Philosophy of Economic Waste
One man’s trash, can be another man’s treasure, but that one item can not be both at the same time.
Some waste might have potential to be useful, but is akin to garbage until it is utilized. Waste that is usable has a value as derived from its usefulness, and therefore isn’t really waste. Like used clothing, which can be treasure to one person, but trash to another. But stuff like that leads to a predicament where something is two things at once; treasure and trash, used clothing and waste. Leaving the state of the item in argument. Is the item used clothes or waste, because it can’t be both?
If you exist alone in the world, whatever you consider the item to be, whether used clothes or trash, it is. For you, those used clothes can only be one thing. But for society they still are two things at the same time because everyone doesn’t agree.
The nature of the item is, only one person at a time can wear each shirt or sock. If that society wants to dictate which or if used clothes are trash or not, a law is passed. If no law is passed dictating what is and isn’t waste, people will do as they please. While doing as they please, people can be wrong, and obviously being wrong is worse than being right. A wrong choice would not and shouldn’t be a standard ideal.
If you make your choice concerning used clothes a personal one, you are acting for yourself in your own best interest. But it is not a personal choice, because if the clothes are usable, they have value to someone, therefore are not waste, even if they are inconsequential to you. Despite that, some citizens will still be self-centered and choose that they are a waste anyways. Again, some people will decide that items that have value to others, but are inconsequential to them, are waste. But the truth is, if something has value it is not worthless waste. When something is wasted, it becomes waste, and that would be the worst option for the used clothes. The better and only other option, and therefore the right option, is to not waste the useful used clothes.
Unlike used clothes, which only have value for some, everyone values money. And as most of us regretfully know, money can be wasted. The thing with money is once you’ve wasted it, it’s someone else’s, and as said before, it has value to everyone, so even when wasted, it is not waste.
But money can become inconsequential. The amount of money it takes for it to become inconsequential will vary from person to person. However, there is an easy to recognize correlation in that the more money you have, the more likely some of it will become inconsequential. If some of your old clothes are inconsequential to you, you are more likely to turn them into waste than if you only have a humble amount of decent clothes. Would that behavior hold true for money? In a way.
If something is inconsequential, it has no value. Therefore, a vast surplus of money that is inconsequential is waste to its holder. Making a personal decision, would you rather hoard the world’s finite wealth beyond the point it becomes inconsequential, or simply be rich enough where you have everything you need and a lot of what you want? In the end, the choice between the two options would not be unanimous. Money is valuable to everyone. So wasteful, inconsequential, money is better utilized than kept in its wasteful state.
It is hard to have a fair way to use this surplus capital since everyone wants it. So it would be best to use that basic truth, of everyone wanting it, as a basis. That money that sits as waste because of it being inconsequential should be invested throughout society as equal as possible. For example, applying it directly to the budget and cutting taxes. This is perfect for society because everyone gains, and the givers are only losing what is already inconsequential to them. But no matter how perfect the solution is, or how clear it is that gross surpluses of wealth are wasteful, society must make the tax laws to utilize it.
