Recycling in the Economy and Dickens

I was recently reading "Our Mutual Friend" by Charles Dickens. The story revolves around the will of a very rich man, who leaves all his money to his son - as long as he marries this random girl, otherwise all the money is going to be inherited by the old mans faithful servants. Where does this link in with Economics you may ask...

Well the old man actually made his money from recycling, by getting peoples rubbish, arranging it into piles and then sorting through it, with the dust being useful for some random people, with the wood being useful for some other random trade, and of course if any jewels etc are found, then they can be sold. A personification of economy really.

Now the interesting thing is that even in the mid 19Th century, 900,000 tonnes of dust was being produced by the households of London. Nowadays this figure would be far larger, with London's population having increased enormously, and consequently its waste has increased. So actually a vital part of the economy is how we manage our rubbish, and as always, with anything that is described as "vital", there is a lot of money to be made.

Nowadays we know that we definitely need to recycle, as the Earth's resources are finite. This makes this sector even more important. But what is also important is an economical usage of farmland, because when we look at some farmlands, the farmers can either opt for output of £50 per annum for eternity, or he could go for intensive farming techniques, and get about £400 per annum for the next 15 years.

Unfortunately the farmer will often opt for the short-term option. This is further exacerbated by the supposedly "low" interest earning loans given by the IMF and the World Bank. No loans given by these selfish organisations have been paid back yet, and the amount keeps rising too...due to the "reasonable" interest charged on the loans. This usage of Western interest-earning loans is in my opinion the new hidden imperialistic tool of oppression. The debtors are always going to be less well off than the creditors, and due to the very nature of the loans, will be subservient to the Western nations.

But the beautiful thing is, that there is no costs of invasion, maintenance, crushing of the odd rebellion etc to be incurred by the imperialists, rather its just a steady flow of cash flowing in, almost as tributes were being paid to the Caesar by smaller kingdoms who had to pay to be left free, during the Roman Empire.

In the meantime...check out my much lighter blog where I'm writing an improvised novel:
www.history-philosophy.blogspot.com