| But - the only reason anyone makes money (other than tax money) is because they're useful to someone else. Almost all of the clothing industry companies make money from large numbers of people buying their clothes. So they are useful to us. Similarly, the reason Europe put 30% of its populace "out of work" by industrialising agriculture is why we don't have to all go work in fields all day. It is a massive net positive for us all. Moving ice from the arctic into America quickly enough before it melted was a big industry. The refrigerator put paid to that, and improved lives the world over. Monks retained knowledge through careful copying and retransmission of knowledge during the medieval times in the UK. That knowledge was foundational in the incredible acceleration of development in the UK and neighbouring countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. But the printing press, that rendered those monks much less relevant to culture and academia, was still a very good idea that we all still benefit from today. Soon, millions of car mechanics who specialise in ICE engines will have to retrain or, possibly, just be made redundant. That may be required for us to reduce our pollution output by a few percent globally, and we may well need to do that. The exact moment in history when workers who've learned how to do one job are rendered obsolete is painful, yes, and they are well within their rights to what they can to retain a living. But that doesn't mean those workers are somehow right; nor that all subsequent generations should have to delay or forego the life improvement that a useful advance brings, nor all of the advances that would be built on that advance. |
Stealing, scamming, gambling, inheriting, collecting interest, price gouging, slavery, underpaying workers, supporting laws to undermine competitors… Plenty of ways to make money without being useful—or by being actively harmful—to someone else.
> Almost all of the clothing industry companies make money from large numbers of people buying their clothes. So they are useful to us.
We don’t need all that clothing, made by monetarily exploiting people in poor countries and sold by emotionally exploiting people in rich countries under the guise of “fashion”. The usefulness line has long been crossed, it’s about profit profit profit.