The Dollar Vote

Make It Inexpensive

The ma**** have made this priority number one. Poverty requires it, savings promote it, and profit is born from it.

The main demand that shapes our world: We want more, and we want it for less. Less meaning money.

We're smart. No problem. Let's do it.

Let's monocrop. One crop means one of everything. One way to grow it, one way to feed it, one time to water it, one way to pick it, process it, package it and ship it.

Didn't Da Vinci say, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."?

If we want to make more for less, we make less kinds and more of it.

This is the evolution of profit and production. This is the ultimate realization of the printing press and the assembly line. This is the absolute most for the the absolute least. This, is the human dream.

What is it about dreams that turns them into nightmares?
Is there a moment when a dreamer can see one coming, and stop it on its way?

Soil can't sustain with one crop. It gets bled dry. It dies.
Species of animals rely on this same diversity of plants. Without it, they die.
The few that rely on the specific crop survive, multiply and flourish.
They are profit-eating pests. We poison them. They die.
We eat the poison, but they say that small amounts are fine.

We build infrastructure that allows the mass transportation of these products, and more to house them.
We turn jungle into desert, and desert into tar.

With our dream to create plentiful, inexpensive everything; we escalate the most inhospitable conditions our species has ever known.

And yet, we have succeeded. People who do it, profit. People who buy it, save. Great.

There is currently more than enough food in the world to feed everybody, and yet millions continue to starve. Now however, overeating is threatening lives as well. There is some dirty irony at work here.

And still, we wear ourselves thin working to survive this perverse machine that terraforms our planet and threatens our very existence.

Whatever happened to simplicity? How did it turn into this?

But then I remember why we did this, and I remember where the simplicity lies. I can walk down the street to a local eatery and buy the food I like.

It doesn't matter if it's out of season, or that it doesn't grow in my country, or that it should be expired by now.

There is a lot of it, it is delicious, it is diverse, and people are always developing new ways of making it cheaper.

Same goes for my clothes, transportation, entertainment, or anything else I wish to buy. It's all right there.

All the bounties and diversities of nature, conveniently removed from their place on this earth, and shipped to a building near me.

I'm your average citizen in a well-off country. I have it good, and that's why it's my job to make things better.

These aren't terrible people that make these stores, or create these products. They are public servants. They fulfill the demands they are given. We make inexpensive and easy our number one priorities, and they deliver. And they do it well.

It's us, the ma****, who have to change. We are casting the votes to these elections, and we do it with every dollar we spend. We buy something and we say we want more of it. We are secretly in charge of it all.

And frankly, I don't like the way things are going. I think it's high time I change my vote.