Planet of the Humans

So my issue is with the idea that economic growth can only take place through more stuff. I think the future is in having less stuff, but having that stuff be built to last a LONG time. I think physical goods and food need to get way more expensive.

Stuff like planned obsolescence needs to go. Everything should be built with one of the primary goals being to use the least material/time possible. That means investing a ton more effort into quality and craft… which will naturally raise the initial purchase price of things but keep the cost of ownership comparable.

The best way to fix that is to start levying significant taxes for natural resource consumption and carbon emissions so that producers and consumers have huge incentives to do their consumption in the form of labor/clean energy instead of stuff like plastic. Food waste is a problem we could solve pretty quickly if it actually was priced close to correctly.

It’s very hard to do any of that with 60% of the population living hand to mouth with no possible way to afford that kind of lifestyle though. This is why I’m so big on stuff that improves the spending power of the bottom of society. It’s not because I care all that much about them as people, because I promise I’m not that good of a person… it’s because they are being wasted from a productivity perspective, and because their ability to consume anything but the cheapest disposable stuff is pushing us off a cliff.

Stuff like overfishing is relatively easy to fix too. 1) we can farm fish (which is actually a super efficient way to grow food from an environmental perspective and 2) correctly managed fisheries still produce a substantial amount of protein. It’s a tragedy of the commons situation that isn’t insurmountable at all.

But yeah I’m not watching some huge bummer of a Michael Moore documentary. I already know plenty about how the environment is being degraded without watching a propaganda piece designed to terrify. I have enough of that in my life already.