From: cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg)
Subject: Those Two New Articles I Told You About
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:19:43 GMT

%t The Economic Benefits of Pollution
%n 1R7
%s Why pollution is necessary in today's economy
%a David Richard Tabb (tabbdav@eng.auburn.edu)
%d 19921030
%x Democracy, Problems with
%i Pollution
%e
It is a well known and unpopular fact that today's modern manufacturing 
techniques are the cause of a great deal of pollution.  It is also well 
known and unpopular that this pollution is the cause of many illnesses 
in the workers at the plants causing said pollution.  What is neither well 
known nor popular is the fact that this entire cycle is actually a powerful 
economic force without which modern society could not exist.

Let's examine this one step at a time.  (One) An executive builds a factory 
knowing that it will cause pollution, much in the same way that cows produce 
methane, and (Two) hires people to work there at ridiculously low wages. 
(Three) The workers work, as workers are wont to do, and eventually (Five) 
become extremely ill and die because they have been (Four) handling very 
dangerous and toxic materials like uranium or the stuff inside 
Twinkies (tm).  Each worker's death has two (Two) immediate effects:  (Six) 
First, a job opening is created at the factory which is (Seven) filled by 
someone entering the workforce, thereby (Eight) lowering the unemployment 
rate.  (Nine) Second, because of the immutable law of supply and demand, 
as the total number of available workers decreases, (Ten) the value of 
each worker increases slightly, forcing (Eleven) the executives to raise 
the workers' salaries.

As can be seen from this analysis, pollution in and around a factory helps 
to stimulate the economy by constantly providing new jobs at a continually 
increasing rate of pay, as well as encouraging the circulation of money 
within the society by the continual payment of funeral expenses by the 
workers' families and the growth of complementary industries such as 
earthmoving equipment manufacturers and the general increase in land values 
as more and more of it is used as retirement space.  Therefore, it is quite 
obvious that if factories were built which caused no pollution, the economy 
of the region would collapse.

And why, you had better ask, would the corporate executives go along with 
this system which obviously threatens their lives and bank accounts?  It 
could be that the executives are compassionate, altruistic individuals who 
are willing to accept a little sacrifice, both monetary and environmental, 
in order to keep society from economic collapse.  It could be that the 
executives went to great trouble and expense designing and building highly 
polluting factories just to keep supply and demand balanced so as to save 
the workers from the indignity of being underpaid for their labor.

However, it seems more likely that the executives' accountants pointed out 
that slight pay increases were still cheaper than stopping the pollution 
and that the executives could pay themselves more than they paid anyone 
else because they worked in the tops of tall buildings and were therefore 
closer to the pollution.  The accountants were so persuasive, in fact, that 
all the executives bought big houses in the country to avoid the pollution 
and bought their accountants slightly smaller houses as a a reward for 
extreme cleverness.
%e

%t Reno, Nevada, United States of America
%n 1R08
%s Information on the gambling town of Reno, Nevada, USA, Earth
%a Scott Mathew Glazer  (glazer@cs.cornell.edu)
%d 19921102
%e
Reno is a city placed in the precise location where the most people should, 
in a rational universe, not want to be.  Heartbreakingly close to breath-
taking vistas, glorious mountain lakes, and the majestic peaks of the Sierra 
Nevada range, Reno's inhabitants instead grovel in the day-to-day squalor of 
a flat, parched, and dust-coated existence catering only to the tourists who 
flock to the area for the singularly incomprehensible reason of trading 
small green pieces of paper for nothing whatsoever in return.

Legend has it that "Reno" is Chawktaw Indian for "When's the next bus out?"
This is the question all people in Reno should be asking themselves.  
Gambling (the aforementioned barter of small bits of green paper) is not as 
much fun as the thousands of thalidomide victims wandering listlessly around 
the casino floors make it appear.  Be warned that there are no other legally 
tolerated forms of recreation aside from gambling in the entire state of   
Nevada.  (Although legends of a brave group of renegade volleyball players 
do surface with surprising regularity.)

Eating in Reno:  You may be tempted by such offers as "64-oz steak $1.99" or
by the even-more seductive circus-circus buffet, offering an embarassing
extravaganza of carefully designed, 100% vinyl food and the atmosphere of
your more sub-standard amusement parks all for one low price.  Ignoring the
obvious cholesterol risks and the not-infrequent outbreaks of food-poisoning,
there remains a compelling reason to avoid such eateries.  Known as "Keno",
this variant of lotto is played in all casino restaurants and is widely 
regarded as the twelth most annoying thing in the Universe, the eleventh 
being the tendency of the natives of New York City to torture their friends
to death as a greeting ritual.

One additional fact concerning Reno:  It is in a very arid desert.  This in
and of itself would not be so bad, but the sad fact of the matter is that
Reno's residents fail to comprehend their situation and believe instead that
(a) Reno is merely in the midst of some sort of decades-long drought, but
it'll soon be over and then you'll be sorry for saying we shouldn't use so
much water keeping our golf courses in tournament conditions, won't you?,
(b) the stinking trickle of fetid water that slithers past downtown is
actually a "river", and (c) despite the fact that Lake Tahoe has pretty much
been completely drained to provide a last gasp of a water supply, building
big new housing developments is a really keen idea.
%e
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