On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 7:18:19 PM UTC, Rod Speed wrote:
wrote
michael adams wrote
wrote
michael adams wrote
wrote
michael adams wrote
8

The exact same item is fashionable, then not, then fashionable,
etc. Just a way to get people to throw out what they bought
and buy again. Why choose to follow it.

Because that's how a vibrant modern economy works. Persuading
people to buy things they don't really need, everything from new
cars to new jumpers* to new kitchens, to power tools, provides more
work for everyone. Rather than having them sitting around with too
much time on their hands, and boring one another to death by
contemplating the essential meaningless of life.

No, its how a wasteful economy works,

Yes, but that is what employment is about in modern
first and second world economys

It is partly, its very wasteful

where most do have
basically what they need even with houses and the

depends how you define need. For survival, lots die unnecessarily young due to limited medical budgets and lack of research. Loads live in passable but unsatisfactry situations due to lack of resources. Most would rather throw their money away on crap than pay attention to life's real issues and address them in any way.

spending lots of resources on crap instead
of useful things like more construction,

Construction of what ?

UK is very short of houses. The average young adult now has no likelihood of being able to buy one.

more medical research etc etc.

Its far from clear how much difference that would
make to most of us now. The bulk of what we die of
now is lifestyle stuff, most obviously with obesity etc.

great topic to research, as with all the major ones.

Certainly if you could come up with something that
allows you to eat anything you like without getting
fat that would have a hell of an impact on the life
of many of us, but its far from clear that that is even
possible.

Zero calorie foods do exist. Researching zero calorie cake, as trivial as it might sound, could save a huge number of life years.


Its certainly possible to design and produce say a
toaster that will last for 100 years fine, and it likely
wouldn't cost more than say double what a decent
toaster costs today, its obvious that there isn't much
point in going that route for the manufacturers.

I wonder if theres a market %age for a lifetime toaster. Dualits sell, they're the closest to that I can think of.

Its less true with cars where cars are vastly better than
they were 100 years ago.

Indeed Century old cars are fairly valuable though, even if nuttily designed.

I don't know of any 100 year old houses that I'd prefer
to live in than my passive solar that I designed and built
myself on a bare block of land.

Theyre still highly valuable


Whatever kitchen refuseniks such as yourself might like to think.

I have a kitchen, I'm more a fashion refusenik

I just ignore fashion completely whenever that is feasible.

Not possible tho quite a bit of the time, particularly with
stuff like cars and clothes etc.

Thankfully with many things one can bypass fashion completely, some its impossible. But its seldom sense chucking stuff out over it.


NT