Why Are We Still Changing Lightbulbs?!

...Good question. And I pondered this deeply, possibly near a bottle of extremely cheap Merlot that I may or may not have been partaking of (I could write an entire article on the evils of the additives of cheap Merlot, but this is alcohol we're talking about--it's poison. Delightful, glorious poison....).

While I was in the thick of my quest for inspiration, my fiance was back up in our NH pad, trying to figure out why Nashua's homeless weren't throwing him their spare change for the place. Was it the economy? The paint job? The slightly homoerotic poster of Mr. Spock that hung in the bedroom? In his mounting frustration, he sought to answer this question in the only way he knew how: ranting on the internet.

As this the best use of an angry salesman's time? Ah,YES--his frustration became my inspiration! He begged me to feature his rant/advertisement here in place of my own inane thoughts, but since the therapist-side of me feels that I need more items in this relationship to call my own besides my impressive collection of weaponry, I said no. But I did agree to give it a (sorta) objective analysis since, like most ranter vs.commentator battles on the internet, the winner was decidedly unclear.

Our current situation shines strobe-lights on the battle that most face when it comes to the issue of Going Green. Take, for example, the following heated excerpt, that is not in any way a real estate plug:

"All of the light fixtures even have environmentally friendly light-bulbs installed that will take years if not over a decade to burn out with some of them."

This is the tip of our slowly-melting icebergs; this place also features a gas stove, water-saving spigots and shower head -- he even created a sealed frame for the window air-conditioning unit in order to make it more energy-efficient (Internet Flame-Throwers pointed out that Central Air would have been a little less ghetto, but our spare cash has unfortunately closely followed the same path as LiLo's career). Said Flame-Thrower assertions in general ranged from "I just want lighting and hot water!" to "What you built is not something anyone other than you would be interested in." Why the abuse? Well, sinking $83,000 into a place in order to bring it up to code, create a full data center, and install environmentally-friendly appliances comes with a price....about $1,800/month for any prospective renters, to be exact, and that's just to break (barely above) even, all in the name of community improvement.

So why aren't renters throwing themselves at the freshly-painted doors for a glimpse of the future? Who doesn't want the best environmentally-friendly shower of their entire life (seriously, that shower head is friggin' SWEET)? Oh wait...because this is Southern New Hampshire, not NYC. Entire 5 bedroom homes rent for less in these parts. Improved conditions, particularly green ones, just aren't in demand if they are unaffordable. Plus, renters often look for some of those improvements to hopefully be on the outside, as well. Although, buyer beware on that.

Now, to sorta fit the definition of objective, I'd like to point out that if one were to nitpick at every aspect of the costs, as my fiance has diligently done, it would make sense on paper, believe it or not; light-bulbs do burn out periodically, and we then have to repeatedly pay for replacements when it's apparently not even necessary anymore. For that matter, there are a lot of little necessities that we needlessly waste too much money on over time: paper cups instead of reusable glasses, disposable mops,etc...Some guy invented a fabric that stops bullets, yet somehow I still have to buy new hosiery every other week. Saving on any or all of these things should logically leave room for rent, right? In a practical sense, not really.

The problem is that $1,800/month is a huge expenditure compared with the cost of replacing a measly light-bulb. You may not have to sink money into more bulbs for the next decade, but SO WHAT? You're still losing $1,800 every month, and thanks to our wiring, that simply hurts the average brain much more than costs accumulated overtime ( EVIDENCE). Therein lies the problems of the current real estate market and having to lower prices in order to simply keep residences filled. While this may be best for the well-being of the family and business, the Earth's well-being inevitably suffers.

"Going Green" may be the latest trend that most businesses are touting loudly, but it's hard to see such efforts as being little more than superficial: Businesses don't want to build things to last a lifetime, they want to profit for a lifetime. So they create products as cheaply as possible that they want you to keep buying as often as possible, be it through deals or upgrades, etc.

This is capitalist economics: it's the bottom-line reason behind everything, from sweatshops to outsourcing to why Whole Foods is so damned expensive. Healthy food in general is overpriced, but I'll save that for another internet rant.