What actually is a commercial advertisement?
It is an attempt by the commercial corporations to convince us that whatever stuff we already have is crap, outdated, doesnt look good, has drawbacks, is out of fashion, unimpressive, ugly, the other gender hates it etc. And then they go on to tell us how the stuff they have recently manufactured is far superior compared to what we already possess! Try to convince us that the buyers are the winners. So if you dont want to look outdated, if you want to be respected, if the other gender should fall for you, then you have to simply buy this new stuff.
In other words, a commercial advertisement simply means, we have a new stuff for you, so buy it for now, a newer version will soon follow – which is what consumerism means – Consume the entire nature like a hungry forest fire till you run out of it completely.
If you carefully observe, almost all stuff that are being manufactured today are not really about durability/reusability any more, they all are of use and throw nature.
Why? So that you can buy more and more, and the commercial corporations can make more and more money. The entire economy is being fuelled by making people buy more and more and even more.
OK, But at the cost of what and whom?
Well, at the cost of nature and at the cost of those who cant afford to buy.
Ever wondered why there is so little inflation in the so called developed countries? How come most of these consumer goods are so cheap? Who pays for them? Well, it is those who cannot afford to buy these stuff are the ones who are paying for most of the same stuff which you buy.
How?
They are the poor people from the third world countries. They are the ones who once lived happily in the midst of their beautiful nature. They had no money, but had everything else in life. They had all the happiness and satisfaction of the world, pollutionless nature, good health, healthy food and their natural habitat was a heaven on earth.
Enter capitalism and consumerism, their natural habitat was looted systematically, trees cut, soil polluted, factories built, water filled with chemicals and what not. These poor people had no place to go, their habitat destroyed, no money to spend in the capitalist economy, no way to make a living. The only way out was to work as cheap laborers for these giant corporations. They work for extremely low wages, and thats how the consumer goods you buy is so cheap. These poor people are the ones who are paying for your gadgets and luxuries! They are heavily underpaid, have no health care, are exposed to hazardous chemicals and die with a lot of ailments – all thanks to the so called developed nations.
Ever wondered why almost all of the mass manufacturing units of these consumer goods are outside the developed countries? It is because both the raw material required for manufacuring is looted from the under developed countries, as well as the cheap labor which makes the stuff you buy cheaper is from these poor societies and more importantly all the pollution resulting out of the manufacturing process is dumped into those poor countries. Why? Because developed countries know the toxic nature of the waste coming from these factory outlets and hence their laws dont allow them to be dumped in their soil. But it has to be dumped somewhere else right? Where? Of course in the poor countries of the world. People who were once untouched by materialism and consumerism, who didnt have money but had everything in their life, who lived in harmony with nature, who were the happiest society, are today been converted into under developed third world countries.
By whom? Of course, by the so called developed countries. In other words, the developed countries are causing the planet on a whole to become underdeveloped, polluted and unfit to be habitated.
So to summarize, these commercial corporations in the so called developed nations are looting the nature for the raw materials to manufacture their goods, are making innocent people in the third world homeless and depriving them of their natural resources and living, and then these poor people left with no other option are becoming underpaid labourers to manufacture consumer goods for the so called developed world. This is what is meant by ‘economic development’ or ‘economic boom’. So if one country has to develop economically, then it has to find other country/set of countries whose nature can be looted systematically, whose human resources can be exploited as cheap labor, and whose environment can be again used to dump back the generated pollutants and waste. Now did you understand why most of these commercial corporations of the developed countries have only the r&d units in their own country and outsource almost all mass production and manufaturing work to third world countries?
A Developed Country = (Exploitation of Nature + Destruction of life + Ill treating fellow humans) X Greed
So when somebody says that their country is the most developed country, it actually means that they are the biggest polluters, maximum exploiters, and hence the greatest threat for life on earth.
Just a few days back I had written about Primitive Waste Management . So what prompted me to write about the same subject once again? One of the most useful websites I have ever visited – The Story of Stuff
Watch the videos below to get a complete picture of the actual problem or download the entire movie
Introduction
Extraction
Production
Distribution
Consumption
Disposal
Another Way
