Mooresville Recycling
How about I show you how government specifically is interested in control and power instead of freedom and people? Here it is, on a tiny town level. Mooresville, NC has around 10,700 households. It’s not a big place. Their government is considering forcing people adding recycling. Yes, I’m well aware this is how you force people to recycle because you make it voluntary at first, then mandatory later on to “save costs.” It’s crappy, horrible, controlling, anti-freedom government at it’s worst.
But the government put together a presentation that shows they honestly do not care one bit about how much money they spend. Sure, if you take the presentation at face value, it looks like this effort would actually bring income to the city. But if you look a little closer, you see that’s not actually the case.
In one place, the presentation bases all its numbers, including those that show a “profit,” on a 70% household participation. However, on the previous page, they show the nationwide average figures of participation is 40-80%, and their own goal is only 50%! So the city is going to try and get 50% participation, but bases ALL the calculations and figures on 70%! I don’t know if you can call that outright lying, but it sure is dishonest in every sense of the word. They also don’t mention in the presentation the line that helps them “earn” money listed as “tax income.”
Worse, they go on to claim that it would cost more if they let a private company do the collections for them — and then provide the data to show that’s completely untrue! The presentation claims that a private company will pick up recycling for just $3.75 per house per month. That’s all. So what would happen in a freedom-based country? The claimed 72% of town residents that want recycling could just pay $3.75 a month and get it. That’s it. There would be no government employees to pay. There would be no administrators to pay. There would be no mismanagement by the government. And best of all — the 28% of residents who do not want to be forced to pay to make other people feel good WOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY!
In other words, the options are clear. Government can use force to require people to pay them, and government will spend nearly $70 a year per household; or people could be free to contract with other free people to get curbside recycling for less than $4 a month (around $48 a year). I bet you can guess what the board “suggested” that the town do, can’t you? Government today, even in small towns, is about using force to control people and nothing more.
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Our county had mandatory recycling, but it went bust after a few months because people began spiking their “contributions” in a mass protest against the plan. Things are much better now that it is voluntary again.
Not that I would condone placing foreign material in with one’s recycling, but there sure were a lot of road-killed possums mixed in with the recyclables! It was beautiful.
In Mooresville it’s very odd — you get one can per residence. If you want a second roll-out container, you have to pay around $100. However, if you just throw crap on the street not in a container, they’ll pick that up.
Most weeks I see about half of the households with 1 container and a pile of crap. I have yet to see a house with a second container. If people are suddenly provided with another container, I bet it gets filled with that crap pile… intentionally or not.