Somewhere in our recent bureaucratic past, some young and imaginative entrepreneur has come up with the following: Clean-air credits and pollution credits. These are things you can buy or sell depending on whether you've been bad or good. Say you have a small company in a large city that is spewing tons of surely asthmatic death causing emmsions to anyone living near your plant and breathing in your earthy bad), and I have a plant out here in the country 1861 miles away, but have, at great cost and loss of profit to myself and my employees, put all the anti-pollution devices I can into affect to protect my neighbors, both locally and globally from ever breathing anything my factory might produce(the good). Well, here's the skinny...you can BUY some of my clean air for your dirty factory. I have no idea what the going rate for my clean air is, but, yes, it is indeed for sale. The odd part of this transaction is that nothing ever gets shipped anywhere. You've just purchased something called credits...Things that give you the right to go on polluting and killing and the only thing that has changed hands is money. I'm pretty sure the government has a hand in this somewhere. What you've bought is the right to go on polluting because I'm not.
That, sadly, being what it is is, is where my extistentional program comes into effect. I want to move this concept into other arenas. To wit: a notoriously bad prolific artist in the Northwest somewhere is producing lots of noticeably bad stuff, and polluting walls all over the area. It is well known and commonly agreed that this characters stuff is bahaahad. But, Lo!, down South there resides a great artist who paints great paintings, but not many of them. So, why can't the bad artist buy some Great Artist Credits from him so he could make just claim that he is a better artist. In the grand scheme of things this could balance everything out and keep the long term bad art/good art ratio in proportion overall.
How about with the Aids epidemic. We are trying to get on top of it here in the USA and say Africa, for whatever reason, is not having any luck at all curbing their problem with same. Perhaps if they gave us some money for some Aids Reduction Credits, then the problem would be on the fast track towards solution. Nothing actually need be done, we need not inconvenience any researchers and doctors by sending them over there...no facilities have to be built, yet they would have the right to claim less Aids cases with their newly purchased credits. It would be awkward at this juncture to mention the actual humans who might continue dying, but we must stick with the theory I am trying to expound. Loss of life should stay out of the equation...it would only serve to evoke unnecessary emotion thus clouding the issue.
A bully could buy Good Guy Credits at school and go on pummeling. The auto makers could buy Lemon and Safety Credits and produce more cheap junk.
How about doctors and Malpractice Credits. Meat packers could by USDA Approval Credits and put more bones and such in out hot dogs (hmmmm, this may already be happening?)
...and so on, ad infinitum, buying evil from the good. This whole concept was just a politically correct thought I had the other day, you need pay it no mind.
I was out with my children the other day, and my eight year old son buys this candy device for a dollar that is so well thought out. It is a miniature plastic baby bottle like object that is filled with pure colored and flavored sugar and even comes complete with a sugar candy nipple on the cap. What one does with this device is you suck the nipple to get it wet and then dip it into the bottle full of sugar and then lick it off and do it again and again and again. I guess this instills a Freudian feeling of impending maturity in the young male psyche along with physiological adaptation to the necessary elements of nutritional balance, ie...mother's milk vs. sugar, and a subtle tertiary lesson in ecological consideration...the plastic bottle that is used for three minutes and sent straight off to the land fill. I must remember to pick him up a twelve pack of these indispensable items for his next outing with his pals.
On a brighter economic note. I still am able to use my Good News disposable razors for 365 shaves before disposing of them(and I don't use shaving cream), and I send the razor back to the President of Gillette when I'm done through with it and he don't seem to care none as he has never responded. I've reduced my trash bill from $119.80 per annum to about $10-12 with prudent management of what is waste and what is recyclable. The brand name (Hahn) lawn mower I use hasn't even been manufactured for 18 or so years and despite age, still runs fine although I do have to purchase clean lawn mower emission credits from a guy in Stamford, Connecticut who has an electric.