Comment on Does anyone else feel like fireworks are a complete waste of money and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary Pollution?

blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Tryptaminev@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes they are. Somebody extracted the ressources. Somebody processed them into materials. Now someone put them together into the pyrotechniques and finally someone set it off.

  All of this labor and capital usage went into creating a short display of pretty lights and bangs, of which afterwards nothing but smoke and memories remain. This is the purest consumption in the economic sense.

  Compare that with people using that labor to produce cars instead. Those cars take years before needing renewal and they can be used productively, so they are investments in the economic sense.

  Finally lets take clothes, while also consumption they address an immediate human need and are reuseable for some time, so while they are also consumption they are quite different form fireworks.

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  • blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Just so we’re clear for anybody else reading since they chose to ignore the easy refutation lol.

    That the money is still present in the economy and provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of people in the supply chain both through sales, materials production, assembly, and labor, entertainment, and local economy boons from festivals.

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    • blujan@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, but the point of the person you responded to is that work for the sake of work is also a waste.

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      • treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        May as well just all just suicide and mulch ourselves so we don’t do anything without purpose.

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    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What represents the value of money? What you can buy with it. What determines what you can buy with it? The total capital stock available and the services offered through labor.

      This part of the capital stock is gone. Literally into smoke.

      Money is not some abstract independent entity. Its value is directly linked to the real production of the real economy.

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  • Beldarofremulak@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Do food next and don’t skimp on the poo talk

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    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Food is also consumption. But without food people die, so this consumption directly contributes to keeping the value of the economy up by keeping the workforce alive.

      As for the poo safely removing it in WWTPs also costs more money than what can be recovered in energy or hopefully phosphate in the near future. Also the capital investments are significant and as they age and need replacement this value is also gone.

      However the alternative is people dying of Cholera and other shitty diseases en masse, so both the investments as well as the expenditures are well spent.

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