Cost of the Good Life Essay

Over entirely wellbeing, an dissipated carriagestyle, and wealth all come to mind when I ponder the dangerous carriage scarce what does the broad(a) manner actually comprise? At prime(prenominal) glance, this seems desire a loaded question that requires eightfold dissertations in order to answer. I even contemplated whether or not the alone life had a woo at all. Breaking the practised life into fork topics relieves very much of the stress when it comes to giving an answer. In call of consumerism, the good life is damaging to the environment, places as well as much emphasis on coin, and it dwindles the importance of non- grocery store values.According to Annie Leonards The Story of Stuff, our current materials economy is a commodity chain in which goods go from extraction, to production, to distribution, to consumption, and last to disposal.The dodge sounds stable but it is actually in crisis. Anyone with a simple understanding of mathematics back tell you that you cannot run a linear brass on a finite planet in the real beingness. In order for us, the consumers, to get all of our fancy products and up-to-date technologies, a process that we construction a blind eye to takes place. At the seeded player of the process, there is inborn resource exploitation. We chop down(a) the trees, blow up mountains to get the metals inside, use up all the water, and wipe out all the animals. As consumers, we be running out of resources because we have too much stuff In the past triplet decades alone, one third of the planets earthy resource space has been consumed.We argon undermining the planets very world power for people to live here. In the United States, slight than four percent of our original forests ar left wing and forty percent of the water moods have become unsanitary. When the resources get rolling to deplete, we do the same thing to third world or lesser developed nations. The erosion of the local anesthetic environments of th ese nations and economies ensures a constant flow of natives that rely on the little money they can earn man working in factories.We have become a nation of consumers largely due to planned and comprehend obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is the art of designing products that dont last a long clipping but last long enough for someone to secure the product again. Perceived obsolescence is changing the design of things to decipher trends and keep up with the times. The number one pattern that people can relate to is the iPhone. If you dont have the newest andgreatest iPhone, you are a loving outcast. While this might be a spectre over exaggerated, its not too outlying(prenominal) from the truth.In all actuality, polls show that our subject happiness is declining even though we have much stuff than ever before. This is because we have less time for the things that truly make us happy like friends, family, and leisure time. At the cost of our planet and environment, are we really even living the good life?Fritjof Capra of Qualitative Growth said that military personnel needs are finite, but human esurience is not. The major problems of our time cannot be understood in isolation they are all interconnected and interdependent. In our current economy, we have put currency on a pedestal that is far too exalted for us to reach anymore. Most of the goods that are produced and interchange are often unneeded and therefore are essentially waste. Even still, demographic pressure and scantiness form a vicious circle that hunt down to fewer jobs and wider poverty gaps.These are the costs of the good life. Our current global economy is a system striving for unlimited quantitative growth and is ostensibly unsustainable as previously stated. Looking again from an ecologic standpoint, the bad growth resulting from this system leads to externalizing social and environmental costs, is based on fossil fuels, involves toxic substances, depletes our natural resourc es, and degrades the Earths ecosystems.Harvard professor Michael Sandel adds what I study to be the most interesting cost of the good life when it comes to affluenza. He argues that over the last collar decades, we have drifted from having a commercialize economy to pricey a market society. Although these two seem to be synonymous, they are actually quite different. A market economy is a valuable and effective slit for organizing productive activity while a market society is a place where about everything is up for sale. By doing this, we have created a counselling of life in which market values seep into almost every sphere of life and sometimes fight out or corrode important, non-market values.One of the examples that professor Sandel uses is congressional hearings in Washington D.C.. Lobbyists want to watch these hearings and because the seats are limited, line-standing companies have arisen. Line-standing companies hire dispossessed people and pay them an hourly rate in order to wait in line justbefore the hearing. According to the professor, this is malign for two reasons. In a democratic society, everyone should have equal addition to representative government. The other reason its wrong is that it demeans representative government. When it comes to the point where almost everything in our normal life is sold off to the highest bidder, something is lost.Money matters more and more in our society. And against the background of rising inequality, money takes a toll on the commonality of our civil life. In other words, we lose a kick downstairs of ourselves. Do we go so far that we are cheapening important social goods and civic goods that are worth caring about? Society will in conclusion become a place of narcissistic egoism where people will be buying their way into and out of positive and negative situations.What is the good life worth? Ive been struggling with this question a great deal lately. You whitethorn or may not be familiar wit h the term initial world problems. They are frustrations and complaints that are only go through by privileged individuals, typically used as a comedic device to make light of fiddling inconveniences. Not having the latest gadget and the newest clothes from a particular store are just a few examples. When I bought something, I failed to realize what I was actually paying. I now know that these consumer goods cost natural resources, valuable money, and so much more. The simplest way I can put it is that the cost of the good life priceless.