I'm sick of F21

I never really understood the principle of mass consumption when I was living in Singapore. However having visited numerous USA malls over the past week and being forced into buying shit I didn't really want (no, not salespeople), I am finally starting to understand why the people of the stars and stripes are such massive consumers with the largest carbon footprint in the world.

1) Farm Produce Subsidies

If I'm not wrong the USA heavily subsidies their farm producers. After all, how can Smith in Iowa compete with Salvadore in Chile? This leads to cheaper produce (naturally), and also leads to the mindset of "oh it's so cheap! It's okay if its wasted." If things cost more, then maybe some people would treasure them more. Though honestly by Singapore standards the fresh produce here is really expensive.

2) Distance of Amenities

A drive to do something such as picking up milk can take up to 15 minutes without red traffic lights. This is in contrast to walking 5 minutes downstairs to buy milk if you stay in a HDB. Cramped housing means amenities tend to be nearer. Suburb living here means if you don't own a car, prepare to get cabin fever. Hence, fuel consumption is very high.

3) Location of Amenities

In order to combat the long distances people have to travel, retailers here have come up with the grand idea of building more stores so that they are nearer to people. This means more stores within X sq miles (since we're going with the American system here). However this makes the consumer market rather small since its still the same number of people as before, but divided. Perhaps maybe about a 1000+ people actually are close enough to use that certain mall, but all 1000 people are not going to be there at the same time. Result? Large air conditioned malls (think Vivocity size too) with enough clothes for 500,000 people (stores need to be stocked right) empty on weekdays serving maybe 50 people. What a massive waste of electricity and cloth for clothes.

And that is probably just the tip of the Iceberg.

In the meantime, while on a weekend trip to Washington D.C. to do the touristy thing, I went to the Smithsonian :D They had a small forensic antropology exhibit with Jamestown artifects and my uncle, aunt and I messed around with real human bones (I felt a bit strange after touching them) trying to solve this CSI case in a workshop. That was really fun. Then the next day we went to the Crime and Punishment museum in Chinatown and I got a huge kick from reading all the exhibits. I even drove a police car into a pole in this computer simulation because I was trying to chase down a suspect -_-

It made me think again about how I love Criminology. But there are post grad degrees for that, thankfully.