Friday, June 11, 2010

The Industrialists And Conspicuous Consumption

If you don't already hate the industrial powers as much as I do -- and you would really have to be working very hard at it for that -- I have two words that will generate pure hatred in your soul for them: Conspicuous Consumption.

No one in his right mind has any good feelings for the concept of Conspicuous Consumption. And no, I don't think Hugh Hefner is in his right mind, no matter how many lovely babes there are who are willing to drape themselves over his feeble body. The man should be acting his age, which would mean prune juice enemas and a quick wheelchair trip down the hall.

We were warned away from Conspicuous Consumption when we were children, since one of the first lessons they taught us had to do with sharing and having your own little portion. They didn't heap our plates up in a Conspicuous Consumption way for many reasons, such as there are starving children some where, who have to be about dead by now.

Grandma and Grandpa Slump went through the Depression, which meant they couldn't consume in a conspicuously lavish way back then, and they remained people of modest means right up to the end (in Grandpa's case, death; in Grandma's case, life, if you want to call it that.) They had one car at a time, one house, one bathroom, quite a luxury after decades of outhouses. Very modest outhouses.

But such scruples seem to have bypassed the industrial powers, which is to everyone's detriment.

Like I said yesterday, I found myself briefly nosing around an industrial section in a nearby town, and the Conspicuous Consumption was very conspicuous indeed. One place remains forever in my mind, a building several times the size of a football field. Just go down the line, it's building building building ad infinitum. Inside, no doubt, it's full of merchandise or whatever they make.

Plus, it'd be true of this place as it's true of countless other industrial complexes, they need a gigantic train traveling by just to carry their smaller items! Then you have the ones with so much freight, they're still packing it, at least in a parallel universe. It's ridiculous! They need so many trains doing their dirty work, you figure something's gotta give.

I'd say it's time to cut back. If you're going to manufacture stuff, find something smaller and go with that. Then you can fit your entire inventory in a relatively large box and strap it to a pick up truck. I don't know.

The thing today is that they're totally into Conspicuous Consumption, something we all hate. Therefore, we all hate them.

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