the definitive history of stuff

In a consumer-led economy, buying useless stuff (from China)
is doing harm to us in two ways, at least.

Lost jobs. The need for a bigger house for our stuff.


check it and see:

ANATHEMA TO STUFF

Guest Post: Is Anybody Else Tired Of Buying And Owning Stuff?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/07/2012 11:56 -0400

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

Is Anybody Else Tired Of Buying And Owning Stuff?

We are suffocating in stuff, physically, psychologically and spiritually.

I know this is a sacrilegious question, but is anybody else tired of buying and owning stuff? Is anybody else tired of dealing with all the junk cluttering up every corner of the room/house/nation?

Has anyone else noticed we have surplus stuff coming out our ears? And that therefore we don't really need any more stuff? Has anyone noticed the psychological consequences of constantly buying and managing possessions? Here is how correspondent B.D. recently put it:

    Kids have a melt-down when they don't have the latest iteration of the (insert trendy electronica here) or if they are asked to tidy up the gargantuan collection of "stuff" they are slowly suffocating themselves with. Most kids these days don't have bedrooms anymore ... they have a small warehouse of goods in which they have a sleeping space.

Everybody has a warehouse of goods, even "poor" households. Of the four households on my block with one-car garages, we're the only ones who actually park a car in the garage. Everyone else's garage is jammed with stuff. And this is not an upscale neighborhood, it's working-class/renters.

Have you been to one of the many gigantic swap meets recently? You know, the kind with hundreds of sellers hawking everything under the sun. Our young friends (newlyweds renting one bedroom in a house, they don't own a car, both seeking fulltime work but currently living on one-part time job) recently described their visit to just such a sprawling cornucopia of over-consumption.

People are selling any and everything to raise some cash: birds, snakes, used iPhones, laptop computers, clothing, furniture, you name it. A guy was selling a guitar for $15. Our friend offered $5. The seller took $8. $8 for an acoustic guitar. Granted it was a cheap one, but $8? Was it even worth hauling it to the swap meet for $8? A set of strings costs $4.

"Almost new" bicycles--again, cheap, poor-quality versions--were being sold for $35. You can't even buy a replacement bicycle wheel for $35.

Were these stolen goods? Our friend asked the seller how he could sell bikes for so little money. The seller replied that he buys the contents of abandoned storage lockers for a few dollars and then sells the contents. (Apparently there is a reality TV show based on this process of acquiring the contents of abandoned storage lockers.)

This raises an interesting question: why bother stealing stuff when it is basically worthless? Smash-and-grab burglars are only stealing electronics (and jewelry if it is laying around in plain sight). Nothing else is worth stealing. Bicycle thieves abound, of course, but they're picky as well: a rusty made-in-China bike with a cheap (and easily snipped) cable lock will be left untouched; only the expensive bikes will be ripped off.

As I keep saying: what's scarce is not stuff, it's cash and reliable income streams. People are trying to convert stuff into cash, but it's tough because there is a surplus of stuff.

No wonder organizations that promote giving stuff away such as Freesharing.org are so popular. People are giving up trying to get any cash at all for old TVs, etc.; they are delighted if someone hauls it away for free.

Is anyone else sick of the "buying experience"? No wonder online buying has become so ubiquitous--the experience of shopping to acquire stuff is a form of torture, at least to some of us. Getting there is a nightmare (unless I can bike to the store), parking is a hassle, clerks generally don't know much, and the selection is often limited or skewed to the high end. The "fun" is in leaving empty-handed.

I suppose other people can't wait to get a new mobile phone; I live in dread that my old "dumb" phone will expire and force me into buying another one. Ditto for everything else we own.

There is so much stuff floating around America that we end up with stuff we didn't buy or even ask for--old laptops, bicycles (abandoned on our property, left by neighbors moving away, left to us by elderly neighbors who passed on, etc.) and clothing, to mention but a few of of the things that we have "inherited."

I make a point to be a "good citizen" by taking outdated printers, modems and other electronics to the recycling yard; others aren't so civic-minded, as proven by the piles of high-tech detritus that litter street corners and dumpsites around the nation.

