The Vast Material Displacements The Machine Has

By Putting Business Before Every Other Manifestation Of Life, Our Mechanical And Financial Civilization Has Forgotten The Chief Business Of Life: Namely, Growth, Reproduction, Development. It Pays Infinite Attention To The Incubator-and It Forgets The Egg!

In The Name Of Economy A Thousand Wasteful Devices Would Be Invented; And In The Name Of Efficiency New Forms Of Mechanical Time-wasting Would Be Devised: Both Processes Gained Speed Through The Nineteenth Century And Have Come Close To The Limit Of Extravagant Futility In Our Own Time. But Labor-saving Devices Could Only Achieve Their End-that Of Freeing Mankind For Higher Functions-if The Standard Of Living Remained Stable. The Dogma Of Increasing Wants Nullified Every Real Economy And Set The Community In A Collective Squirrel-cage.

Adding Highway Lanes To Deal With Traffic Congestion Is Like Loosening Your Belt To Cure Obesity.

Deliberately, On Every Historic Occasion, We Piously Fake Events For The Benefit Of Photographers, While The Actual Event Often Occurs In A Different Fashion; And We Have The Effrontery To Call These Artful Dress Rehearsals Authentic Historic Documents.

Unfortunately, Once An Economy Is Geared To Expansion, The Means Rapidly Turn Into An End And "the Going Becomes The Goal." Even More Unfortunately, The Industries That Are Favored By Such Expansion Must, To Maintain Their Output, Be Devoted To Goods That Are Readily Consumable Either By Their Nature, Or Because They Are So Shoddily Fabricated That They Must Soon Be Replaced. By Fashion And Built-in Obsolescence The Economies Of Machine Production, Instead Of Producing Leisure And Durable Wealth, Are Duly Cancelled Out By The Mandatory Consumption On An Even Larger Scale.