Over the last couple of decades, greed and capitalism have been destroying community. Partly by the taking of excess profits, and partly by monetizing everything possible. A big part of it is the reduction in tax rates for the extremely wealthy. Without the redistribution of wealth through taxes, too many essentials go unfunded. Another aspect is the huge inequity in wealth, with 1/10th of 1 percent holding 95 percent of the wealth. Then there is the definition of 'wealth'. Numbers in bank computers are considered 'wealth', but they don't actually have value. Not like houses, bridges, schools, water systems, electrical grids, etc.
I am sure that others can point out examples of capitalism destroying community, but what I am interested in is describing a way to stop the destruction. For instance, bringing some manufacturing jobs back to where they used to be done. The higher levels of pay created demand for services that gave many people a livelihood. House cleaner, nanny, cook, gardener, many semi- and unskilled jobs resulted from people making good money and wanting to spend their time doing things other than taking care of their house and yard.
For the most part, jobs were off-shored because that allowed higher profits to be taken. Having someone in China assemble your product was still cheaper after all the shipping than having someone in the U.S. assemble it. The drive for ever higher profit disregards the consequences of taking well-paying jobs away from people. We have also seen the quality of products diminish because of the use of inferior materials, poor design, and sloppy assembly. One of the most common things I encounter is the 'snap together' item, which cannot be taken apart without breaking it. This is acceptable for inexpensive items, but when the price is substantial, I expect that the item should be repairable.
Another example is the reduction in the amount of room at the top of a bottle of water, juice, or some other product. In order to save 1/100th of a penny per bottle, the distributors have reduced the free space in the container by decreasing the room from the top of the contents to the top of the container. Squeeze the container to open it, and you end up wearing the contents. Okay, that is not going to destroy the community in and of itself, but it is another straw to put on the camel's back.
And capitalism is based on consumption, which is what is creating the problems with the environment. Reducing consumption reduces the profits to be made, so there is a lot of resistance to reducing consumption. To really be able to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, people need to leave their cars and trucks at home and use mass transit, ride a bicycle, carpool, or walk. But those alternatives will put a lot of people who make cars out of work, so we get electric vehicles, which are touted as being more 'environmentally sound'. They are heavier, so need more energy to move around, and require exotic materials to make the batteries with. Electric vehicles are a way to go on consuming while pretending to be conserving.
Fossil fuels contain absurd amounts of energy per given unit of measure. Nothing I know of equals fossil fuels in energy density. So switching automobiles to electricity means generating huge amounts of energy somehow. The average vehicle today has a powerplant that is rated in the range of 150 to 200 kilowatts. Even though electric vehicles are more efficient, that is still a lot of energy to come up with. Multiply that by the millions of vehicles on the road, and our current generating capacity is nowhere near what is needed. And this increase in electrical energy will require a grid that is several times more robust than our current arrangements. But no one is going to get up in front of the crowd and tell them that to save themselves they will have to stop driving.
So what do we do?
I am sure that others can point out examples of capitalism destroying community, but what I am interested in is describing a way to stop the destruction. For instance, bringing some manufacturing jobs back to where they used to be done. The higher levels of pay created demand for services that gave many people a livelihood. House cleaner, nanny, cook, gardener, many semi- and unskilled jobs resulted from people making good money and wanting to spend their time doing things other than taking care of their house and yard.
For the most part, jobs were off-shored because that allowed higher profits to be taken. Having someone in China assemble your product was still cheaper after all the shipping than having someone in the U.S. assemble it. The drive for ever higher profit disregards the consequences of taking well-paying jobs away from people. We have also seen the quality of products diminish because of the use of inferior materials, poor design, and sloppy assembly. One of the most common things I encounter is the 'snap together' item, which cannot be taken apart without breaking it. This is acceptable for inexpensive items, but when the price is substantial, I expect that the item should be repairable.
Another example is the reduction in the amount of room at the top of a bottle of water, juice, or some other product. In order to save 1/100th of a penny per bottle, the distributors have reduced the free space in the container by decreasing the room from the top of the contents to the top of the container. Squeeze the container to open it, and you end up wearing the contents. Okay, that is not going to destroy the community in and of itself, but it is another straw to put on the camel's back.
And capitalism is based on consumption, which is what is creating the problems with the environment. Reducing consumption reduces the profits to be made, so there is a lot of resistance to reducing consumption. To really be able to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, people need to leave their cars and trucks at home and use mass transit, ride a bicycle, carpool, or walk. But those alternatives will put a lot of people who make cars out of work, so we get electric vehicles, which are touted as being more 'environmentally sound'. They are heavier, so need more energy to move around, and require exotic materials to make the batteries with. Electric vehicles are a way to go on consuming while pretending to be conserving.
Fossil fuels contain absurd amounts of energy per given unit of measure. Nothing I know of equals fossil fuels in energy density. So switching automobiles to electricity means generating huge amounts of energy somehow. The average vehicle today has a powerplant that is rated in the range of 150 to 200 kilowatts. Even though electric vehicles are more efficient, that is still a lot of energy to come up with. Multiply that by the millions of vehicles on the road, and our current generating capacity is nowhere near what is needed. And this increase in electrical energy will require a grid that is several times more robust than our current arrangements. But no one is going to get up in front of the crowd and tell them that to save themselves they will have to stop driving.
So what do we do?
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