Waste Versus Need

by Dick Mac

Waste is vulgar and disturbing. The amount of edible food discarded by Americans could probably feed a couple of small impoverished nations. It's our own fault: we have turned capitalism into a culture of avarice and self-satisfaction. Money has become not a tool for Americans to build a good life, but a method for consumption without consideration of the ramifications. We have become so consumption-oriented that most of us continue to consume at vulgar levels even when we've run out of cash: we just ring it up on our credit cards.

I am a fan of American society and American culture (well, what's left of it), and we have such a font of plenty in America that there is more than enough for everyone willing to earn it.

Sadly, we have stacked the deck against the have-nots, and abandoned charity and social welfare in deference to corporate welfare and freebies for the privileged. If we provide welfare to the wealthiest corporations, we are told, they will create jobs that will help all Americans improve the quality of their lives. We know, after thirty years of this insanity, that this is simply not true. We have more poverty, hunger, and homelessness in America today than forty years ago.

Many of us are privileged. I count myself among the privileged. I have a work, shelter, clothing, and food. Most of us, though, have no respect for our privilege, and denigrate those without, instead of using our privilege to make the world a better place.

Most would rather discard their leftovers (clothes, electronics, etc.) than be bothered to give them to a person who needs them.

We live in a conservative culture that believes that recycling is a lifestyle choice and should not be mandated by law, that chemically-fortified lawns are the right of a landowner, irrespective of the impact on the water table, insects, and wildlife. People who pass themselves off as 'conservatives' are the least conservative of all Americans. We are a wasteful lot. All of us.

In a time of economic hardship, waste is even more disturbing.

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted waste by Wal-Mart and H&M, who have chosen to destroy and discard new clothes rather than donate them to the needy. One can only assume this was an attempt to control the market, in violation of the spirit of our collective notions of the market: supply and demand. If there is a large supply of Winter coats, then the price goes down. However, if the retailers destroy and discard their inventory to create a shortage and keep the prices high, that is price-fixing, and if not illegal is certainly immoral.

The stores could have lowered the price of their overstock, following the supply-and-demand notion that so-called conservatives tout as God-given laws of humanity, and allowed American families to purchase new clothes at a price in line with the changing economic hardship faced by most of us. They could have boxed them up and sent them to homeless shelters or social service agencies for distribution to those who cannot afford them even if the notion of supply-and-demand was allowed to play out.

But no, these wealthy corporations beholden to nobody but an invisible population of shareholders, slashed-up coats and children's clothes, cut the insteps of children's shoes, bagged them all up and put them in the trash. In the case of Wal-Mart, they hired a contractor to dispose of them who, instead of paying the fee to dump them, left the full bags of destroyed clothes (with Wal-Mart labels still affixed) on city streets to be collected by the taxpayers' sanitation departments.

At least one of the companies has feigned ignorance of the practice and said it will cease. They say they give their leftovers to charity and will ensure this happens in the future.

They are immoral liars, cheats and criminals, so we have no reason to believe them; and I think the SEC should investigate them for price-fixing (which I think is still against the law, but maybe not).

A Clothing Clearance Where More Than Just the Prices Have Been Slashed