Story of Stuff

We live in a market economy which is a system that is dependent on us buying things. It starts with us extracting natural resources from the Earth. Then, we manufacture goods in factories. These goods are sent to stores for people to buy. People buy these goods to use for a short amount of time. This is then disposed of by piling it all in one place, or incinerating it. This process is unsustainable because it is linear and not a cycle. A linear system is infinite, but we do not have an infinite amount of resources. There are many flaws in this system. Extracting natural resources causes a lot of harm to the environment and destroys the local ecosystems. Manufacturing uses thousands of chemicals that could be harmful to make products cheap. Both of these steps are usually in a third world country with lax human rights laws which allows kids younger than I to work in unsafe toxic conditions for many hours and very low wages. Buying things in stores is because of the massive propaganda through advertisements that convince us that the more new things we have, the better our lives are. Once problem is the meeting with corporations and the government in the 1950s under President Eisenhower. He wanted to encourage growth in the economy, and he figured the best way would be creating a need for short term goods. This would be achieved by convincing people to keep on buying goods that would need to be replaced in a few months. This would create and endless cycle of buying that would push our economy forward. By making products either look outdated, or making their lifespan short, we would create this constant demand for new products. This is also coupled with the constant bombardment of advertisements that condition us to think that we need new things and it creates societal pressure for us to conform and be a part of the endless cycle of buying. If we have outdated products, we will be scorned by society because it is outdated, regardless of whether or not is still functions. Another issue is external costs. When we buy a product, it is usually a lot cheaper than it should be. The example shown was a radio that costs about 5 dollars, even though there are a vast amount of products used to make it found on opposite sides of the planet shipped from one place to another. This product should realistically cost a lot of money. We keep prices cheap by sacrificing parts in the other steps of the cycle. Examples of this is the poor working conditions of workers and child labor. Disposing is also a problem because leaving it in one place will destroy the ecosystem that live there and incinerating will force us to inhale the chemicals in our products. Recycling can work in a small scale, but it is inconsequential compared to what manufacturing produces in waste. In summary, the material economy has many flaws and is unsustainable.