When the university students leave town in May, dumpster after dumpster is filled with broken Ikea furniture and old mattresses, many of recent vintage. It isn't worth hauling any of it home. They will buy more future-landfill at Ikea when they settle down somewhere else.

My new mantra is "please don't give us anything we won't consume in a few days." What with all the insecurity in the world, a lot of people have assembled stashes of precious metals. Quite frankly, I don't want physical wealth I have to store, manage, protect, etc. I am not at all sure I want any "wealth" at all other than the "wealth" of productive land, a functioning infrastructure / civil society, and the "wealth" of freedom of movement and choice.

I just want to get rid of stuff, not acquire more. I welcome the digital age because "entertainment" no longer requires physical collections. I have already accepted that most digital stuff will be lost with time, just like physical stuff. Who wants to lug around 50 years of digital files? Yes, it might fit on a small drive, but who will sort through it all or even look at it/listen to it?

The clutter of all this stuff, physical and digital, clouds the mind and spirit. I think it was Sartre who noted that our possessions own us, not the other way around. I am tired of being possessed by possessions, of any kind or nature. I would be delighted if the can of WD-40 in the toolshed lasts the rest of my life. If it doesn't, then I will replace it, grudgingly.

More than likely, I will find an almost-full can in somebody's trash, along with everything else anyone could possibly want. The only thing missing from sorting through all that's been abandoned is the drug-like "hit" of the purchase. Sadly for a consumerist society, some of us are immune to that potent drug.

Many others will suffer consumerist withdrawals as the cash and credit needed to complete the purchase become increasingly scarce.

redpill

I fucking hate shopping.  I'd rather spend the money on a massage.  I could throw 3/4s of the shit in my house in the garbage tomorrow and not miss it a bit.  And then there's the kids toys....arrrggghh grandparents constantly giving them big bulky plastic shit.

Anyway, there is a solution to this.  Repeal the 16th amendment and replace the income tax with a revenue-neutral consumption tax on new retail goods and services.  Poor people can save money buy buying things second hand.  People would save more, and think more before they consume because they would have a choice in how and where they would pay tax.  They would take better care of things and sell them to others who would take better care of them.  People would be rewarded for saving, and punished for being wasteful.  It would not only help solve our addicted-to-Chinese-crap problem, it would be a boon for our economy to have more savers.

Rick Blaine

Absolutely...

It's now at the point where I specifically ask my family not to buy me anything for my birthday or Christmas...well, besides a gift card or cash.

Even a lot of the stuff I buy for myself, which I initially think I want/need, basically gets wasted.

One of my favorite things to do now is look through my stuff for things to give to charity...

...which is a solid indicator of how meaningless my life has become.

FEDbuster

Checks and gift cards to restaurants is what we exchange.  Once and a while some wine or interesting food items.  NO MORE STUFF! 

If something we use breaks, we fix it or replace it.  That's it.  Stuff we don't use or wear we get rid of, sell it or give it away.

The only exception is long term storage food (seems like you never have enough).  The accumulation of Chinese made McShit is over for us.

i_call_you_my_base

Everyone can be poor if you define it as a matter of degree. Poor to me means you can barely afford food and are constantly on the verge of being thrown out of your rental. That is poor. Poor people do not have "a surplus of stuff". Poor people don't have shit, and if you want to see what that looks like, you can go to Detroit, Philly, or Baltimore, or the backwoods of West Virginia if you prefer a more natural setting.

Umh

Many poor people have a surplus of stuff. Mostly because they can't resist the urge to buy stuff they can't afford when they should be paying their rent and buying better groceries.

ParkAveFlasher

The concept of minimal possession resonates within me as well, trust me.  I'd rather build than buy, I'd rather sweat than hire.

However the problem is not in "materialism", the problem is the manipulated view on the real value of anything.  Blaming it on "materialism" is obfuscation.  Like blaming our economic woes on "capitalism". That's like blaming "geometry, mass, and conservation of motion" for stubbing your toe on the coffee table.

You should want things.  You need things to live. Cats have claws and fur, and sharp eyes and ears, we do not. You need practical things.  You need practical things of a certain material quality that makes them practical for a long time.  In fact it is in the practice of proper valuation that wealth is unlocked.  You can not behold this unless you first crawl, walk, fly, limp, or lurch through materialism.

