value this stuff for what it is. And please, don't feed me back stories of how you've 'saved this item since grade school' or 'aren't throwing anything away'. I know you good people are out there and I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the people who fill up the dumpsters, what do you have to say about your excessive waste!

5.17.2006

A World Without the Poor

Just step back and consider for a moment a world in which there are no poor. Where everyone has enough money to not be considered poor or lacking and everyone has disposable income to spend not only on 'luxuries' but also to spend on lawyers, political rights, education, etc. Lets put the economic and sociological feasibility of this project aside for the time being because I am going to stay away from that.

Instead, consider how you would act in such a world. When you want to buy a new hot tub you have to find a way to produce the electricity needed for it. You could not build another coal power plant somewhere because the people living there wouldn't allow it, and in this world they would have the means to make that desire a reality. You couldn't even build a windmill somewhere because there would always be some active protester who didn't want the eyesore on his ridge top. Instead you'd have to either build a power plant in your community, and mine the coal from your backyard to power it. With every kilowatt put into the hot tub, you inhale a little breath of coal smoke. Suddenly the hot tub becomes less appealing.

Next lets drive to the store for some groceries. But would you think twice about getting into your car if you know gasoline costs $20 a gallon? If the people in the middle east, Colombia, Nigeria and Sudan were as well off as we are, do you think they'd be selling crude oil for as cheap as they are? No, they, and everyone, would be using more and they'd live in a society that didn't give away its resources. Just imagine if Saudi Arabia's oil reserves were under America instead, would we be giving the stuff away at $70 a barrel? No, we'd be calling it a strategic resource and trying to manage it responsibly so that we can drive gas cars long after the rest of the world is starving for good old fossile fuels.

Then you'd get to the store, maybe on your bike at this point, and go in. Maybe you feel like ham for dinner. But as you reach for the pork you begin to smell the stench of the hog farm just outside the grocery store, because after all no body else wants a hog farm stinking up their backyard unless its going to benefit them in the only particular way a hog farm can: giving them pork. I mean, the only other reason you'd have a hog farm would be to make a living, and if it came down to making $30,000 a year raising hogs or $30,000 a year sitting in a puffy chair writing political satire, which would you choose? Given a free choice I'm not sure how many people would choose the pigs.

When anyone says 'not in my back yard' it either means 'I'm rich enough that i don't have to deal with this' or 'I'm not rich enough and the only thing I can do is complain to the few people who will listen'.

A world without poor is probably not possible, but I'm no theoretical economist. What I do know is that we profess ideals of humanism and equality and hold the power of money in politics in contempt. But as Americans we often blatantly overlook how our own actions may contribute to perpetuating the poverty, pollution and corruption that plagues our supposedly developed and modern society.