Having too-efficient harvesting tools lets people take more than is sustainable

Evidence

While a sharp shovel would make digging more efficient, the truth is that it makes the work too fast. If I could get all the leeks I needed in five minutes, I’d lose that time on my knees watching the ginger poke up and listening to the oriole that has just returned home. This is truly a choice for “slow food.” Besides, that simple shift in technology would also make it easy to slice through neighboring plants and take too much. Woods throughout the country are losing their leeks to harvesters who love them to extinction. The difficulty of digging is an important constraint. Not everything should be convenient. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 637

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that difficulty itself is an important ethical constraint echoes gift-economy self-restraint claims from chapter 7 and extends the slow-food thread. — connects to: Sustainable harvesting is deepened by deliberately giving back more than is taken — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 704; Efficiency logic ignores that leaving harvest for others is wise — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 648; Even renewable resources face depletion when consumption outpaces replenishment — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2925
• CANDY: ‘Not everything should be convenient’ is a quotable one-liner against efficiency culture.

Broader Connections

• Even renewable resources face depletion when consumption outpaces replenishment #corroborates (0.90) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2925
• Sustainable harvesting is deepened by deliberately giving back more than is taken #contradicts (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 704
• Efficiency logic ignores that leaving harvest for others is wise #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 648