This is what annoys me the most currently in my life: perfectly fine things going to the trash. I’ve read that comic series, and probably won’t pick it up again. What do I do? I do not have the storage space to save them indefinitely, nor anybody is going to accept it (comics are at an all time low marketing value where I live). So I throw them away. The same thing for books, old hdds, modems, keyboards, laptop, cd’s, etc. There’s an enormous waste of material goods.
Well, but is there any value there? If you can’t even give your old comics away, trashing them is not a “waste”. Your 10-year-old modem might still be functioning, but if no one wants it, it has no value.
Yeah, I think people today have a major anti-trashing bias. Manufacturing and distribution have gotten so good and cheap that we should all be anti-hoarders trashing lots of stuff, then ordering new stuff as needed.
Maybe I’m ill adjusted to the modern world, or maybe I’m one of the few who sees Moloch’s footprints here, but the fact that a tree is cut, processed, printed on, read for ten minutes and thrown away where it will rot and emit chemical substances into the soil annoys me in a big way.
it’s consumption. Does it annoy you that a lot of money, time, and effort is spent on a big fancy dinner and then it just turns into poop? Which also emits chemical substances including the notorious dihydrogen monoxide...
Does it annoy you that a lot of money, time, and effort is spent on a big fancy dinner and then it just turns into poop?
In that case, there’s less waste because your body extract whatever calories it can with an added bonus of pleasure. But yes!, it annoys me that calories are seen as a major social lubricant, as much as it does annoy me all the Mton of food wasted by grocery stores each day all around the world!
May I suggest it would be beneficial to yourself to change that attitude? The world is certainly not going to change and spending your life annoyed at the reality seems… wasteful.
You’re right, clearly there’s no economical value. But that depends on the lack of demand, and markets can be inefficient in many ways. It’s not a clear, specific idea, but I’m ‘sensing’ a big inefficiency here.
There is no need put “economic” in here. Defining “value” as “wanted”, there is no value, full stop. “Lack of demand” in simpler terms means “nobody wants it” and in a such situation markets are irrelevant, efficient or not.
Well, the only means I have of advertising my “leftovers” are say a local market and ebay. These are the markets that are accessible to me, but if there’s someone who would want them but is in Japan and we could not communicate, then there’s a want that cannot turn into demand (and so in value) because there’s no market that connect us. So I do not equate want and value, because in that case the Japanese collector and I do not have a mean to translate our demand/supply into an exchange.
Relatively small behavioural changes on your end may address some of the causes of these frustrations. It sounds like you might be overstocked with things of relatively low long-term utility, which is why it’s hard to immediately pass them on. Have you scanned your spending patterns for hyperbolic discounting, for example?
Comics are a great example—if you have the willpower to hold off until you can but a TPB, they’re cheaper, more economic, more durable, take up less storage space, and are much easier to pass on or pass around than individual comics. If you have friends who also enjoy comics, it’s easier to pass around books of them than individual issues, and you can probably read a broader range. Alternately, if you find a way to read comics online or through an app, you can enjoy getting stories as they come out but through digital distribution instead of dead trees. If you’re not collecting dead tree stories for long-term value, and don’t re-read, then that may be a positive trade-off for you.
You’re correct in that throwing things away is one of the least useful things you can do with them. Each low-utility spare object is probably not worth a huge effort in disposing of appropriately individually, so why trap yourself into that situation by virtue of your own lifestyle choices?
Do you have municipal recycling facilities or charities that you could donate things to?
For the entrepreneur—I’d pay some marginally low cost to have comics delivered from MrMind’s house to mine once they’re done with them :-)
Where I live, people sometimes organize “markets” where they bring stuff that is potentially useful but they have no use for it. Everyone brings whatever they want, and everyone takes whatever they want (first come, first served). Sometimes there is a specific topic, e.g. “clothes” or “stuff for kids”, sometimes there is no topic.
In theory, I would expect that such place would attract e.g. all homeless people around, which could make it quite unpleasant for other participants. But in practice, this doesn’t happen, probably because those activities are usually organized online or through personal lines, so it’s mostly middle-class people coming there, and many of them bring more than they take. Usually people take home all the stuff they brought but nobody else wanted; but sometimes there is an explicit rule (e.g. with the clothes) that at the end, all the untaken stuff will be collected by the organizers and donated to some charity (so it will “trickle down” towards poorer people until someone takes it).
So, if this is important for you, I recommend first doing some research (online, asking your neighbors), and if you can’t find, maybe you can organize it. Find a few people to help you, rent a room with some tables (is best case, some organization sympathetic to your goals would lend you the room for free), send invitations on facebook. Call it a “no-money market” or “neighbors’ exchange” or whatever. Maybe the first time you organize it, make sure you have at least five people who don’t know each other and want to get rid of some potentially useful stuff.
This is what annoys me the most currently in my life: perfectly fine things going to the trash.
I’ve read that comic series, and probably won’t pick it up again. What do I do? I do not have the storage space to save them indefinitely, nor anybody is going to accept it (comics are at an all time low marketing value where I live). So I throw them away.
