
We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things - CraneWorm
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/online-shopping-and-accumulation-of-junk/567985/?single_page=true
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NeedMoreTea
_" as consumers demand cheaper clothing, electronics, and other goods,
manufacturers are spending less to make them, which sometimes means they fall
apart more quickly"_

Oh if only it were that simple.

I find that even the premium and more expensive makes are being made just as
cheaply meaning they don't last as long either. Or when a simple, and formerly
replaceable, part fails it can't be replaced for reasonable cost.

Even the length of time spares are made available has shrunk dramatically, if
available at all. No doubt as now manufacturers insist on constantly changing
models for no reason other than visuals.

~~~
gaius
_I find that even the premium and more expensive makes are being made just as
cheaply_

I was looking for some new headphones recently, but reviews of even premium
makes were pointing out quality flaws, flimsy manufacturing and so on and I
guess now pretty much every pair of headphones in the world comes out of the
same factory in Shenzhen and just gets a different brand sticker on it. So I
bought a cheap pair by TaoTronics who I’d never heard of before and they’re
great! Why would anyone pay 10x as much for basically the same thing?

------
MiddleEndian
The most offensive stuff I accumulate is paper received in the mail. Banks,
insurance companies, and other self-important financial institutions will send
junk that may contain relevant personal information, and as a consequence, I
(and many others) have cabinets full of this uninteresting paperwork. At least
if I order something I've made the decision to have it in my home. If I were
to recreate a postal service in a new nation, I would make it request-only.

~~~
paulie_a
I personally want to pull a Seinfeld Kramer moment and opt out of mail
entirely. I only check it once a week, then everything goes directly into the
garbage. What a waste.

~~~
ryandrake
I have you beat: my mail goes directly to the trash. I keep a trash can under
the mail slot in my garage and just let everything fall into it. Once a week,
or when I have time or am curious, I pick through it and pull out anything
that might be important.

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unwind
This boggled my mind:

 _The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs
in 2000._

I probably should buy shoes more often, that's easily 10 times more often than
I do it. Perhaps that was the "wrong" conclusion from this article, though,
oops.

~~~
voltooid
I don't think anyone needs 7 pairs of shoes a year. I have had the same three
pairs of shoes (each for a different kind of weather) for the past 2 or so
years. One of these pairs has been with me for close to 4 years. Buying 7
pairs a year seems so wasteful.

~~~
doombolt
This would depend heavily on weather. Not everybody is living in California.
There are places when you need five different pairs of footwear just to
survive a year. Some might last, some won't. Throw someting in to wear
indoors.

~~~
wott
1\. It is not a matter of "need", rather a matter of comfort and practicality.
(I leave in mountains).

2\. I do have half a dozen different types of shoes (something like 1 or 2
pairs of army boots, 1 for cycling, 1 for MB-hiking-gardening, 1 for
gardening, 1 pair of tennis shoes to wander in and around the house, and
probably 1 old worn spare one I forget about). _It doesn 't mean I buy them
all every year._ I haven't bought any in 2017 or 2018. The army boots are 5 to
10 years old, same for the hiking shoes I use for mountain-biking (4 years
old?) and gardening (15 years old?), since I cannot really hike any more. The
tennis/cycling shoes are dying but they were already dying last year and in
fact they are still good enough :-) So I probably buy only 1, perhaps 2 pairs,
in an average year.

~~~
doombolt
It is only a matter of comfort, and not survival, if you own a car and drive
it around exclusively. If you own a car, well, impact(car) > impact(any number
of pairs of shoes).

------
torgian
Damn is it really that bad? I hate buying new shit. I spent a year thinking
about replacing my head phones (5 year old Sennheisers) before getting a pair
of Noise canceling AKGs. I have a 5 year old MacBook that I want to replace
but don’t because it’s just fine for what I need.

Shit I spend most of my money on food.

~~~
criddell
Have you always been like that? When I was young, there was always more stuff
that I wanted. Now as I approach 50, what I really want is more time to use
the stuff that I bought.

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jhbadger
On one hand the Internet allows a (perhaps too) easy way to obtain physical
goods, as the article mentions, but on the other hand it allows a way to avoid
many physical goods that we had to purchase before. We can read books and
magazines digitally and watch movies and listen to music without having
physical media.

------
vfc1
The internet has a solution for everything.

The same way there is 1-click online shopping to fill your house full of junk
and toys our kids will never even use, there are also online services for
companies that will come at your place and collect all the junk (you need to
pay for that too).

They will empty your full basement if you want!

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
If there is an Amazon for "take my junk and sell it for me, keeping a
reasonable percentage" I'd really like to know about it. Craigslist is such a
pain.

~~~
ryandrake
Unfortunately it’s the opposite. You generally have to pay people to take your
junk. Raise your hand if you have that drawer (or closet) full of old RAM,
hard drives and video cards that you’re going to one day sell on Craigslist
for $5 each? Spoiler: you won’t. Nobody will buy any of that. You might as
well just recycle or trash it.

I once took a picture of my computer parts/cables closet and put the entire
contents for sale on Craigslist for $10. I got zero replies.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I dunno, I've sold a lot of things on craigslist I assumed would never sell,
or that I'd have to at least lower the price substantially. It's mostly a
matter of leaving it out there long enough that the kind of person looking for
that thing can find it.

------
maxxEnt
It should read: "100 million suckers have signed on to pay $119 a year for
“free” two-day shipping instead of free 4-5 day shipping"

~~~
trentmb
It should read "free" "two-day" shipping.

At some point, I was waiting a week for my Prime packages to arrive. So I
cancelled my subscription.

Now I wait a week for my packages to arrive.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
Amazon Prime has deteriorated similarly for me as well.

At first, 2 days, every time. It was great and extremely reliable.

Now? I'm lucky to get an estimated 2 day delivery. It's almost always 3 days.
Why? They deliver it to the post office now, about a mile away. Half the time
it gets there too late for the USPS truck to deliver it on that day. It is so
frustrating.

Couple that with price increases, Twitch prime adding ads, counterfeit
products, confusing product pages, fake reviews...Amazon is worse than ever.

~~~
calgoo
For me it has been the opposite: I have next day or same day delivery here
now. A lot of time when amazon says 2 days, i get the package the next day.

It might have to do with living in Barcelona and amazon having their own
delivery people here. They even have a summer offer where you can order cold
beer and have it delivered to you in less then 2 hours.

~~~
mdrzn
Same experience here in a relatively small city in Italy, most "2 days
shipping" arrive the next day, and Prime is just 3€ a month (so wayyyy cheaper
than in the USA).

It's a hard to beat service.

------
squozzer
We should keep in mind that under the current system, goods are made _before_
they are sold. Meaning that not buying so much _now_ might have future
benefits _later_ , but at the price of throwing away unbought stuff.

And just-in-time manufacturing (e.g. 3D printers) looks awfully slow.

------
hamilyon2
This is literally one of very few ways capitalism can continue expanding.

Our per-capita production have long passed absolute minimum of things needed.

Now it is about convinience, but marginal gains are less and less.

For manufacturing to continue to increase, things have to rot after they had
been paid for.