Western society has forgotten what "value" is.  Our food comes in boxes.  Our lives come in boxes.  Our work is on paper, theoretical.  We export time.  Our manufacturing is done elsewhere.  Our "wealth" paradoxically equals our "debt".

"Value" is further confused with "price", itself the victim of that arbitrary, sliding-scale denominator of  fiat money.  "It is a high price, therefore it is valuable".  In this statement, lies the great confusion of our times.  The confusion of "value" is enforced and dispersed via fiat currency.

There are material things that have value.  This value must be unlocked.  It is an active process.  It is soul-searching, it is experimentation, it is study. However in the value of things, upon unlocking this, what may be reflected is the value of endeavor, the value of human action.

laomei

Here's a tale from when I lived in the US.

I had a cheap decent Jetta.

I lived in a neighborhood that I believed was incredibly convenient. 5 large supermarkets. 2 western, 1 discount, 1 chinese, 1 korean.  Great food at good prices.  Go a little bit further and hey, even more great supermarkets that are even cheaper.  Cheap clinics, pharmacies nearby, basicaly lots and lots of options... even a Fry's!

One day, the alternator dies and just my luck, there is a sale at the local autoparts store.  I can get a recertified, trade in the old one for credit on the core charge and another $20 off.  $35 for an alternator? Score!

Just so happens that my housemates are all away for the week.  No biggie I think, I'll just take the bus, it's only a 5 minute drive. After walking 40 minutes to the nearest bus stop, I find that I missed it by 5 minutes according to the schedule that is only posted at the bus stop and nowhere else.  Next bus? 1 hour later.  I wait.  The bus finally comes, I have to take that bus to another station so I can transfer onto another bus that will get me where I'm going.  The hitch in my plan however is that the second bus wasn't running that day.  After getting off at the station and learning from the schedule (which is only posted there) that it's not running, I wait 30 minutes for a different bus which will take me another 5 miles down to road to meet up with a 4th bus that IS running and makes that stop.  3rd bus gets there just in time to meet up and I don't have to wait. 4th bus gets there after doing a stupid route that takes an hour.

So after 4 hours I am finally there.  Fortunately they knew me from the last time I was in, and as they were closing up shop anyways, I scored a ride home from someone who worked there for $5... the buses were stopped for the night anyways, so I was kinda screwed.  Only takes 5 minutes in a car going 85 (which is typical there), but that's 7 miles each way.  Sorry, zero intention to walk 14 miles in the summer cali heat.

It was this experience that got me to realize how utterly retarded the system is.  Not a city bus either, it was privatized.  They just killed all stops and routes that they deemed unprofitable.  Try to go shopping when you have to rely on the bus.  Taxis will eat you alive.

Over here, subways are everywhere and being built up further.  Buses are everywhere.  No stupid time schedules either, they come when they come and you are rarely left waiting more than 10 minutes for one.  Taxis are cheap and everywhere as well.  The taxis actually receive a subsidy from the government to keep the fares low in light of inflation and gas prices.  The buses operate at a net loss, as does the subway system, but they are state-owned and operated and are public services.  Their existance enables far more commerce and economic activity than the operating loss created.  Our highway system has distance-based tolls.  Add in the cost of gas, and unless it's a car of 4, it's just cheaper (and faster) to take the train or fly... or even take a long-distance bus for stupidly cheap.

Driving here is a luxury and it's really not required until you get really really remote and most small villages will have regular buses and motorcycle taxis to the nearest town and neighboring villages.  A personal car SHOULD be a luxury, not a requirement of basic life.  In the US you are slaves to cars with the rare exception of a handful of cities that actually have semi-functional mass transit.  Actually living in those cities, you are either rich as hell and can afford property, or you are renting a slum and/or sharing with a roommate or two, or three, or more.

laomei

I advise investing in learning all about molding/casting and welding.  Tools are cheap, materials are cheap.  And there's something that's just satisfying about it.  Don't even need top-of-the-line tools to do it either.  Basic soldering skills and learning how to etch are also great investments.

NotApplicable

Reminds me of a coworker who, "OMG, I just saved $100!" after paying $120 for a Coach purse.

