Sustain-ability: Too Much Shit

Oct 25, 2016 | 6 comments

I’ve written previously about the death of the middle class. One of my points was that it’s hard to find mid-level quality items — everything is either really expensive or it’s shit… and there’s no shortage of the latter.

Since we have a teenager who seems to be growing out of clothing before they’re even worn, let alone worn out, we make regular runs to Goodwill to donate. This seems fair because, since the kid has a clothing budget, there’s a lot of shopping at Goodwill too. So it makes for kind of a nice loop.

Recently I had a car-full of stuff to donate. Some clothes and shoes, a couple of coats that stopped fitting over the summer, and some pet supplies for our cat (RIP). I took a cruise past the Goodwill truck nearest to me and they weren’t open. So I drove over to the bigger, permanent facility. I was floored by the huge amount of stuff, both wedged under the unmanned truck and almost completely filling the parking lot. Just, all kinds of STUFF. Furniture, mattresses, construction stuff (sinks, etc.). And all of it looking beat up and near death.

This is actually from a local Goodwill dropoff,
though not the one I’m writing about here…

Part of this is due to rampant consumerism, I’m sure. But another big part of it is that most stuff you can afford to buy in the US is shit.

I run across this all the time. Reviews for products inevitably go like this:
“Great quality, I’ve had mine for 20 years.”
“I bought one based on good reviews and it’s complete crap!”
“Seems like they changed the design / materials / construction from the old ones.”
“Used to be good, but when I got a new one, it broke right away.”
“Ever since they were bought by X, the quality and services has just dropped.”

I also see this with the products we buy, like the mattress saga I wrote about in the post I linked to above. Or some small kitchen appliances. With rare exceptions, you’d be better off buying a toaster, blender, or processor from an antique shop than a new one. Items I’ve had from my mom that are 30 years old are chugging along while newer items die rapid deaths.

Or look at the made for TV phenomenon — interesting and innovative ideas so poorly executed that you’re honestly better off without them.

We are absolutely drowning in shit.

Not just shit that we don’t need (which we already know we have way too much of) but shit that we need but that’s still poorly constructed crap. Complete with built-in obsolescence and an inability to be repaired. And this is what really frustrates me. Because it’s one thing to suggest that people might not need quite as much fast fashion or cheap toys or disposable gadgets. It’s another thing to suggest that you can’t even have a working toaster or coffee maker. That a mattress that will last more than four years is out of the 99%’s price range. That you’re just stuck with shit. Shit that will break, forcing you to buy more shit.

Who’s seen this quote?

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play
It’s been making the rounds on Facebook. And it’s absolutely true. It’s much more expensive to be poor. To buy one roll of toilet paper after another, rather than a giant bundle from Costco. To get the cheap boots and have to buy them over and over. To get fined and fee’d to death because you, hello, don’t have enough money. 
But what terrifies me is that maybe there aren’t actually any good boots left. You can spend a little bit of money on a cheap piece of crap that won’t last… or a bunch of money on an expensive — often designer — piece of crap that won’t last. Quality is the endangered species.

I suspect that there are still quality items. But they are so far out of reach at this point that you may not even know about them. Bespoke suits, hand tooled boots, custom crafted furniture that’s not made of particle board and despair. But there’s no way to catch up to that. You can never, ever win. Because you still need shoes on your feet, something to wear, and something to sit or lie on in the mean time.
The idea that the toaster you spend your last $10 on from Walmart never worked right and died right after the 30-day warranty ran out is painful. The idea that the $100 toaster you got from the home store also never worked right and died — twice — so now they won’t replace it is also pretty painful. The idea that in our age of technological marvels you can’t have a piece of properly toasted bread? That’s fucking brutal.

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