by Perry McCarney

Created on: September 01, 2011   Last Updated: November 27, 2011

Every activity undertaken by humankind has a cost and a benefit. As long as someone perceives there to be a greater benefit to THEMSELVES than the cost to THEMSELVES for a particular activity, then it is almost inevitable that someone will do that activity no matter how unethical or socially damaging that activity may be to society as a whole. This is the primary cause of pain, despair, poverty and plain evil in our world; a world where we have the scientific knowledge, technological capability and access to resources to eradicate poverty and famine in not only the developed nations but all the others as well.

Recycling is an activity that is beneficial to humanity as a whole. Like every other such beneficial activity it is overburdened with monetary cost. Our capitalist economic system, for some insane reason, insists on making every single activity that enhances the environment, that every single human person absolutely needs for their continued existence, extremely costly from a financial perspective. It insists that all costs for "green" endeavors are paid by those making those endeavors on the basis that they are the people making a profit from them. Which seems fair enough, and would be if they held polluters to the same. But they don't! Polluters are frequently subsidised on their upfront costs and usually pay nothing towards the environmental damage they cause.

Essentially, people who are environmentally responsible, such as recyclers, have to pay to be so, while those who are not are allowed to dump ALL of their polluting costs on the community as a whole while taking all the profits for themselves. And this still persists as our economic norm because our social structure is essentially insane. All the nations of the world, no matter their proclaimed politics, are dominated and manipulated by self-centered, short-sighted, arrogant megalomaniacs! As are all of the multi-national corporations dominating the global economy. And these "leaders" regularly and repeatedly allow and enable economic recessions and depressions to distract peoples attention, focusing it on the need for personal and family survival over the deliberate evil of their decision making.

The world has limited resources. Obvious with regards to non-renewable resources, but even most of our theoretically renewable resources are limited. And considering the excessive manner in which we are harvesting those supposedly renewable resources, how renewable they actually are is debatable. Re-using

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