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It’s also about driving everything to the bottom. Why does society need a cheap throwaway tool? What if only high quality, well made tools were available that t
by medion 3y ago
It’s also about driving everything to the bottom. Why does society need a cheap throwaway tool? What if only high quality, well made tools were available that truly reflected their production cost - both materially, environmentally and in terms of complete labour cost (as in, well paid employees with adequate 401k, holidays, etc). Not everyone needs a cheap tool, what if the tool reflected the true cost and it was very expensive and only a few have them? What happens? You borrow one. You save up for one. You pay a professional who has all the right tools.
I’m pretty sure this is (put very simply), how it always worked until globalization was sold as a good idea. It’s funny how democracy attempted to trickle down into materialism - as in we think it’s our god damn right to own whatever we want at the lowest possible cost regardless of its effects.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoI suspect that it has more to do with the desire to have tools. No one in the year 1900 would have said they did not want tools. They were essential, and even if you had no particular need for a tool yourself, it was something to loan for favor trading. If someone would've have given them high quality tools, it'd be like gifting you or me a spaceship. Today? Who wants a tool, they live in places where they can't even keep more than the tiniest assortment of tools, and they use them infrequently enough for them to be more of a burden than an asset. If such people do not want tools, they sure as hell don't want expensive, high quality tools. Those are like the cheap ones, but they cost more and you cry more when you lose them moving to the next apartment. And if no one wants high quality tools... Well, no one's going to bother to sell them. If I'm honest, it's a little bit of what you say and the two effects play off on each other as it spirals down into the void.
- danans 3y ago> Today? Who wants a tool, they live in places where they can't even keep more than the tiniest assortment of tools, and they use them infrequently enough for them to be more of a burden than an asset. In this case, tool lending libraries are a great solution. You can see if there is one near you at: https://localtools.org/find/ https://localtools.org/find/
- shuntress 3y agoGlobalism wasn't "sold" as a good idea. Shareholders of companies that make tools just realized they profit more by increasing the difference between cost of production and final sale price.
- medion 3y agoOf course it was sold - by the means you mentioned, but also, those profits were then quickly deployed into decades long marketing strategies - which has led to a world addicted to low quality, cheap goods - an addiction we cannot be weaned off of. So much so, as the article laments, we can't even make a wrench.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoGlobalism was and is always sold as a good idea.
- meroes 3y agoMy memory is everyone just loved buying cheaper things like flatscreens. This “selling” business is made up hindsight and I hear it a lot. “Do you think globalism is a good idea”. No idea but weren’t you just at Black Friday buying $300 TVs, wear fast fashion, and buy cheap tools?
- agentgumshoe 3y agoThat's exactly the point, that's how it's sold. They don't exactly go around telling us that it's cementing centralisation of large corporations, leveraging slave/cheap labour as much as possible until caught while reducing local opportunities and knowledge, environmental impact of mass packaging and supply chains, bringing wonderful tax avoidance opportunities and flouting quality controls and regulations. But of course, blame the consumer, because it was sold with full warnings but they didn't listen ..
- shuntress 3y agoThere is no "they" conspiring to convince "us" that globalism is the way to go.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoI think there's a weird situation here. People don't actually want 'cheap' things made in America (because that's what China et al do), but then complain it's too expensive to make locally. This is very difficult to solve: allow cheap locally made products while still allowing pride in the 'locally made' label...
- bombcar 3y agoThere are lots of cheaply made local products, nobody cares. The trash cans at Walmart say "made in USA" because shipping giant pieces of empty plastic across the ocean isn't economical.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoYes lots of people go around saying how proud they are their trash can is made in the USA...
- refurb 3y agoWhy does society need a cheap throwaway tool? Because, I'm a consumer, who needs a screwdriver maybe every 3 years. I don't care if it's lower quality because i never do more than tighten the hinges on my door frame. Instead of spending $20 on a top of the line screwdriver, I can spend $3 and it still does everything I need it to.
- Nition 3y agoIf you had to buy the top quality $20 screwdriver, maybe it'd eventually be passed on to one of our children, or go to someone else. I know that sounds kind of silly when we're talking about screwdrivers, but hopefully it'd still mean a world that needs to manufacture a few less items.
- toast0 3y agoIf the only screwdrivers were $20, a lot of people would use butter knifes to screw in a lot more things. They're not good screwdrivers, but they're not $20 either.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoWhat would happen is screwdrivers would rarely break, all the necessary screwdrivers would be made, we'd get cheap screwdrivers secondhand that had been straightened or re-shaped. The market would shrink considerably and the companies making screwdrivers would be at risk of closing. Repair shops would increase, resource usage would decrease, there'd be far less need of recycling. Capitalism is completely incompatible with economy and environmentalism.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]