Month: September 2012

Law of Tradition: Every purchase needs a receipt.

Is a receipt anything more than a statement of distrust? It’s basically a piece of paper that is proof something happened. More often than not you receive one of these most frequently at the grocery store where it’s completely unnecessary seeing as in order to get one you had to have paid. I certainly don’t see the staff stopping everyone at the door checking their receipts so the stopping shoplifting theory is out. I suppose a benefit would be on returning something. Most places require proof that you purchased the item from them but definitely not all of them. There are many well-known businesses that will take returns from anywhere so long as they sell the item too. Receipts sure can be handy but it’s certainly in a state of overkill these days.

To Defy the Law of Tradition: say no more to receipts. Many businesses now’adays will ask you if you want a receipt. Say no if it’s something that just isn’t necessary. A few examples when not necessary; tacos; gum; most food items; any purchase less than a dollar; heck, any purchase under ten dollars; firewood; flowers; etc. you get the picture. I’ve been collecting these piles of receipts for years and throwing them away at the end of the day but it’s really just wasted time. I shouldn’t be throwing them away because I should never be accepting them most of the time.

Law of Tradition – You earn money
This is wrong. Money isn’t earned, it is rationed to you like food stamps. I think of money now as resource stamps that are doled out so you can then choose which resources you need the most. The entity that controls the money, the federal reserve, has such an elaborate system of controlling these resource stamps, it is beyond the comprehension and out of awareness for most. The myth would be that money is important in regulating resources. The reality is that it is important for controlling the resources for the benefit of very few. Instead of intelligently using our resources, we are beholden to resource slavery. Jacque Fresco refers to this as a rule of scarcity where those in control give the impression that the resources are scarce and that we need to be careful about how we distribute them with money being the lubricant to distribute them. If an item is becoming scarce then lets think intelligently about how to replace/supplement/etc. to serve everyone instead of using a system where those with enough of those ‘prezidential baseball cards’ get to make all the trades. In the worst cases they ignore everyone else and in the best case they embrace everyone around them.

Easier said than done, I know.

To defy the Law of Tradition – think and act with everyone in mind. Think intelligently about your issues and how they affect those around us, and more importantly how to sustainably solve them. Vow to create a sustainable solution to an everyday issue that you and others encounter. Live life to the fullest.