Barry Brooks wrote:
[snip]
> Why can't we take advantage of increased durability to conserve?
> Because our goal is not to have more wealth. Our goal is just
> to stay busy and consume more of everything. We have made
> income the enemy of wealth. The wrong goal is worse than the
> wrong method.
America's motto: "We paved over the planet and drove around."
Our national anthem: "Running on Empty" (--Jackson Brown)
>
> Let's change our goal. How can we do that? So let's say that
> we have built an efficient, durable, sustainable economy. When
> we made our goal to have more goods in service we will be trying
> to satiate all markets, to create a condition of widespread
> wealth. But, if the economy actually delivers the goods it
> conflicts with the goal of producing however much might be
> needed to create full employment. If people have everything they
> want they would not bother to buy more.
I know a man who is the curiously perpetually impecunious son
of a very wealthy man (there is a major museum named after the
father, e.g.).
This person once explained to me that
the meaning of money/wealth is to have choices. On this
definition -- with which I concur -- the longer something lasts,
the better, because it is so much the longer until having
to replace it constrains our freedom of action and our
choices again. If the car is broke, you gotta fix it.
If the car never breaks, you can decide whether to drive
somewhere or not. This does not take account of the
deprivation which shoddy impinges on us of preventing
us from having anything to savor in our life.
In the mid-14th century, Giovanni de Dondi of Padua devoted
16 years of his life to making an astronomical clock. The
clock itself was soon melted down for the brass in it because
nobody was able to maintain it. But de Dondi did not just
make a clock. He also invented and made the machines he needed to
make the clock. But de Dondi did not just invent
machines to make things nobody else in his age could make.
de Dondi also documented his work so thoroughly that in
the 20th century 2 replicas of his clock were reliably able
to be made by persons able to understand the documentation,
including Mr. Carlo Croce:
http://www.clockmaker.it/inglepresentastrario.htm
Vita brevis, ars longa -- one, if not the only form
of eternity accessible to us is to make something right and
to know we are doing this in the act of doing it. If
time is all we have, then what else can wealth be? (Obviously:
to share this with others who appreciate it.)
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
