Re:Aging Parents with Lots of Stuff, and Children Who Don’t ...
by jahewson on Monday August 21, 2017 @03:28AM
(#15062602)
My parents' entire generation seem to think the same thing, but I don't buy the "scarcity" argument. I don't think it was ever true. Planned obsolescence was a concept pioneered (and coined) by those very generations. From its beginnings in the depression-era auto market to its peak in the fashion driven 1950s with cars designed to last three years or so.
Fashion-driven, low-quality overpriced US cars left the market wide open for cheap, high-quality foreign imports in the 1970s - and forced US manufacturers to significantly increase quality. That's pretty much the opposite of the story you're telling.
Instead I see a society which had a post-WWII manufacturing abundance just binging on material goods to the point that they were buried in stuff in a way that has never really happened before and people don't have good mechanisms for dealing with. At least not until they realise that "stuff" is the problem.
Both my parents and grandparents would claim that they bought stuff that lasted but they just bought the trendy items of the 1950s and 1980s respectively, and 90% of it went in the trash years ago.
Fashion-driven, low-quality overpriced US cars left the market wide open for cheap, high-quality foreign imports in the 1970s - and forced US manufacturers to significantly increase quality. That's pretty much the opposite of the story you're telling.
Instead I see a society which had a post-WWII manufacturing abundance just binging on material goods to the point that they were buried in stuff in a way that has never really happened before and people don't have good mechanisms for dealing with. At least not until they realise that "stuff" is the problem.
Both my parents and grandparents would claim that they bought stuff that lasted but they just bought the trendy items of the 1950s and 1980s respectively, and 90% of it went in the trash years ago.