Once we have sacrificed our time to the extractive economy, there is even more money to be made, because we now must use our hard-earned cash in order to purchase substitutes for the time we’ve traded. We buy take-out and fast food when we don’t have time to cook dinner. We buy prescription drugs when we no longer have time to take care of our health and get ample rest. We buy luxury goods for our loved ones as a substitute for spending time together. We throw out our shoes when the soles wear thin, toss our electronics into landfills when they stop working properly, because it takes too much time to repair them. In the long run, we wind up cash-poor and time-destitute, while corporate America accumulates our wealth.
Shannon Hayes
Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture
