I hate luxury items. I really do. They are like drugs in that they enable violent factions in bloody civil wars to fund their wars from the greed of men.
With the recent spike in the price of gold, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is seeing an increase in violence, courtesy of the blood gold being mined there to fund its long-lasting civil war. Actually, it’s more a long-lasting looting project. I don’t think the factions want to run the country as much as they just want to sell off its mineral wealth for their gain.
Anyway, I already don’t buy diamonds. I’m now sure I don’t want to buy gold. The only bloodstained things left for me to not buy are my clothes and my gasoline.
Oh well…
So does that mean in the long run everything will have to be turned into a blood type of thing? Because people already shed blood over food, money, diamonds, oil, and a whole bunch of other things. We all know that we need these things making it a necessity to our lives, yet are we all willing to fight wars over this?
For example, Black Friday, the craziness of people for good that are luxuries are ridiculous. My sister, dad’s girlfriend’s son, and i decided to go to Walmart and go through this horrid holiday and learned that people are crazy and would shed blood for stupid goods that aren’t necessary. A man got hit in the face with a rock band box because a psycho lady thought he was trying to steal it from him…
IS the world going to go through that with everything and anything they can get their hands on?
Black Friday is very different from blood gold, and blood diamonds, because the goods that people are scrambling for will probably never be used to fund wars, because they are products and not something the can be mined, or picked off a plant. Also, Black Friday is the one day that high priced items are at lower prices and therefore more affordable. For example, say a person has $300 and there is this PC they really want to buy, but it costs $450. If the economy was not sucky, they would just use the credit card and not pay the bill, but with the economy in the dumps and each individual/family’s financial situation not sound, they may choose not to buy it until… voila the Black Friday price of the PC is $300. The desire to spend has been bottle up all year is finally released on Black Friday, and therefore chaos ensues.
Anything that has a monetary value may someday have a high monetary value, and therefore will be able to support the “civil wars” as long as they are cheap to obtain either directly from the land or made.
ah okay David i get it