2. Waste Burner Waste
A Basic Government Rule: “Don’t get rid of the problem — ADD TO
IT!”
For example: Build an expensive waste burner plant.
Instead of; putting a ban on all disposable containers. (This solution
wouldn’t cost the taxpayers
anything — so naturally, it won’t be considered.)
Instead of; creating an economic system that wouldn’t require
advertising. (Like the Priceless Economic System.)
Just think of the percentage of the contents in your garbage can
or dumpster that is just advertising. Think how thin the newspapers and
magazines would be without advertising.
Just look at the Profit the Industrialists will make when they
sell the waste burner plant to the government and how much more they
will make every year from its maintenance.
Profiteers Promote Waste!
The Little Free Press newsletter has been pointing out for years,
that people are just spinning their wheels trying to stop a bad
situation by working against the symptoms of the problem.
They will build that burner plant some place, no matter how many
people demonstrate against it!
So, why not use our time and energy to help set up a system in
which no one can Profit from doing bad and wasteful things to our
planet and its people?
Waste
The Hennepin County Government is building a multimillion dollar
incinerator in downtown Minneapolis. This huge incinerator is the first
of its kind and has never been tested, according to the “Stop the
Incinerator Coalition.” It is starting to draw many opponents. Most
people would rather they pollute the air 50 miles out of town, but not
right here where we can see it coming out of the stacks. Do these
people think that the air stands still out in the country? Do they not
care that it will pollute our food source area? It takes a few years to
discover the poisons that eventually find their way into our food.
Some of the opponents say we should expand our recycling plants
and try to reclaim more of the trash. Of course this is more sensible
than the burning, but it’s still avoiding the basic cause of the
problem, so, instead of stopping the drilling in the bottom of our boat
it merely deals with plugging up the holes in a less destructive
manner.
Why do we always just deal with the immediate problem? When will
we “wise up” and build a system which will not include the “basic
cause” of our problems? Let’s eliminate the reason why we drill holes
in the bottom of our boat! Then we won’t have to continuously plug
them!
Straw man?
Is this garbage incinerator just another straw man set up to burn
the awakening people’s energy? When was the last straw man set up for
the Minneapolis radicals? Was it the domed stadium near our downtown?
Did people burn up lots of energy; thinking, arguing and demonstrating
against it?
This is surely a “Straw man” set-up. Any city planner could have
told them of the impossibility of the loop location from a traffic
situation alone. (you know of the traffic jams we already have in the
loop) What will it be like with the hundreds of garbage trucks from
the city and county converging in the loop all day and night long
lining up to unload! This alone makes the loop placement impossible,
but it is very impressive, and will anger more people to burn up their
energy in tearing down this elaborate straw man. In the end the Elite
will probably compromise by building four plants. One on each corner of
the county.
Would the “Elite” rather see the “thinking” people spend their biocomputer
(mind) time fighting another straw man, or have them use that
time to discover the fact that they are “wage slaves” and that they
don’t really have to put up with this shit any more?
It seems to me, the radicals are taking the bait; hook, line and
sinker. They are throwing up another defensive action to stop the
masters from whipping us. (Undoubtedly with the aid of some highly paid
government or corporate agent provocateurs.)
Seems to me we would get more progress in the direction of our own
liberation by taking an offensive action. It is not possible to gain
ground by defensive actions. Gaining ground only follows offensive
action.
Let’s begin this action by pointing out the “basic cause” of the
pollution. Let’s examine the rubbish cans and dumpsters and see what’s
in them. Besides the disposable containers, you will find products
which were made for PROFIT, i.e., not to last. Things which were made
with built-in planned deterioration and planned obsolescence. Why were
they built that way? To make more PROFIT! If the objects were well
designed and constructed many of them would last a 100 years instead of
one or ten. We all know this! But we don’t do anything about it. We
think that this creates more jobs so we are quiet.
We don’t stop to study the fact that if we were using a People
oriented system instead of the Profit oriented system we would strive
to eliminate work by building only beautiful long lasting things which
were easy to repair with universal parts. People who enjoy tinkering
with these things would be happy to do the repairing. In a sane system
we would not use these “things” as status symbols. We would not think
it necessary to throw away our old and replace it with whatever is now
in style.
In a priceless system, I think, we would try to create shorter
working shifts for the essential jobs, then more people would get a
chance at playing with the wonderful fun machines that we invent for
production, but no one would have to work very long hours. In our
present Profit motivated system we can’t have much fun running these
machines when some slave driver boss is constantly causing stress as
he/she attempts to make more Profit.
Before this Incinerator Straw man is disposed of in one way or the
other, it is my guess that many thousands of good intelligent people
will add their energy (and money) to this drama, on one side or the
other. It is also my guess that if just 10% of these thinking people
would put their creative energies behind an offensive action directed
at creating a Profitless Society, they would succeed. Once we are
operating a priceless economy there would no longer be a “reason” to do
destructive things like; polluting, waring, starving or stealing. We
will eliminate most of the world’s present major problems with a
priceless economic system. So why not put some energy behind creating
one?
Computer
Teach an old dog new tricks?
You can! I just taught this 61 year old dog to run a computer. I
had forgotten how much fun it is to learn something new. (I have had
many great highs in teaching myself to run this IBM clone that I have.)
They say the Macintosh is easier to learn on, but it costs about twice
as much. My clone has a 640K RAM and a 30 meg. HD and a 5 1/4″ floppy
drive. The Epson LQ850 24 pin printer is fun too. I started with the
Ability software program but that just wouldn’t do what I needed so I
got the Microsoft Word, Windows and Aldus Pagemaker. I don’t know which
was greater, the joy or the agony in learning these programs.
If I hadn’t thought I had a great use for the computer I might
have chucked it all. As it was, the computer outfit cost about the same
as the typesetting would have for my book. And now I’ll have the
computer to use for the word processing of my future writing and my
newsletter. It also feels like I am joining the great leap forward in
progress that the world is now taking. I can understand and use some of
its new technology. Wow! The jump forward is far greater than the leap
from the quill to the typewriter, but I’m still glad I learned to type
back in ’43.
I think we will never get senile in our old age if we keep adding
interesting new input into our minds.
March 20, 1988 Ernest Mann
———————————————————–
[For people interested in doing their own book – – I did the
typesetting on this book with my IBM XT clone computer with the
“Microsoft Word” word processing program and my Epson LQ850 24 pin dot
matrix printer. I used a Sans Serif proportional spacing 12 point font
(which actually measured only 10 pt.) (sans serif fonts stay clear even
after several generations of copying). Finally, the printing company
reduced it to 78%, which makes it 8 pt.]
“An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.”