Status Updates From The Waste Makers

"One of the best hopes for improving television content and reducing commericalism is "pay TV"" - I suppose that's worked out with HBO and Netflix. I don't know what content he was aiming for. For me educational channels on YouTube have been much more important.

"...the lives of most Americans have become so intermeshed with acts of consumption that they tend to gain their feelings of significance in life from these acts of consumption" - Was this fair? Is this still true? Is it peculiarly American? If it is, is that because America is country fuelled by immigration, and the migrants are pursuing the American Dream.

"Today, more than a hundred thousand talented high school graduates - certified to be college material - fail to go on to college specifically because of lack of money." - the problem today, some say, has been inverted now we have too many graduates drowning in debt.

"Many scientists have long felt that salt-water conversion offers the most sensible way to make use of the slumbering genie of atomic power" - Vance doesn't have an ecological bone in his body.

"...opportunities continue to open up in such service fields as travel, insurance, restaurants, hotel and motel operation..." - which with the exception of insurance damage the environment.

"Furthermore, in terms of life satisfaction, acts of consumption are no adequate substitute for acts of individual productivity" ... Prostestant work ethic, obviously not heard of alienated labour.

"Ireland, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, is outstanding among the nations of the world that have got their birth rate under control" - I thought it was emigration that eased Irish poverty, and in anycase it is outstanding because it's population peaked in the mid 19th century.

"Japan is one nation that has in recent years taken drastic and spectacular action to strike an equilibrium between its births and deaths" - and now struggles with demographic decline...

"If an automobile requires over 100 horsepower, it is too damned big and wasteful." - average car is 120 horsepower today