Recycling For Survival

In the USA, our government chose to let recycling fall into private hands, private companies recycle our waste and it turned out to be big business. Our government blundered by turning over recycling to private companies rather than managing the recycling processes itself which would have benefited our economy indefinitely or until all recycles were reprocessed for the last bit of worth. Revenue from recycling alone could have replaced some portion of paid taxes, provided countless jobs to the least employable, and recyclables are freely given so collection costs would be the only major expense in acquiring the basic materials for production.

More and more, recycling of resources is done out of necessity, currently due to the declining economies where most folks can’t afford new, high end products so someone else’s product is refurbished and resold. Vehicles, computers, game consoles, smart phones, jewelry, water, plastics, papers, the list goes on and on.

As the planet’s finite resources dwindle to naught, when its obvious that everything has become a part of the recycling process for our continued survival, will man’s ambition finally slow enough to learn of the fact that man exists within limits, that not one thing can be taken for granted, that not one thing can be produced without conscience?

government often doesn’t do things as efficiently as the private sector

Do revenues from recycling outweigh expenditures? Would that still be the case if the government took on this responsibility? If so, I agree with you and think it would be a good idea (for recycling only)

Its a slippery slope though, if we applied this idea to any given/all businesses… where would the line be? Any profitable business that becomes acquired by the government could serve the purpose of less taxes. Taken to its end is waaaaay to liberal imo (in terms of big vs small govt)

That is not true in any case. And privatizing of sectors often looks like this: expensive, thus non-efficient subsectors of the sector remain in possession of the state, whereas the cheap, thus efficient subsectors of the sector become privatized. There are many examples, at least in Europe. The loosers are the states, thus the tax payers, thus especially the middle class, but at last also the lower class (because: if there is no state anymore, then there will be no tax payers anymore who can pay for the lower class). The problem is typical for the whole economy of the globalistic system. And the extinction of the states and the middle class is a problem. I think it is going to end up in societies having no or just very inefficient states, no or just very inefficient institutions, no or just a very inefficient midlle class. So, at last, 99% of all humans will live in “Third World” societies.

Just look at the globalistic process we have experienced since about 1990. There is no single state and no single middle class of the “First World” that has benefitted from this globalistic process.

Sure, states can be monsters (according to Nietzsche, states are the coldest of all cold monsters), but if you compare them with the current private globalistic institutions, companies/corporations, then you will likely support the statement that these kinds of monsters are even colder than each kind of the states. Both are like superorganisms in which humans are working like supercells - comparable with the cells in their own bodies.

Currently it seems that the fight between those superorganisms will end up with a victory of the private globalists. But that is only how it seems. Who really knows how it will end up? More and more people will miss a functionable state, will wish it back, hopely not when it will be too late. I hope that humans will someday be able again to say about a state what Hegel already said about it in the end of the 18th century.

If the states function efficiently, thus work efficiently, then they are not as bad as the private institutions, companies/corporations of the globalists. Private institutions, companies/corporations of the globalists do not care about nature, do not care about culture, do not care about humans, do not care about living beings at all. Infinite growth is not possible on our planet. We should not accept that more and more humans become poorer and poorer, whereas less and less humans become richer and richer. If not the human beings, then nature itself will stop that unfair, destructive, dangerous and stupid development.

:obscene-drinkingcheers: Here, here…to nature! I’d drink to that if I consumed spirits.

I seldom drink, but now it’s time to drink two of the big beers:

Cheers!

:laughing: