That was the subject line of one of my missives in response to the Glynn County Director of Public Works entering into a contract with a trapper to deal with beavers that might presume to clog his culverts with sticks and debris. I was wrong. "Management," it turns out is the catch-all bureaucrats' euphemism for destroying and disposing of whatever inconvenience might impede their enterprise.
"Waste management" wasn't just an effort to enhance the social status of garbage men. It had functional relevance because where the latter were originally engaged in a recycling enterprise based on feeding garbage to hogs, waste management focused on incineration and/or burying stuff underground, like some dead body.
"Waste management" is a dead-end enterprise, not a matter of trade and exchange. Which, of course, is why our swelling landfills serve as testaments to an economy that's failed. Sad to say, our economists can't read the sign-posts 'cause they're not on a spread-sheet. Even the graphs from the Federal Reserve depicting the sluggish dollar don't register. Economists don't get pictures.
Are there exceptions?
Pest management?
Personnel management?
Wealth management?
Hotel management?
Resource management?
Asset management?
Should we be surprised that management fees diminish all assets over time? Gradual elimination, that's the ticket, instead of in one fell swoop.
To manage is to exterminate, but gradually. Which suggests it is not derived from the French "mènage." A mènage á trois is a far cry from household management.
The destruction of the basic economic unit is not a happenstance. Economic activity has been transformed from exchange into exploitation under the guise of capital. The ephemeral has promoted the destruction of the real. Exploitation has been shielded by the veil of money.
Capitalism is the triumph of the ephemeral over the real, the idea over the fact.