by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Instead of waiting that everything goes back to “normal” after the pandemic and all this economic madness restarts would it not better to consider doing things differently? To make things better rather than going back to “normal” because this so-called “normal” was not normal at all. Rather the opposite. But then again the system is not broken either, it was designed this way not to function properly.
How about instead of building ever more car parks to create parks and playgrounds.
Instead of more and more consumption to design and manufacture products again – yes, I did say again – that can be repaired and create a repair economy to boot, that is to say shops that specialize in repair of those things that we cannot fix at home.
Instead of events experience and instead of everyone for himself a spirit of Ubuntu, a together rather than competing against each other.
And there are so many insteads that the list could go on and on, to be honest. I think we can all add a fair few of them to this small list that I have put together here.
The truth is, and most people, I am certain, would agree, that the so-called normal we have had for so long was anything but normal. What is normal with shop till you drop and buy crap only to impress others and also stuff that gets tossed a short time after. That is keeping the economy, the way it has been designed for the last how many decades, but normal it is not.
Products have been designed, in capitalism, ever since World War Two or not long thereafter, to have but a limited lifespan and more and more they can no longer be repaired, not even by specialists. We are, thus, forced to buy the same product over and over again simply because after a couple of years they are broken and cannot be repaired, because they have been designed that way.
There was a time when most things could be repaired, often by the tinkerer at home even, or tinkering was not even needed but just to know how to repair or replace a switch, for instance. A simple screwdriver was sufficient to open the things and repair could commence. But that was not to the liking of the capitalists.
The point is that is we have to buy the same products over and over over time because they keep breaking and can't be repaired means that manufacturers do not have to be innovative and do not need to design and make new products, better products, but can just keep making the same over and over.
However, what this pandemic has also shown us is, and this is a great irony, that the world's economy is in danger of collapsing simply because people are only and have only been buying what they really need. It proves the point that nothing of the normal was ever normal.
So, do we really want to go back to that kind of “normal”? I would think that we truly and honestly consider the options the answer, from the majority, would be a no.
© 2020