Carlin stuff

Detroit, Bush league

I've been following Detroit history of late, and it had a
great time in the 20th century with the car factories,
and then some over-zealous
cops ruined it all and started the riots, and gave us
some of the most Gi-normous FUNK and PUNK
music the world has ever seen.

MC5, Stooges, Parliament Funkadelic

The city was probably the first major city to be 

largely evacuated, and slowly it became derelict,

then burned out, then forest land.

Enjoy this nature spectacular
let's cut to the video:

Detroit prairie on cbc
Detroit ville morte .
Ανέβηκε από NewWorldOpposition. - Ανακαλύψτε περισσότερους webcam χαρακτήρες.

OOPS. in this next video, you can see the bush-ification
of the city and the boarded-up houses, and the fire that
claims so many parts of the city.



This having been seen, woodland creatures are all the more 
entering cities because we've stolen their habitats and 
food supply. They'll evolve into garbage eaters, and thus
children will learn about those "creatures in our garbage" 
and learn to fear nature. 

Every last gamma ray

In these post-Fuku-me days, it takes a
bald-faced cheeky oligarchy to push for more Nukes.
Thatcher went for it because while it looked like
private investment, everybody knows that nukes
are so heavily subsidised that they're worse than
if it were a public enterprise. But we gotta give
cushy jobs to lazy friends.
Well, more of the same these days.

It is telling of the racial differences between the UK
and Japan and Germany.

After Fukushima, once the dust settled, the Japanese
stopped all their isotope-shacks, and the Germans
put forward the plans to stop their plants as soon as
is practicable. NO OTHER NATIONS even
considered changing their tack. Tell you something?
I would rather be led by those kinds of people.

Then there's the whole why-not-thorium nukes?
the benefits are amazingly obvious, except that thorium
doesn't go BOOM. Therefore, no Western governments
want it. Neither does Iran, but that move may cost the
Persians.

Anyway, here's  story of how French power-brokers
have somehow paid off the UK's box tickers:

checkit: slog
How Britain’s energy future is dangerously compromised

EDF is foisting second-rate nuclear technology onto Britain, and we can’t stop them

Slog exposé of Britain’s woefully hands-off ‘secure energy’ policy is a tale of clever government omission in what it puts out about energy. A brief history of the inane reasons behind the UK’s choice of nuclear reactor type. A classic example of having no control over our own national destiny any more. The continuing story of the unaccountable obviating their responsibilities. And the obsession of governments throughout the world with nuclear development in terms of weaponry. this means "We dicked about with the energy football under New Labour, but now we need to get on with it, even though we can’t afford it. So over to you, EDF The Coalition Government which took power in May 2010 has backed the plans for new nuclear,and progress to new build remains on track. Uranium is the 92nd element in the periodic elements table that baffled us all at school; but the 90th place element in that table is Thorium. Never heard of it? Probably not, but Western scientists estimate that the nuclear energy available in thorium is greater than that available from all of the world’s oil, coal and uranium combined.

Thorium is approximately three times as abundant as uranium in the earth’s crust. In addition, thorium is present in higher concentrations (2-10%) by weight than uranium (0.1-1%) in their respective ores, making thorium retrieval much less expensive and less environmentally damaging per unit of energy extracted. Countries with significant thorium mineral deposits include: Australia, India, Brazil, USA, Canada, China, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, and Malaysia. Its availability is both broader and deeper than uranium, and it produces a fraction of the nuclear waste left after using uranium for electricity generation.

But it is a minority choice for reactors round the  world. A senior researcher explains with refreshing bluntness why:

“Ah, that’s easy. You can’t make bombs out of it. Bombs should, of course, have zero importance in the decision about which material to use for nuclear electricity generation. Thorium is plentiful, easier in terms of disposal, and vastly – hugely – more efficient than uranium. But you can’t make bombs out of it. So nobody uses it. It’s insane”.

A specialist media source tips me off by email as follows:

“I am not a rabid anti-nuclear person – I would not oppose new nuclear plants on condition they were based on thorium technology, which is (potentially at least) vastly superior to current uranium technology in terms of safety, clean-up costs, waste storage and nuclear proliferation risks. But we are not being offered thorium, and nobody anywhere seems to know or care about the difference between the two….the main difference between uranium and thorium is its thermal efficiency. Uranium’s is pitifully bad, which means there is lots of waste and lots of bad stuff left after the reaction, some of which remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Thorium’s thermal efficiency is – if I remember rightly – 97%, which means there is a fraction of the waste, and that waste is non-radioactive within 300 years.”

