In defence of waste
The market can manage waste without sacrificing our liberty. The war of the environmentalists against waste is actually a war against personal choice.
Pierre Lemieux - November 17, 2008
“In the natural world”, writes ecologist David Suzuki, “nothing is wasted. Zero waste needs to become the basis of the human economy as well as nature’s economy.”
The problem is, what is waste? Everything over and above what one needs? But what does one need? MP3 players and GPS systems? To survive, we actually need very little. Less than six pounds of soybeans per day provides all the calories a person needs. In his 1854 book Walden, Henry David Thoreau argued that a wooden box measuring six feet by three with a cover would provide shelter when needed. We pay too much for shelter, he explained, adding rhetorically: “Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?”
With a diet of soybeans and a wigwam for shelter, individuals would leave a tiny carbon footprint. They would also have a life expectancy of less than 50 years, which is still the case in sub-Saharan Africa. There would be no ecological waste, just wasted lives.
Man not only has needs, he also has preferences. “Waste” has no meaning outside of these preferences. Merely surviving is not the goal. Most people want fun too.
In fact, there is no more waste in social interaction than in the natural world — which is not surprising since man, the rational animal, is part of nature. The symmetry between human and animal behaviour allows evolutionary biologists to use the economic concept of cost, like when Richard Dawkins shows that sunk investments in a sexual relationship cannot explain a male’s future fidelity towards a female (The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 150; see also my Comprendre l’économie, Belles Lettres, 2008, p. 48).
An individual makes his choices according to his preferences given his constraints, that is, given the configuration of prices and other conditions that reflects other individuals’ choices. He maximizes his benefits over his costs, which is just another way of saying that he doesn’t waste anything.
Markets have the advantage of helping in the computation of costs and benefits. If it costs me less to purchase a new printer and throw away the old one instead of getting it repaired, it means that the resources used up to manufacture a printer are worth less than the resources used in repairing it. The worth or value of something is calculated by having all individuals bid for the resources according to what these resources are worth for the satisfaction of their preferences. The market is an on-going auction that directs resources and the goods and services they produce to those who attach more value to them.
Note that repairmen are no more slaves than consumers. If repairmen worked for free, repairs would be cheaper.
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