Bruce Bisset: Not with a bang but a trinket

Bruce Bisset

Economy. A little word that's held to mean so much - and to excuse so much - that we will do everything up to and including racial suicide to promote it.

Think about it. There's nothing "sustainable" - environmentally, socially, culturally, or indeed economically - about consuming every ounce of our planet's finite resources merely to make money.

Yet paradoxically this is what a so-called "growth economy" strives to do.

And because so little of what we make is in any way long-lasting or fit for useful purpose, we are digging our own graves with every landfill full of junk we bury.

Oh, you don't think we're killing ourselves for the sake of those inane Christmas and birthday knick-knacks we buy each other? You know, the ones that have no conceivable purpose other than to provide a moment's vicarious amusement?

Then it may surprise you to learn that only one per cent - yes, one - of all consumer goods purchased lasts more than six months.

That's the true measure of "the economy" - a make, it buy it, junk it fantasy-go-round that is 99 per cent focused on creating trash.

Not just things that are thrown away because they break quickly or are superseded by next season's model, but things which have no practical use in the first place.

Yet we consume them with a pathological desire that can only be described as mad.

By "we" I mean everyone with any amount of "disposable income". But it is we who are disposable, and we are disposing of ourselves.

All to feed our addiction to the fiction that is money, which has been raised above all else; it has become our God but, insensate, it cares not a whit whether we live or die.

We know this, but we continue to empower people whose entire rationale is to bow to it, serve it, make more of it, without regard for any other thing.

So when a smiling Lawrence Yule assures the wife and I by personalised letter that National's "strong economic management" is the main thing that matters, forgive me a cynical sigh.

Not a single mention of the environment, nor pertinent "local" issues like water quality.

Nor (hush my mouth!) even the faintest indication that the huge and increasing gap between rich and poor demands a radical re-think of the way our society malfunctions.

No, growing the money-tree by voting for the Natz is evidently all we should be concerned about.

Leaving aside that that "economic strength" is a lie propped up by over $100 billion in new borrowing, I'd really like to know why I should condone the rape of our region (and the planet) via Chinese water bottling sales and oil exploration and genetically-modified produce - all policies Yule must now fall into line with - for a fiction that cannot endure.

We're so fixated on the dollar that a study into the consequences of a volcanic eruption in Auckland - which would cause tremendous loss of life and long-lasting societal effects - concerned itself with the numerous different ways an eruption here rather than there might disrupt business and manufacturing, and the impact of each scenario on the economy. Nothing else.

If we discount ourselves, there's not much hope of saving the planet, is there? I suppose we could try eating the rich, though there's not enough of them to sustain us.

Certainly it would be nice to have something real to vote for, for a change.

But since we go on buying useless knick-knacks ostensibly to say "I care" - when all that really says is, "I don't" - I guess economic models are as close as you'll get to a real figure.

*Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.