Earth Provides Everything For Free?

By TLS

I was in a restaurant the other day eating lunch one-handed. The other hand was busy scrolling away on my phone, on LinkedIn actually, when I came across a video clip that made me stop. I had my volume down because that annoys me when others crank the volume up on their phone in public spaces.

The clip was in a post which was in a share, in a share, and maybe in one more share. So there were apparently several points, or agreements, trying to be made throughout. The clip fortunately was subtitled so I was able to read, mostly, what was going on. I tried to hang onto the clip so I could listen to it later but I lost it and couldn’t find it again. So everything here that follows is based on a loose summary.

There was a 40-something woman in a small crowd and she seemed to be rather upset. According to the subtitles, she was saying (rather heatedly) that the Earth provides everything for free but she couldn’t afford to live because billionaires always need new yachts.

Wellll, ok, sure, I think I get your point. Things are expensive, right? But lets unpack her statement a bit. “The Earth provides everything for free.” Uhhhm, sort of. Here’s my response to that statement: This mineral, or that body of water, or that piece of wood, for instance. Is it yours, is it mine, is it someone else’s? Is it on this side of the river or on the other side of the ocean? These are important details.

Here is where I think her argument completely falls apart. Yes, everything on Earth is just there for the taking, or digging up, or whatever. But, since there are more than about 20 humans on the planet, there is intense competition for those ‘free’ resources. That competition requires effort and energy, and that effort and energy is not free. Someone has to mine it, someone has to build it, or grow it, or design it, or…this can just keep going.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was on medication. I don’t remember ever seeing a diabetic medication tree anywhere before. Or a tree that grows cars, or houses, or designer shoes or purses. But I might have simply over looked those.

Currently as we wrap up 2024 there are a little over 8 billion people on this planet. Sure, the Earth’s resources could easily, or cheaply, or maybe even freely provide for a few hundred thousand, maybe even a few million. But that’s not the world we live in. Instead we live in a world with finite resources and almost infinite want/need. Does it suck that things are expensive? Yes, but that’s just how it is.

In this world everything costs, someone always has to pay for lunch. Which, I suppose, is probably why the guy at the register stopped me when I tried to leave without paying for the lunch I thought the Earth just provided for free.

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