We think appliances are to save labor, but General Electric created them to grow demand for electricity, hence General “Electric”
Until I learned that “the electric refrigerator was made and marketed as means of supporting the physical properties of fossil fueled power plants,” I thought electric appliances were designed to save us time and effort.
Some may, but our lives have less leisure time than our ancestors before agriculture, as well as many indigenous people today. No wonder, I realized, when it hit me that the industry didn’t begin to help us but to sell products to sell more electricity.
Oh yeah, generating all that power pollutes and depletes, which power companies don’t make a point of publicizing.
We’ve bought into what they told us to sell us that we don’t realize we’re not benefiting. I never would have noticed this pattern except for hands-on practical experience that belies the stories mainstream culture lives by.
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