I Perished Beneath Progress

I suffocated beneath a billion plastic shopping bags each barely used but once

I failed to crawl my way out from under tons of rotten half-eaten convenience foods

I was found buried beneath an avalanche of good, reusable cardboard we had tossed aside

The mere idling of their many vehicles proved enough to totally blacken my lungs

I died from a million tiny cuts caused by all the perfectly good glass we had thrown away

I was carried off by the flood of petroleum, mindlessly burned for no real reason

Advertising jingles collided noisily in my head as I tried earnestly to pray for my soul

I was crushed beneath mountains of worthless and dead corporate factory fishery bycatch

I lay flattened and compressed under fresh concrete, right along with the dying soil

They gave myself and other dissidents free housing: next to their coal-fired power plants

I was borne off with rich sediment as the mountain glaciers melted into blowing dust

I drifted up with the smoke from the last firewood burned to boil their drinking water

They brought bad jobs and ruined our lives with their wasted dream vacation resorts

I was scalded horribly before drowning in the spreading floods of their black asphalt

I stood no chance as monstrous yellow machinery pierced and gouged my unprotected flesh

I perished from the shock of all the electricity that was simply being wasted

I was quietly covered by silt far below the surface at the base of their marvelous dams

I passed out, unaware of the hypoxically-poisonous nature of their slick propaganda

I was but one of uncounted millions who perished in the resource wars caused by overpopulation

Their high-speed tires spread me into a shiny stain on the smooth concrete pavement

I was buried with free-market lead in my brain and Clean Coal mercury in my tissues

I failed in my struggle to make it to the air above a sea of cast-off plastic containers

Nobody found my tiny newborn body inside a milk carton in a convenience store dumpster

I passed away beneath the excessive marching feet of the far beyond sustainable

I slowly decomposed along with vast forests of discarded paper we found no use for

Their screaming sonar destroyed my guidance system as we fled, full of industrial toxins

I drowned with a polar bear searching for ice floes long melted in this new warm age

I disappeared from migration routes traced through the web of life for a million years

Drying with the virgal rain, I never reached the parched earth, so very far below

I flowed lifeless along with dirty runoff into channelized rivers to help enlarge ocean dead spots

I withered beside the plants which could not migrate away from the increasing heat

I perished of amnesia after my identity was stolen by some worm-filled spam

Our imports fell apart quickly and lay in useless heaps by their abandoned strip malls

I was sent to Africa with the castoff Chinese clothing even thrift stores could not sell

I was body-bagged as the regrettably-unavoidable collateral damage of inevitable globalization

I thinned to the density of outer space with all the rest of their thoughts and beliefs 

Blindly Destructive Hand Of The Free Marketplace

Coupled with an unwavering and blind faith in our choice from all of those One True Gods

The blind hand of the marketplace unerringly creates optimal economic solutions

Thus, toxic emissions from our vehicles should not be saddled with artificial taxes

But weapons producers can increase demand through promotion of phony bogeymen

Given our love of exotic hardwoods, loggers quite naturally clear cut and sell them all

Pure supply and demand is always superior to meddling government social interventions

Strictly for-profit healthcare will provide all the medical services the old, sick & poor really need

If it is cheaper to bulldoze cropland than to redevelop strip malls, that alone makes it proper

Exterminating predators in competition for our domestic cattle is natural to market economics

Quite naturally, social costs cannot be found on the ledgers of brave entrepreneurs

Nobody profits from forests quietly filtering drinking water, so their rate of return is zero

Producers need not pay for problems their contaminated dust brings to far off lands

Making coal clean is inefficient and costs the consumer more, so it is to be avoided

Air and water are free goods and pollution controls are simply taxes, not investments

Capitalists will always be rewarded for reducing prices through slashing labor costs

If the Chinese will pay $600/oz, starving tribesman will sell all the ivory they can gun down

Factory trawlers can rob an old african fishing village of its living in the name of globalism

Short-term crop increases justify the overuse of fossil water and costly, dangerous chemicals

It is merely simpleminded idealism to hope for economic self-interest to be tempered with altruism

Our financials contain no long-term debt reflecting unsustainable resource usage

I can use my 300 hp SUV solely as an air-conditioner because the gas is all I need to pay for

Why add costly insulation to my home when energy costs less the more that I use

Neither the producer nor the consumer has any economic incentive to recycle

Laissez-faire allows prices to rise until scarce goods are simply driven to extinction

A dirt-poor consumer lacks incentive to drive producers towards sustainable practices

Government income transfers are an unnatural artifact which corrupt a pure economy

Hiring illegal immigrants at a fraction of market rate is rational economic behavior

Using a cheap, unregulated foreign food ingredients yields a clever competitive advantage

Shifting production overseas saves costs and justifiably brings executives great rewards

A large, poor, uneducated, young workforce benefits producers of consumer goods

Realistically, pension plans make no business sense and are to be eliminated via bankruptcy

Citizens should pay their own way in free retirement and healthcare marketplaces

Tying electablility to fundraising neatly marries entrepreneurship with politics

Certainly, we can rely on supply and demand curves to intersect at sustainable catch levels

We reflect with pride on our pollution reduction, having exported all of our factories

A no-strings bailout of the Too-Big-To-Fail will produce a blossoming of industrial self-regulation

We will simply let the marketplace test the survivability of these so-called endangered species