The Externalities, The Help and Enjoying a Good Ham Burgher

I was explaining to my father yesterday that the cost of meat in this country is artificially low, due to externalities like corn subsidies, pollution downstream from pig farms, destruction of habitat for cattle grazing, etc. Amazingly, I think this was new information for him—he even asked about “documentation” of the pollution, which I pretty much laughed at and reminded him of The Internet.

Today, I was doing my sit and someone had a goddamned leaf-blower going. I will posit that a yard or sidewalk that meets the standards of the good burghers for tidiness is also an artificially inexpensive thing, due to the infernal obnoxiousness of leaf-blowers, the downstream psychological damage from the noise pollution of which is borne more or less silently by all neighbors. To the extent that any corn-fed burgher even considers this, he assumes that since all neighbors must pine for yards and sidewalks that meet the general standard for tidiness, and since we’re all equally tight with a buck and don’t want to pay The Help at a rate commensurate with clearing debris without creating a maelstrom of noise pollution, everyone benefits and suffers equally, cancelling any moral dimension to the question. But not all are party to this unspoken and sordid pact. Not at all.

And far from it. I am not being tongue-in-cheek at all. Leaf-blowers should be banned within the city limits.