> But is disposable housing economically undesirable?

Of course, disposable housing is economically desirable--for the 
corporations that construct it and in the process will wring every cent 
of value out of the earth and your life and my life, and the lives of 
our children, and their children.

The only economic studies that conclude the disposable economy is good 
depend on the corporate strategy of externalizing expenses. Damage to 
the environment during manufacture and disposal of plastic and cardboard 
siding--not included. Loss of the lives of our sons and daughters in 
Iraq to secure the oil used to make the disposable plastic windows--not 
included. The flat out waste of embodied energy when the fine old 
Victorian down the street is ground up, hauled to the dump and replaced 
with a disposable MacMansion--not included.

We don't need expert studies to determine what is practical and good. We 
can look around us and do our own thinking. Does it make practical sense 
(or not) to pick up a metal spoon that already exists, use it to eat 
your breakfast and then wash it; or to go half-way around the world, 
extract petroleum oil from underground, haul that oil back home, refine 
it into plastic resin, haul that resin half-way across the continent, 
form it into a plastic spoon, haul it across the continent again, go to 
the store, haul it home, remove and dispose of the plastic wrapper it 
came in, use the spoon once, throw it in the trash, and haul it to the 
dump? How is it even possible to make that spoon so cheaply that we can 
afford to throw it out? Because the corporations that make it are 
externalizing most of the cost of making that spoon. The exact same 
thing is now happening with plastic windows and entire houses. Each of 
us can do our own thinking, and decide each morning how we will eat our 
breakfast and how we will build and care for our houses.

knowledge, good judgment, wisdom

Like Leland says, "think global, act local."


John

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