None of what follows is new. I know this stuff happens all the time. And yet somehow this insignificant thing shocked me and it’s been gnawing at me for the past few days. And today was the icing on the shit cake.
So my wife ordered a a foot massage machine. $50, typical el-cheapo thing made in China. The thing was shipped to our home out in the boonies in less than 48 hours. Wow!
My wife opened the box, got the device out onto the floor and… she couldn’t fit her feet inside. She’s not big, but apparently the device was designed for customers in the Shire. Unusable.
So she emailed the distributor who told her to cut the cord, send them a photo proving the destruction and throw it away herself. Not return the device. Not pretend to return the device and the device is thrown away behind her back. No no: this time, the distributor told her in no uncertain terms that it’s cheaper for them to let her destroy the thing herself.
And then it hit me: here is a device that was born in China, put together by some underpaid workers in a nondescript factory, designed by someone who didn’t give a shit, made out of materials that probably came out of the ground somewhere in Africa and in Saudi Arabia - probably involving child labor at some point or other - put on a boat, shipped halfway around the world, then put into a truck, only to be landfilled here.
It didn’t even see a single second of use. This is utterly absurd and completely depressing.
I’m not compatible with that. When I buy something, the thing has value and I want it to have a decently useful life. It’s not about ecology or money: it’s just basic respect for the resources and the human labor that went into this thing. The value of the object is what it cost the Earth and the people who toiled to make it and ship it to me. When I use my things, I show respect for those who made them and it justifies the use ot the materials they’re made of.
But here I was looking at that poor thing across the room, unloved and unlovable, whose sole purpose as an object was to be landfilled without ever seeing any use. It consumed resources and someone worked to make it, yet somehow it never had any value for anybody.
And the most depressing thing about it is, its very existence from Chinese factory to my local landfill is totally absurd and makes no sense at all, yet all the invididual steps that contributed to it being fabricated and ultimately landing on our doorstep were a series of perfectly rational economical decisions: someone found added value in designing and building a shit foot massage machine, my wife found it worth buying sight unseen, someone figured there was money to be made shipping it here, and the distributor decided to outsource its destruction to the customers because it’s cheaper than destroying it themselves - let alone shipping it back to Shenzen or wherever. And yet when you string everything together, the net result is senseless waste and production of things that have no inherent worth. How crazy is that eh?
I couldn’t throw it away. So I replaced the cord and I gave it to the local Red Cross store yesterday to give to someone in need or sell it for pennies. Today, I passed by the shop on my way to work and saw the damn thing in their garbage container behind the store. In the box. Unopened. I guess it will be going to the landfill after all…
That really put the final damper on my day today…
Sorry if this is the wrong venue, but I really needed to vent.
A lot of people misunderstand economic systems by anthropomorphizing (it means to give them human characteristics) them, giving them the illusion of thought or feeling.
Capitalism doesn’t care at all about humans, it’s not human, it doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel. It has no concept of right or wrong.
Capitalism says “what is most profitable”, do that. If killing someone to make money is the most profitable, it’s supposed to go ahead and do it, and it absolutely DOES already do this on a daily basis.
Now clearly, that’s going to give us some really fucking bad outcomes from a human perspective. So government regulation is how we attempt to prevent corporations from doing these bad things.
If we tell a company: “if you kill people it will cost $X” and $X would reduce their profit below “most profitable” they will stop doing it.
If we want to fix the bad stuff corporations are doing, simply put a larger cost on those things. It’s that simple. Pollution, Safety, Health, whatever… price the negative externalities (economic speak for bad things humans don’t want) properly and the market will sort itself out.
The part where it goes right off the rails however, it seems now that its cheaper to buy and own the politicians, and buy and own the media to manufacture consent to kill these regulations than it is to operate responsibly. Which seems to be right around where we are now.
The thing is, it always has been. Regulations slowly bubble up over the decades anyway, so that’s nice. The only question is how much damage happens in the meantime.
I don’t disagree.
Ho there pardner!
You’re saying that capitalism isn’t inherently evil and it serves an actual purpose? That capitalism itself doesn’t destroy the world, but an improper use of the system is to blame? And might even imply that there is a way to keep using the old, familiar capitalistic systems without extorting the working class and stripping the world of every last resource?
Unsarcastically, yes.
Capitalism can be great, if given the correct regulations to improve quality of life for everyone.
I will say however, that not all industries should be handled by capitalism, there are a few big ones where market competition simply doesn’t work due to inherent physical flaws (like for example needing to run five sets of water pipes to your house if you wanted to have choice among water providers)
I think that’s your point, but yes. Well, assuming capitalism = markets. Sometimes capitalism = the ultra rich, who are way harder to justify without resorting to just-so stories.
Just in case that was directed at me, versus part of your overall opining, I do not.
It’s an economic and social system, ‘Bartering 2.0’, and not a mechanical or otherwise thing.
Good opinion piece overall though.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Yea, was more of a general take. Thanks.