Dead cars and SUV’s lay scattered for miles across the devastated land. Bricks, broken glass, twisted metal, and loose lumber lay in silent communion like fallen warriors. Pink strips of insulation flutter like useless banners in the listless wind.
The hurricane has moved on.
But where are the carrion crows? Where are the scavengers of the battlefield? Where is the clean-up crew? Why have they passed-up such a feast? The TV drones on endlessly about tragedy. No mention is made of opportunity. This seems odd in a country obsessed with recycling.
Why isn’t there a rush to save all this valuable recyclable material. Here is treasure for the taking. Why is no one reaping the windfall?
Shouldn’t ambitious America’s be flocking to this opportunity as fast as the 49ers did to the California gold-fields. No, sadly, in our time, layers of regulation along with endless paper-work conspire to throttle ambition and opportunity.
It wasn’t always so.
In the days before recycling became chic, recycling was unheralded and automatic. Thousands of scavengers wanted what we didn’t want. Both animals and humans would carry-off what we threw away - for free.
The cries of the Rag-man, the Bone-man, and the Junk-man echoed through city streets right up to the mid-twentieth century. These were men who knew how to turn refuse into profit.
They didn’t deal in biological refuse, but stray dogs, cats, crows and racoons did, anything discarded didn’t remain discarded for long.
It was a harmonious system of mutual benefit. Hungry animals were fed, enterprising poor folks had
a ready source of cash. The streets were kept clean.
Nowadays, we prohibit the human scavengers and chase-off the hungry animals.
We’ve switched-out natural recycling for artificial recycling, complete with everchanging categories of what’s official trash and what isn’t, mandated pick-up schedules, sanctioned-only bagging, and tedious sermonizing on the moral imperative to save the planet.
Carrion crows and junk-men if allowed to sue would probably have a good case for breach-of-natural-contract and incitement to public mischief,.
Scavengers are faster at cleaning-up disasters because they give it their full attention. They don’t have to coordinate with other agencies, fill-out reams of paper-work, study environmental impact reports, consult with experts, or hold press conferences.
They just pick the rubble clean.
I’ve watched the news coverage on many disasters. Not much seems to get picked-up for the first few weeks.
I suppose the official agencies are busy getting their ducks in a row, accessing insurance losses, calculating disaster-payouts, rushing-in emergency aid and restoring utilities. First thing first.
Pick-up can wait.
Maybe it doesn’t have to wait.
Maybe after a disaster anything scattered across the debris field could be proclaimed common property, available to any willing to take it away – starting with able-bodied regional survivors, then extended to anyone willing to put sweat-equity into building their fortune - pound by pound.
It would be an opportunity for the formerly unemployed to become employed. Grateful stray-dogs, racoons, and crows would have a rare chance to eat their fill. Millions of taxpayer dollars could be saved.
Local police would still arrest looters, but leave scavengers to their useful work. Otherwise, government should hand-off disaster pick-up operations to entrepreneurs, who when free to make a profit will always find a way to do efficiently what red-tape bound bureaucracy cannot.
It would be a model of recyclable triumph that could be endlessly recycled with every new natural disaster.
So obvious, so unlikely.
Honor the carrion crow.