I think that humans have a very hard time realizing the long term effects of a specific action even if we collectively have a strong grasp of good and bad. I am not immune to this issue. Diet, exercise, consumption, and so on. I know I should eat better, exercise more, use more sustainable products, but when it comes down to it, I’ll go and get a large McDonald’s fries without a moments reservation. But there are also the bigger and longer term issues that so many people seem to have problems with.
Take EPA restrictions on Mercury and other hazardous chemicals being emitted by power plants. It is not a global warming thing or a energy efficiency thing, but purely hey look 10,000 fewer kids a year are going to die if we do this. You would think the entire right-to-life crowd would be all on board. But no. So the government shouldn’t regulate to help save lives except for abortions when the government should regulate like crazy? I wonder if those people understand the meaning of the word hypocrite?
I don’t know, I mean I don’t like big government but I don’t like big business even more. Don’t people see how much scarier big business is? Water contamination, food contamination, smog, what do these all have in common? They are things that all lead to big company profits and which all lead to you needing more health care which then leads to more big company profits and the cycle continues. I just wish I had the conviction to make radical changes, going off the grid, eating organic non-GMO local foods, producing no trash – but I am too lazy and up ahead is another McDonald’s drive through… well maybe not this time, a small change at least.
4 January 2012 at 2:53 pm
In general I agree with you, but I have a couple of thoughts.
One local restaurant has terrible turnover (because you never get the same server twice) and I’ve heard through the grapevine that they don’t pay servers what they should. (If it’s slow and servers don’t make minimum wage with their wage + tips, the restaurant is supposed to pay them the difference, and this place, apparently, doesn’t always do so.)
Another local restaurant is family-owned, and one daughter has been working as a hostess (!) and bussing tables since she looked like she was about 10. Since it looks like she’s a family member who is treated reasonably well and not, say, a human-trafficked waif, we keep going there, but one wonders.
Now, if I go to, say, Panera, or even Mickey D’s, I can be pretty confident that they’re paying their workers the state-mandated minimum wage, and none of their workers are children, because they have more oversight, and if they were violating these laws, they’d get sued.
So, imagine I wander into a mom-and-pop grocery, and they’ve got produce labeled “organic” and “local” and so on, and they have “artisan” goods with various levels of detail in labeling. Do I trust that their food is correctly labeled, and that it has been handled according to all the health regs? Now, our local hippy grocery store is fab, and if you engage them in conversation, they can provide great detail about all their sources, and I know some of the local suppliers they work with, so I trust them and throw money at them whenever possible. But if they were lying, who would go after them? It wouldn’t be worth it to sue them. Probably the locals would grumble to one another and word would get around, but if I’m just passing through town, I’d probably avoid a place like that and go to a chain grocery instead.
Wegmans, for example, seems to be a chain that has a great reputation for not being evil (to coin a phrase.)
So I’m not sure that big business is always a bad thing and local business is always better (though, I agree, that’s the way to bet.)
15 January 2012 at 3:58 pm
hello muddledblog its dennis the vizsla dog hay yes this is all a problem but it wil be a moot poynt unless i can stop tuckers farts frum destroying the erth so thank yoo for the gud advice yoo gayv me on how to do so!!! i am implementing yore plan eeven as we speek!!! ummm i meen rite!!! ok bye