And finally, this from the US – source must remain vague I’m afraid:

“The major reason why thorium use for energy production has not made more progress over the past decades is that thorium is not nearly as easy to weaponize. The principal reason thorium hasn’t been used more widely to date is that the ore contains no fissile isotope.”

.... [GM BLOCK OF PROGRESS]

But EDF energy remains committed to diversifying the energy it has on hand to sell. Before the Delingpolar one at the Torygraph has an attack of the vapours, let me quickly review the “CETO” wave energy device being developed by Carnegie Wave Energy. It is a joint Australian-British endeavour, and its main plus point is having most of the equipment based on land – which makes it easy to maintain and cheap to run. The technology is also very power-dense, and capable of producing something like five gigawatts of energy per square mile. Astonishingly, it can also be turned into a desalination device when it is not needed for energy generation. No more standpipes for Britain, then. Amazing.

However, the exclusive rights to use the technology in the northern hemisphere have been sold to….EDF....
2

FRENCH NUKES ARE A BIG LOBBY. Testosterone pit
Russia’s Gazprom Tightens Its Stranglehold On Europe, France Falls: The Natural Gas War Gets Dirty Friday, August 31, 2012 at 5:19PM Why would France suddenly prohibit shale gas exploration? Sure, there are environmental issues with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the methods used to extract gas from porous shale deep underground: flammable drinking water, earth quakes, cows that die, radioactive sludge in sewage treatment plants.... But French governments have had, let’s say, an uneasy relationship with environmentalists. Its spy service DGSE, for example, sank Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, killing one person. No, there must have been another reason why the government of Nicholas Sarkozy prohibited shale gas exploration in 2011, after having already issued permits in 2010. A mini hullabaloo had broken out, stirred up by the European Ecologists and The Greens (EELV), the fringe on the French left. And Sarkozy caved! Without a fight! Enthusiastically. The government of François Hollande just confirmed the prohibition when Environment Minister Delphine Batho declared: “Hydraulic fracturing remains and will remain prohibited.” The clue: Sarkozy suddenly visited Japan on March 31, 2011, a couple of weeks after the horrific earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear accident at Fukushima, to declare in front of shell-shocked Japanese that there was “no alternative” to nuclear power. He’d been dispatched by the almighty state-owned nuclear industry to tamp down on the growing anti-nuclear sentiment at home. Owned by the government, nuclear power plants produce 75% of France’s electricity and export some of it. No one who wants to be politically viable is allowed to hamper the industry. If someone strays off the reservation, he or she is dragged back soon. While Hollande campaigned on a vague promise to reduce dependency on nuclear power to 50%, it was understood as one of the bones he had to toss to environmentalists. Nothing would come of it. So when Batho, who wants to add more renewables to the portfolio, toed the party line by saying, “Nuclear power is an industry with future,” then qualified it with a “but,” it caused an outcry even among the Socialists. That’s the power the nuclear industry has over the political machines. But now another powerful entity turned up: Russia’s Gazprom. It’s the world’s largest gas producer, gas exporter, and gas distribution company with nearly 100,000 miles of gas trunk lines and branches. The Russian government owns 50.01% of it. At home, it has to sell gas under cost, one of the Soviet leftovers. It relies on high-profit sales from Europe to make up for it. But Europe is diversifying away from its single most important supplier. Competitors include Russia’s number two, Novatek, and Norway—the second largest natural gas exporter in the world. So, in April, Gazprom had to lower its European sales guidance for 2012. Its market share in Europe was 27% last year, and it’s shooting for 30% by 2020, but if the US shale-gas boom ever infects Europe, those plans would become a pipedream—and if the high-profit sales from Europe tapered off further, it would have to raise prices at home, a political nightmare. Hence its fight by hook or crook against shale gas in France. Gazprom’s “underhanded tactics” and “scaremongering about a new technology” have Moscow’s nod of approval and are designed to dissuade governments from developing their own shale-gas reserves, according to a report by Platts, a global provider of information on energy, petrochemicals, and metals. Efforts include all manner of operations, online and through encouraging demonstrations, but also paying public relation firms to spread “myths and misconceptions,” said Aviezer Tucker, assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. A “European Union-wide ban” on shale-gas production, he said, would be the “holy grail.” With France already knocked off, Sergei Komlev of Gazprom Export has been bouncing around the world in his fight against European shale gas. At a meeting in Qatar, according to Platts’ report, he gave a presentation. “Multiple Handicaps Will Retard Shale Gas Development Outside US” was the title of one of his slides. “Fortunately, it claimed, “European shale gas development faces numerous economic, regulatory, and political barriers before there are significant amounts of shale gas production, not sooner than in ten or more years.” Breathing room for Gazprom in the natural gas wars. In the US, natural gas may be the most mispriced commodity these days. Its price has been below the cost of production for so long that the industry is suffering billions in losses. But demand for natural gas by power producers has been booming—and it’s killing coal, one powerplant at a time. Read.... Natural Gas Is Pushing Coal Over The Cliff.

