This post starts from
a discussion started on
Maurice's blog, about the habit, to drink, of the water sold in the
stores, typically in plastic or glass bottles instead of the "mayor's water"
(the one coming from the aqueduct [in Italy it is a service by the
Municipality], that is declared drinkable, and often purer than the one sold in
bottles).
We, at home, use water in returnable glass bottles. The attempt is to cut to
the bone the waste of plastic, fighting not only the scattering of this
polluting material, but also the environmental damage, smaller but still not
insignificant, given by the recycling processes.
Nevertheless also the returnable glass bottles cause a useless environmental
damage, because this system produces some wastes: for example the detergent to
wash the bottle, the plastic cap to close it (note that in a regular plastic
bottle, the amount of material in the cap is bigger than the much in the bottle
itself), the paper label and the glue to attach it, the energy for the machines
that fill the bottles, the fuel for the transportation to the groceries, the
fuel to take the bottles home, and then all the path backward of the returning
bottles till closing the cycle.
But, the "mayor's water" in our village, also admitting that it is
bacteriologically pure, is really disgusting. It tastes like chlorine and it is
very calcareous. For this last problem there are efficient filters in commerce,
but against the chlorine there's no simple solution, as far as i know.
In that discussion, Maurice himself writes:
Credo
che sia necessario anche mettersi d’accordo sullo sviluppo sostenibile, come
sostengono alcuni ecologisti fra i quali vorrei collocarmi.
Una semplice bottiglietta d’acqua inquina il pianeta, ma dà anche lavoro (e
quindi produce ricchezza) a chi deve produrre la bottiglia ed il tappo, a chi
la imbottiglia, a chi la trasporta, eccetera.
Leggiamo spesso cifre precisissime sull’inquinamento - ricordo a memoria che
una bistecca inquina quanto un’auto che corre per 50 km - ma non ho mai letto
quanto valore produce la bistecca in termini di lavoro e di ricchezza.
Credo che si possa vivere con agiatezza rispettando la natura e l’ambiente,
senza con questo ritornare alle società primitive. Ammesso che esse
rispettassero l’ambiente, come non hanno fatto i pellerossa distruggendo le
foreste delle grandi praterie per permettere la sopravvivenza delle mandrie di
bisonti e di loro stessi.
I believe that it is also necessary to agree about sustainable development, as
some ecologists, among whom i would put myself, assert.
One simple water bottle pollutes the planet, but it also gives work (and so it
gives wealth) to who produces the bottle and the cap, to who fills it, to who
transports it, etcetera.
We often read very exact numbers about pollution - i remember that a steak
pollutes as much as a car that runs 50 km's - but i never read about how much
value the steak produces in terms of work and wealth.
I believe that we can live in prosperity respecting nature and environment,
without having to go back to the primitive societies for this. Also admitting
that those ones used to respect the environment, as the native american did
not, destroying the forests of the big prairies to allow the survival of the
bison herds and of theirselves.
[Free translation by me]
I believe it's a mistake to justify consumerism with the excuse that it is
a system that allows a fair redistribution of wealth. Firstly because it
doesn't seem fair at all to me.
But above all, the hole in the capitalist consumerism is right intrinsic in the
mechanism, according to which the amount of commercialized goods (and services)
must always increase, and so, also the useless has to be sold (and bought)
anyway.
From one side it is true that the commercialization of a water bottle gives
wealth to those who are part of its production/distribution chain. But let's
consider, for example, the driver that transports it on his truck, which we
can name Mario. At the end, how great is the wealth that Mario gets from the
delivery of a bottle? For sure less than the cost at the store of that bottle.
Mario, indefatigable worker, will eventually be thirsty, before or after, won't
he? And how will he quench his thirst? Will he drink from the tap the "mayor's
water"? No! Carefully applying the logic of consumerism, he will go to the shop
to buy a water bottle similar to the ones he hauled (spending more money than
the amount he made for each of them).
