House of Eratosthenes

Maslow Gotta take a quick minute to jot this down, since I’ve already been caught in an endless tail-chasing loop googling Abraham Maslow a handful of times. I keep forgetting everything about the guy, and he’s important. Or at least his pyramid is. The concept of the Maslow Pyramid is, that our attention focuses on different things as we achieve the basics. When we have food, clothing and shelter, we start worrying about things that wouldn’t even have drawn a passing glance from us when we still had questions about food, clothing and shelter. Maslow put together a spectrum that covers all of it…and for the most part it’s the 41st thing I figured out myself without being aware of his work.

Thing I Know #41. Those who are out of danger, worry about food. Those with food, worry about discomfort. Those who are comfortable, worry getting things done on time. Those who have time, worry about money. Those who are solvent, worry about their legacies. And the lucky souls who spared the plagues of danger, hunger, discomfort, time, solvency and legacy issues, worry about fashion.

So about a year and a half ago, San Francisco, which doesn’t seem to worry too much about food, discomfort, getting things done on time, or money, started worrying about…grocery bags. Yeah. They did. They really really did.

City officials are considering charging grocery stores 17 cents apiece for the bags to discourage use of plastic sacks.

Plastic is the choice of 90 percent of shoppers, but the sacks are blamed for everything from clogging recycling machines to killing marine life and suffocating infants.

Paper is recyclable, but city officials propose to include them as well to help reduce overall waste.

“One thing we’ve learned is that sending a financial signal to the marketplace tends to modify behavior much better than voluntary approaches,” Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“We all have a responsibility to promote a healthy and sustainable environment, and by doing that, it means we need to help change people’s patterns, and that even means their shopping patterns,” said [Supervisor Ross] Mirkarimi, who will take office in January.

Responsibility to promote a healthy and sustainable environment…in other words, they flat ran out of worries and had to start making some more. So the city elders started telling citizens how to shop for their groceries.

Somehow, in a nation started by a tax revolt, this was allowed to go ahead.

No, worse than that. Here it is twenty-eight months later and it’s not a tax anymore. It is…a ban. Yeah, a ban. Notice, Supervisor Mirkarimi is still at the epicenter of this little tempest, which in fact is not nearly as tempestuous as I think it oughtta be…

City leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. If Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected, San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to adopt such a rule.

The law, passed by a 10-1 vote, requires large markets and drug stores to give customers only a choice among bags made of paper that can be recycled, plastic that breaks down easily enough to be made into compost, or reusable cloth.

San Francisco supervisors and supporters said that by banning the petroleum-based sacks, blamed for littering streets and choking marine life, the measure would go a long way toward helping the city earn its green stripes.

“Hopefully, other cities and states will follow suit,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who crafted the ban after trying to get a 15-cent per bag tax passed in 2005.

Markarimi Yeah that’s right Ross. I’m sure the environment is going to get along just dandy when we all head down to Safeway with our 33 gallon lawn bags. You know what I really like about your story? It’s a classic case of something starting out as a tax…and everyone sits down with their slide rules and figures out, hey! I can afford this after all, so it’s not such a bad thing! And just over two years later it is a ban. I mean, facts is facts; here we are. Let it be a lesson.

In late ’04 you had targeted the paper bags as well. Now, it’s off the table — for the time being. But can the paper bag ban be far behind? Back then the story said…where’s the quote, ah, here it is: “…city officials propose to include [tax] them as well to help reduce overall waste.”

You know what I think? I think the Maslow Pyramid is a volcano. You spiral to the top of it, worrying about more and more trivial and cock-and-bull crap as you run out of the more essential concerns. Your attachment to reality suffers as more and more of your day-to-day needs are met, and uncertainty with regard to any of those needs, is gradually eliminated. And then this is what happened to Rome: Cemented into the very top of this pyramid, you are forcefully ejected from the top. No longer capable of making rational decisions, your super-duper safe-n-secure existence comes crashing down. It comes to an inglorious end.

Of some kind.

I’m really not sure how it can be brought about by outlawing grocery sacks. But on the other hand, it’s hard to envision someone having the competence to get dressed and get their teeth brushed, and go about their day doing whatever it is they do, if this is anywhere on their list of concerns. I mean, the competence with regard to things that really matter, just isn’t there. Somewhere, there has to be a day of reckoning.

Money quote…

“I think what grocers will do now that this has passed is, they will review all their options and decide what they think works best for them economically,” said David Heylen, a spokesman for the California Grocers Association.

Wow, I wish Mr. Heylen continued with that train of thought. What options are left? Maybe if the kitty can go without her litter pan for an hour or two, you could rinse it out and use that as your grocery bag when you run down to get more milk and cereal.

Don’t you love San Francisco? It’s a place everyone loves to watch…in the same way, I think, it’s really hard to look away when you see a highway accident about to happen.

A few thoughts…

First, it’s really funny to hear a bunch of anti-capitalist freaks talking about “sending financial signals to the marketplace”.

Second, it sounds like a great way to guilt people into paying the socialists more money.

But then they went for a ban. But it’s not really a ban, is it? It’s a ban of certain types of bags, and the return of forest-eating (but recyclable) paper.

Question is, do you still pay the 17 cents a bag for the recycleable/ biodegradable bags that you CAN use? Is the ban really a replacement of the money-making scheme? Be interesting to find out.
- philmon | 03/28/2007 @ 10:41
As I understand it, the seventeen cent penalty or surcharge or whatever-ya-call-it, is off the table. Knowing what I do about SF, that’s probably a case of left-wingers feeding on their own; in other words, the bag-banners ran into the “poor and minorities and womyn hardest hit” folks, engaged in a melee, and lost.

But I’m still going to bet you are right about the money-making scheme. I got seventeen cents of my own, that says 1) someone who knows someone, has an interest in a company that makes the biodegradable and “good” plastic bags, and/or the cloth bags; and 2) our wonderful objective unbiased press is going to be real helpful in exposing such a relationship. As helpful as…well…a you-know-what without a bottom.
- mkfreeberg | 03/28/2007 @ 11:43
[…] is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail,” said Abraham Maslow, he of the Maslow Pyramid fame. This is an excellent point; it is so worthy that it has given birth to what has become known […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/10/2010 @ 07:58
[…] spread the fable to make sure I can keep getting my vittles.” I guess the bottom layer of the Maslow Pyramid is something we’re enjoying in abundance, and there’s something higher up that is […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/16/2016 @ 11:07

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High on the PyramidWednesday, March 28th, 2007

High on the Pyramid
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007