don't wanna give up my toys

Global warming denial has just been decisively connected

with childish selfishness in a new study.

One big finding of the study of Ego University is that

rich boys want their toys, and so do poorer ones
whose toys are of lesser quality.

They interviewed a new lobbying group called 

Big Boys' Toys, who were only too happy to 

respond:

BBT: You know, all this taxing of pollution will just 
stop us from the unlimited use of our toys, 
not because we can't afford, but because 
our shphincters will slam shut and we're going
throw hissy fits.

Here we see Mitt Romney's newest toy which he needs in Tampa Florida

for his future campaign for president of the Cayman Islands.
 

Every last drop of oil

Not being ones to waste stuff, be sure that businesses will
use every last drop of oil on, or inside the planet. You do
understand that, OPEC notwithstanding, the oil business
is a mafia, run by the US. Well, try to get them to turn
green, like Greenpeace.
Exactly

This is a trompe d'oil, for anybody who thinks that oligarchs will
stop before the last drop is gone.

It's up to you to find other means. Stiff them by biking.
Use an electric car.

Here's what Mark Jaccard has to say about the use of the
good-to-the-last-drop oil:
"my evaluation of the primary energy alternatives leads me
to predict that fossil fuels will not be abandoned and indeed
will sustain their dominant role through this century and
perhaps well beyond"
even though subsidies for Nukes and Oil are "$150 B per year
in the 1990s" and probably more today.
 --
Major oil companies around the world pay negative taxes.
If they were not subsidised, even more people would be
chucking their cars. Governments and companies are
colluding to keep the price at a particularly high level
whatever the world oil price is, but they know not to
go too high, because it will cause a revolution. If people
cannot get to work, they'll freak out.
So, governments subsidise the companies who pay
negative taxes, but not consumers.

the Book
Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual suspect in the quest
for Clean and Enduring Energy.

surfing on garbage saves the planet

No, no, nein, non

When the icebergs melt, we will not have the planet flooded
in a neo-Noah incident.

Indeed, the millions of tons of garbage that we produce
every day will come to save us from sinking.

 [source is in the file name]

This is how your plastic garbage comes back to your doorstep.


This goes as an epilogue to the story I compiled last year on
the plastic island floating around the Pacific, apparently, now,
on a tide of radiation from Fuked up Fukushima.

Garbage as an economic indicator. Guess what?
When people are afraid of recession, they throw away less
garbage. I suppose they sleep with their chicken bones
buried in the garden. Garbage to GDP.
A new economic indicator (I got it from Ritholz Big Picture)

You may think that what comes from the planet is merely recycled.
But you'd be wrong. What about oil? We dredge it up
and then make garbage with it. The garbage gets piled
up above the waterline. Ergo, we get saved by our garbage.
However, we may end up floating in it, and our fecal matter.

How to prevent cyclist squashing in London

Put your bike in one of these.


plan b
scare drivers to death

crush protection

make yourself conspicuous

I think being meek and out of the way is just one step towards being ignored and
then killed. So, get in their faces. Hogg a lane. They won't forget you then.
However, the may then have other reasons to kill you.