The Guilt of Consumerism and Its Potential Solution
A lot of times, I feel guilty about buying new things. It is not that I bought something which I don’t need, and yes, money is much less of an issue once I start to work and have a steady income. It is when I thought about where these things going to end up at the end of their life. Landfill? Incinerator? Trust me, the efforts of recycling are a joke. Why? The recycling business doesn’t make much financial sense, as it is far more profitable to produce than to recycle. Most of the trash that goes into recycling ends up exported to third world countries, polluting their environment.
It only gets worse when we are in this electronics era. Not just we have decay-resistant, man-made material, but also we have tons of heavy metal ingrained in these electronic products. Each consumer upgrade cycles that send big corporation to cashing-in spree creates more of these products that end up in landfill, not to mention it induces consumers’ insatiable appetite. Who is in for better products and better user experience? Almost everyone.
It is because when someone feels that their current lives are not good enough, that they decide to upgrade their standard, giving in into the idea of consumerism. I am guilty of this too. See, we work hard to earn more money by producing goods and services, and someone will consume these stuff. Production of these consumes earth resources, just for us to rake in the money. The money we have entitles us to more purchasing power to consume more goods and services that someone else produces. Each of this cycle only robs earth more of its resources and gives it more trash. Cheap and poor quality products only waste more earth resources but limit its potential to value add to the lives of their consumers. I think you might have guessed it, and it is obvious, that we are talking about the economy. The economy is a gargantuan furball of vicious cycles for the earth, both for its depletion in resources and accumulation of trash. Everyone dies one day, but the trash they produce outlives them into millennia. Who would want their kids to live on stark, trashy earth?
Why does this economy work? It begins with meeting the needs, then it gradually caters to the wants. Money is currency. Whatever we need or desire, we can just work hard to extract the resources, turn them into goods and services for someone to consume and earn money from them. The money we have can spur further economic cycles, as ones’ expenses become others’ profits and this cycle goes on. Our mere thoughts of insecurities or fear of missing out certain things fuel our need and desires. Like, for example, if one day, we lost our income, how can we sustain our lives? For those who have met the basic needs of sustenance, they are asking how they can improve it further?
Is there a better way to meet our needs and wants, and at the same time, limit the extraction of earth resources? Let’s enter the profit and GDP free, multi-tiered sharing economy I propose.
How does this work?
Firstly, money must not be the currency of the intra-economy (legacy, inter-economy might still be driven by money). The currency of the economy is societal ranking. Different professions in society correspond to different ranking. A society with very different needs can raise the ranking that caters to its needs accordingly. A society ranking is determined by collective, communal consensus, not by anyone in the highest tier ranking. The societal ranking must be maintained every year and subjected to renewal and it can fluctuate from year to year.
Secondly, access to everything is free but is subjected to multi-tiered societal ranking, and no one own anything as society owns them all. (It makes sense since everyone dies empty-handed no matter how much you own while you are alive, right? If you think about passing on your possession to your children, they die too one day.) Nothing can be sold for profit, as it is illegal to do so, which is consistent with a profit free society. For the allocation of resources, the lowest societal tier is guaranteed free access to food, shelter, healthcare, transport, clothing and education. And the highest tier is guaranteed access to a luxurious life. The society keeps track of everyone’s consumption of resources and makes it punitive for ones who waste.
Finally, this way solves a few problems. No one will extract the earth resources unnecessary to make a bank for themselves when access to everything is free and shared. The lowest tier of the society is guaranteed a decent life no matter if they work hard or if they even work at all. Those who desire more luxurious lives will be motivated to solve bigger, societal challenges to increase their ranking in society. So yes, the ones who solve the biggest, most challenging problem deserve the most credit and best quality of life.
Finally, this puts a shift in money-making, resources draining and trash and pollution producing (no pollution means no economy, right? And vice versa.) societal behaviour to profit-free, resources conscious and critical societal challenges oriented societal behaviour.
That is enough for societal structural changes.
How about the old trash, e.g. e-waste that we produced in the past and today? They cannot rot away on their own. These elements are already there during the formation of the earth when they are extracted from the earth. One idea is to use ultra high energy to deform, melt or vaporise them and arrange and pack them into their elemental cluster, much like the fractional distillation of the crude oil into its various constituents. However, access to ultra high energy is quite unlikely today as we still on the brink of an energy generation breakthrough. No matter we have nuclear fusion or nuclear fission, the uranium material itself comes from the earth and that involves extraction process.
Here is one basic principle:
If we need energy, we should go to the source — the sun.
If only we can install a vast array of the very high-efficiency solar panel outside the earth atmosphere to obtain maximum exposure to the solar radiation and somehow, come up with a way to transmit the energy back to earth. Not only we can have access to the unprecedented amount of energy, but also we have almost zero-footprint of energy generation facilities on earth, minimising the impact of lives on earth.
Anyway, those are the idea.
