AMERCIAN COMERCIALISM Americans are accused of being overly commercial. Constantly buying tons of stuff we don’t need, filling our homes with junk, more so then any other country in the world. I dont actually think that’s true, but I’ve got a theory as to where the myth comes from, and I think it’s just as bad, if not worse then the actual accusation. First off, a person buys what he can afford. Everybody in the world does this. If you can afford a big screen tv, and leather sofas, you buy that. If you can afford and mansion and swing pools, you buy that. The only other option is to just sit on a pile of money. I do not believe anyone here can prove to me that people from other parts of the world are sitting on more cash then americans, so lets just move forward acknowledging that everybody spends in proportion to their earnings. Don’t argue, “americans are in debt to buy stuff!” Eventually, everybody reaches their credit limits, and then they pay interest, so buying with credit actually decreases the amount of money you have to spend in the long run. So we’ve established Americans don’t spend more. They spend in the same proportions to their income as anyone else. So why does it feel like Americans “shop” more then others? My theory is simple: our country is filled with cheap crap. America is a profit-culture, and selling low cost items that don’t last long is more profitable then selling slightly more expensive items that last a life time. Cheap crap lasts a short amount of time, and breaks, so you are constantly buying new things and throwing out the old things. Lets look at a couple examples: Example #1: Scissors. There is a great video going around the internets right now featuring this guy that hand makes drop forged scissors, built to last a life time. This is a very old fashioned way of doing scissors. Now, i immediately wanted a pair, but I know this isn’t something you can buy in the US. Here, we’ve got plastic handled disposable scissors. The amount of scissors I’ve thrown away, and repurchased is likely a pretty big number. If I had a pair of his scissors, they’d last forever, but they start at $150 each! (ernestwright.co.uk) Scissors here are $6, maybe? Example #2: Electronics. Actually, everybody in the world buys electronics. You through it out when they break, or become obsolete, and that happens every couple years at the best. Americans don’t do this any more then any other country. (6.8 billion humans have cell phones, and their are 7 billion people. Everybody uses electronics now.) Example #3: Pots and Pans I hate crappy kitchen stuff. Here in the US, pots and pans are cheap, but they don’t last very long. $15 for a frying pan, coated with teflon that will last maybe 3 years, if you are careful. Then you throw it away and buy another. Well, one day I splurged and bought a whole set of Ruffoni copper pots and pans, tin lined, like the kind you’d see in a movie about a fancy french kitchen (Ratatouille). These are meant to last a life time or longer, and they are awesome and gorgeous. However, the tin lining wears out, and when it does they are poisonous until you get them re-tinned. What does re-tinning cost? About twice what cheap pots and pans cost! Also, it’s nearly impossible to find a place in the US to re-tin your pots, with out shipping them, so add that to the cost. So whats the cost difference between the “last a life time” stuff and the disposable stuff? A copper frying pan is about $200, plus about $70 to re-tin it every 5 years. Over 20 years that’s $480. That’s 32 teflon frying pans!!!!! You could just do cast iron, but thats not that much cheaper, and its pretty easy to ruin, and has a lot of work to up keep it. So the problem, as I see it, isn’t that we americans are greedy, or commercial, or usurpers. It’s that we have been given an environment in which all our products are cheap and disposal. This keeps us shopping, and throwing away. If you are like me, and try to cheat this system, it becomes insanely expensive really fast. I don’t think we are the only country that does this. Ikea is not an american company, but they do make some insanely flimsy crap for a low cost. China and Japan also make and sell a vast amounts of crappy disposable products, also. But this absolutely IS bad. Worse then being “overly commercial” which is what we are accused of. This fills the junk yards and land fills, and uses up resources at a tremendous rate. And the part I hate most: we have to live in an environment filled with crappy stuff. This is the fault of the profit-centric corporations, with the very american philosophy, “if it turns a profit, it must be the right thing to do.” Don’t blame the american people. We don’t really have any other option. The cost of the high quality, last-forever products are out of our reach, both in price and location. To not participate in the disposable culture, we literally have to go without pots, or pay 20 times the cost for purchasing and maintaining the real stuff.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 19:35:56 +0000
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