The necessity of waste.

Bataille once said, "humanity recognizes the right to acquire, conserve, and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle nonproductive expernditure." Today, my wife was attempting to put Microsoft XP on her new Mac, the software she acquired with the purchase of her last computer. She called about the "product key", and asked if it was alright to "roll over" the software from her last computer. The service associate said, "the software lives and dies with the computer itself."

Now think about this. Software, which by definition "floats" around, above and through hardware, something like a word floats around the definition the dictionary gives it, lasts longer than hardware, if one chooses to use it. Software requires an agent to initialize it, to give it body and form. It needs hardware in order to be used, but of course, this hardware can be any old machine. The software-machine is the tide of the ebb and flow of the sea, needing any old beach in order to bring down its white, frothy caps.

But Microsoft, in our wonderful capitalistic system, is much more concern about money than about products themselves. The products are merely means to an end, an end which is an abstract thing, the almighty dollar. This dollar can be exchanged for other things, things one needs or wants. Yet what would be the best way in order to procure said money? The creation of waste.

Yes, waste is one of the most essential categories in our economy, because without sufficient waste, money would be impossible. You see, waste allows for expansion, and expansion is the only way for money to grow, and for capitalist exchange to be possible. Waste is the silent partner in the growth of our social machine.

Hegel points this out well. In his discussions of poverty in his Philosophy or Right, he tries to help us understand just how the wealth of a society is directly related to its poverty in capitalist societies. You see, there is something of a dilemma when it comes to what to do with the poor. If you support them (in charity), you immediately devalue their humanity, because they would be dependent on the wealthy. We can see how the English poor laws helped both deal with poverty, while at the same time create a group of people who did not see themselves as equals to the wealthy, and conversely, the wealthy believed themselves superior to the poor. On the other hand, if you helped provide work for them, there would be too much production. Hegel puts it like this: "it is precisely in overproduction that the lack of a proporitionate number of consumers who are themselves productive that the evil consists, and this is merely exacerbated by the two expedients in question. This shows that, despite an excess of wealth, civil society is not wealthy enough - it.e., its own distinct resources are not sufficient - to prevent an excess of poverty and the formation of a rabble [i.e., the poor]."

What is the way out of this capitalist dilemma? I mean, needing a group of people to be poor in order to stop overproduction is pretty harsh, don't you think? One small solution is waste: don't worry about overproduction, because what you produce shall last for such a limited amount of time, and so the consumer will continually consume. Admittedly, this does not solve the full problem; if we had zero unemployment in this country, overproduction would be rampant, and everyone would suffer. Instead, if we displace the "lack" here from people to things, we can still be capitalists and have our cake too.

What is the consequence of making waste necessary to the growth and survival of a system? Especially when so little can be recycled, it seems to me, at least, there is no incentive to treat our world like a place that should be sustained. Eventually, waste creates a desert.