Now, it is also true that our Mario doesn't deliver only one, but an entire truck
of bottles, and I'm not going to say that the necessary physical exertion for
that job gives him such a thirst to drain the entire charge. But it is also
true that Mario would have the need to buy other products, which probably
suffered similar commercial stages. If Mario buys an apple because he's hungry,
it means that there is somebody else that hauled apples. And maybe this last
delivery person would have the need to quench his thirst with Mario's water besides to
appease his hunger with his own apples.
In short, applying this mechanism to the whole closed system, society consumes
exactly the entire amount of products that are commercialized, spending exactly
an amount given by the sum of money that any single individual made as fruit of
his work. In this system, so, no wealth is created. At most it has been
re-distributed in higher or lower amounts belonging to how hard any individual
worked. Since the amount of wealth in the closed system is not infinite, if
wealth is proportional to work, when an individual works more, the other
individuals must work less. And this mechanism generates social inequalities,
which is the exact opposite of the system purposes.
One could raise the objection that instead of spending the entire amount of
money made it would be wiser to save something. Or, that Mario should decide
not to buy the apple, if he's not that hungry but to keep that money. But
doing this way, that apple would remain unsold, and the wealth destined to who
worked on it won't be available. In substance if the savings increase, in our
closed system the consumes would decrease, and so also the money to be
re-distributed would.
In other words, in our closed system, if we avoid to buy the useless, it is
true that we would decrease the circulating wealth, but it is also true that
this reduction is exactly equivalent to the value of the unsold useless goods.
To come back to our example, if we all used the "mayor's water", it's true
that, as Maurice says, the wealth that would have been distributed in the
commercial chain of the water in bottle would decrease, but its also true that
globally that lost wealth would be exactly equivalent to the amount we save not
to buy the water bottles.
And so, where's the social advantage in buying the water bottles?
A remark is needed about the fact that, in this analysis i considered a "closed
system", which, apparently, doesn't apply very well to reality. In the
capitalist westerner world (and also pretty much in the rest of the world),
economical systems are not closed, meaning by this that they are based on
export (and import).
The statement that working more one makes more money to the detriment of others
that, working less, make less money, in a context of a non-closed system, it is
false, because the eventual exceeding of product wouldn't be lost but exported.
But this assumption presupposes that there is, elsewhere, another non-closed
system (an importing country) that buys the surplus.
But this means that the importing country wouldn't have the need to produce the
imported good, and so it doesn't have the possibility to employ workers in that
productive cycle, and to produce the relative wealth, necessary to buy that
product. And this looks to me a non-ethic side of the system, since it implies
the increase of public debt, which means political dependency, of the importing
country, increasing the social difference between rich and poor countries.
Considering instead the global economy of the world, which is obviously a
closed system, since it's not possible to export outside the planet (and it
looks it won't be for a lot of time), no wealth can be created, if by wealth we
mean the purchasing power. Wealth equals the sum of all the goods globally
produced, and so it is clear that the one coming from the production of a
useless good is useless itself, because it allows only to buy a useless good.
The real wealth should be computed not in the basis of purchasing power, but
according to the ownership of goods useful to better our lives. For example,
the invention, production and distribution of cellphones didn't create wealth
meaning purchasing power of individuals. Simplifying, the wealth given by the
salaries of the workers that contributed in invention/production/distribution
of cellphones is even to the wealth spent by consumers to buy that product...
that's to say, at the end people that work get a salary that, after, is useful
to them to buy the same goods they produce. The real wealth given by progress,
instead, is the possibility to use those goods. If cellphones weren't there we
wouldn't be able to send each other all those short messages to tell us
romantic stuff like "TVTTTTTB" [in Italian it's the acronym of "ti voglio tanto
tanto tanto bene" ("i love you very very very much"), typical teenagers'
language].
Adimitting that water in bottles has the same quality of the "mayor's water"
(which is clearly false in my case), to buy water bottles is absolutely
useless from the economical point of view, and only a damage from the
ecological one.
Anyway i am not an economist. Where's the error in my line of reasoning?
