[kingofmen]

> Consumer spending is not "wealth destruction" -- who makes the fantasy coffins? Who prints the banners? Local businesses!

If the local businesses were instead being hired to dig holes and fill them up again... oh wait, they literally are, except they're also instructed to make very elaborate artworks and put them in the holes before shoveling in the dirt. Anyway: Can you please examine the movement of real resources rather than pieces of paper? No society gets rich by making art which is immediately destroyed.

[card_zero]

There's no good way to measure wealth creation. If people are getting what they want - if there's no extra government tax them to pay for the digging and re-filling of holes, but it's all done freely, out of desire to have it done - then it might be of some value, because they think it is.

We can say "but it plainly isn't purposeful", but the same applies to pets, vacations, every kind of art and craft, fancy cuisine, pure mathematics, dance music festivals, religion and all associated economic activity, all sports ... I'll stop there, but the two main points are: firstly, the value in life is about a lot more than moving real resources, or paper, or food and shelter; secondly, nobody knows what it is all about, man. It's hugely a matter of opinion, what's good and worthwhile. Economic activity is perhaps the ongoing process of making guesses about the answers.

[kingofmen]

> If people are getting what they want

"If".

It appears (from this article, I haven't done any exhaustive research) that when the Ghanaians have the option of hiding money from their families and from the funeral expenses, they exercise that option with flair and alacrity. That suggests that they are not getting what they want out of this whole digging activity. And while we cannot read off what is best in life from the stars or the mountains, we can have a look at what people do when they are free to choose without social pressure. It does rather appear that most humans who are free to choose would rather have washing machines and cars than elaborate funerals. Were it not so, then presumably the funerals of the West, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, would drastically outshine what the poverty-stricken Ghanaians can manage. Where are our burials IN SPACE? Our cremation rockets fired into the Sun, "from stardust you came, to stardust your return"? Why do we not hold weeks of elaborate mourning, with professional poets (or rappers if you prefer) hired to extol the virtues of the deceased and laws about "funeral leave" allowing us to sit idle?

[card_zero]

It would be mean of me to link to the Wikipedia article "Space burial" at this point. I think you make some valid points, mainly in the first few sentences.