On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 20:32:33 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:

On 5 Aug 2006 19:50:25 -0700, "steve" wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic
skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well
you get the idea...

caused some of those skills are rarely needed, I rarely get any flats
anymore, haven't had one in ten years, I used to get them at least once
a year 25 years ago.

TV's can't be repaired

now it's cheaper to buy a new lawnmower then to fix one (due to China
the price of a new one is less now then 25 years ago, and our income
has gone way up, the cost of parts, however, has stayed the same)


When I hear or read comments like these, a little shiver hits me. My dad
tells the story of how Dad's grandfather (an increasingly successful farmer
in Eastern Colorado) once told Dad's grandmother that she didn't need to
patch overalls anymore, it was cheaper and more efficient to buy new ones.
That was in the late 1920's; we all know what happened in the 1930's --
especially in the dustbowl areas.

Your great grandfather and Steve were/are both correct about
their current conditions. What happens if current
conditions deteriorate a bit?

Steve wrote, "No, its just the workshop has changed, it can
live in a computer, for instance, workshops are alive and
well, they are just different, today's workshop can involved
hooking up a wireless router to a wired LAN that supports
Appletalk, before your time it was thatching a roof"

A wired LAN is an artifact of the symbolic economy. It is a
Good Thing, right now. But if what you need is a new roof,
and there is no longer much demand for wireless routers,
LANs, Appletalk, etc., (as would be the case in a post-SHTF
scenario) then being able to mess with LANs and such, but
not roofs, leaves you out.

--
Robert Sturgeon
Summum ius summa inuria.
http://www.vistech.net/users/rsturge/