The same thing for books, old hdds, modems, keyboards, laptop, cd’s, etc.
There’s an enormous waste of material goods.
Well, but is there any value there? If you can’t even give your old comics away, trashing them is not a “waste”. Your 10-year-old modem might still be functioning, but if no one wants it, it has no value.
Yeah, I think people today have a major anti-trashing bias. Manufacturing and distribution have gotten so good and cheap that we should all be anti-hoarders trashing lots of stuff, then ordering new stuff as needed.
Maybe I’m ill adjusted to the modern world, or maybe I’m one of the few who sees Moloch’s footprints here, but the fact that a tree is cut, processed, printed on, read for ten minutes and thrown away where it will rot and emit chemical substances into the soil annoys me in a big way.
it’s consumption. Does it annoy you that a lot of money, time, and effort is spent on a big fancy dinner and then it just turns into poop? Which also emits chemical substances including the notorious dihydrogen monoxide...
That doesn’t make it right or even tolerable.
In that case, there’s less waste because your body extract whatever calories it can with an added bonus of pleasure.
But yes!, it annoys me that calories are seen as a major social lubricant, as much as it does annoy me all the Mton of food wasted by grocery stores each day all around the world!
Better that there be too much food than too little!
Sure, but at the moment there isn’t too much food, there is too much food here.
It sounds like you are annoyed with the world.
May I suggest it would be beneficial to yourself to change that attitude? The world is certainly not going to change and spending your life annoyed at the reality seems… wasteful.
We’ll see about that...
You might need to take some fiber supplements...
And that will reduce the dihydrogen monoxide emissions..? I think you’re confused about what fiber does :-P
You’re right, clearly there’s no economical value. But that depends on the lack of demand, and markets can be inefficient in many ways.
It’s not a clear, specific idea, but I’m ‘sensing’ a big inefficiency here.
There is no need put “economic” in here. Defining “value” as “wanted”, there is no value, full stop. “Lack of demand” in simpler terms means “nobody wants it” and in a such situation markets are irrelevant, efficient or not.
Well, the only means I have of advertising my “leftovers” are say a local market and ebay. These are the markets that are accessible to me, but if there’s someone who would want them but is in Japan and we could not communicate, then there’s a want that cannot turn into demand (and so in value) because there’s no market that connect us.
So I do not equate want and value, because in that case the Japanese collector and I do not have a mean to translate our demand/supply into an exchange.
Ebay actually is such a market. I don’t see why your Japanese collector could not access it.
Relatively small behavioural changes on your end may address some of the causes of these frustrations. It sounds like you might be overstocked with things of relatively low long-term utility, which is why it’s hard to immediately pass them on. Have you scanned your spending patterns for hyperbolic discounting, for example?
Comics are a great example—if you have the willpower to hold off until you can but a TPB, they’re cheaper, more economic, more durable, take up less storage space, and are much easier to pass on or pass around than individual comics. If you have friends who also enjoy comics, it’s easier to pass around books of them than individual issues, and you can probably read a broader range. Alternately, if you find a way to read comics online or through an app, you can enjoy getting stories as they come out but through digital distribution instead of dead trees. If you’re not collecting dead tree stories for long-term value, and don’t re-read, then that may be a positive trade-off for you.
You’re correct in that throwing things away is one of the least useful things you can do with them. Each low-utility spare object is probably not worth a huge effort in disposing of appropriately individually, so why trap yourself into that situation by virtue of your own lifestyle choices?
Do you have municipal recycling facilities or charities that you could donate things to?
For the entrepreneur—I’d pay some marginally low cost to have comics delivered from MrMind’s house to mine once they’re done with them :-)
Where I live, people sometimes organize “markets” where they bring stuff that is potentially useful but they have no use for it. Everyone brings whatever they want, and everyone takes whatever they want (first come, first served). Sometimes there is a specific topic, e.g. “clothes” or “stuff for kids”, sometimes there is no topic.
In theory, I would expect that such place would attract e.g. all homeless people around, which could make it quite unpleasant for other participants. But in practice, this doesn’t happen, probably because those activities are usually organized online or through personal lines, so it’s mostly middle-class people coming there, and many of them bring more than they take. Usually people take home all the stuff they brought but nobody else wanted; but sometimes there is an explicit rule (e.g. with the clothes) that at the end, all the untaken stuff will be collected by the organizers and donated to some charity (so it will “trickle down” towards poorer people until someone takes it).
So, if this is important for you, I recommend first doing some research (online, asking your neighbors), and if you can’t find, maybe you can organize it. Find a few people to help you, rent a room with some tables (is best case, some organization sympathetic to your goals would lend you the room for free), send invitations on facebook. Call it a “no-money market” or “neighbors’ exchange” or whatever. Maybe the first time you organize it, make sure you have at least five people who don’t know each other and want to get rid of some potentially useful stuff.
Specifically, there is this thing called freecycle.