What if the overarching goal of our businesses was to produce the
products we need in a manner so they would last as long as possible,
be simple to fix when they broke down, easily upgradeable to better
technologies as they arrive and designed to be fully recyclable once
all of the former options expire? What if our businesses were
motivated & rewarded by the degree in which the goods they
produced directly benefited humanity at large as well as the health
of the biosphere which our survival is dependent upon? What if the
goods we all enjoy and rely on for our basic survival were
distributed and shared among us in a way where all of our needs,
across the globe, could readily be met and doing so using
substantially less resources?
Today, as we all know too well, our businesses are not in any
appreciable measure oriented toward the attainment of the former, but
instead are predominantly driven by the achievement of one very
simple goal – that of profit. From the perspective of business,
products (or commodities) are not produced for the utility they bring
to those whose hands they will come to, but created by business for
their convertibility into the ultimate commodity of all: money.
"Success" in business can therefore for all practical
purposes be defined as producing a commodity for as little as
possible, selling it for as much as possible, pocketing the
difference and reinvesting as much of the proceeds back into the
former to further increase the monetary "wealth" extracted – ad infinitum.
With this singular & narrow motivational framework (i.e.
"capital appreciation") being our businesses' guiding
beacon – and whose logic by its very nature is heedless to the
longterm survivability of humanity, the limits of the biosphere and
fostering a just & equitable society – one cannot be surprised by
the types of odious & astoundingly wasteful practices that
predominate our age and where this next documentary clearly
illustrates how our present day mode of operation is now nearing its
natural & calamitous endgame. How we define & produce
"wealth" cannot much longer be couched in the abstract
monetary symbolism which transfixes us today, but will very soon need
to evolve to accurately represent the physical, social & ecological
wellsprings that truly define that which supports us.
Pyramids of Waste – AKA The Lightbulb Conspiracy
... and on a related note try The Story of Stuff.