I had such a wonderful and provocative response from my friend Rama to my last post and I will attempt to answer her questions in today's post. Basically she asks why I continue to belittle imports from China and not just concentrate on my art, saying that there is a market for both. I agree with her 100%!!! The people who buy imports are not my customers and for the most part, my customers do not buy imports. So there should not be a problem there at all. But I see two problems and they stay with me.
The first is interesting actually. Why do we buy things to make us happy? I have spent most of my working life creating additions onto houses to accommodate more stuff. I have seen four car garages so full of stuff that you can't even walk in them let alone park a car. We don't use this stuff. We accumulate it and store it, have garage sales and haul it to the dump. It seems in my experience that the wealthier people buy less stuff than those with less money, but they buy things of better value. Maybe that is a trap of poverty, always spending money on junk and never saving enough to buy something that might last.
Food, shelter and medicine, these are things people need and for most of the world people spend every waking moment to secure these essentials and they are not given the luxury of wondering what would make them happy. For others, "happiness" become a vessel to be filled. We get the attitude of "make me happy"
or buying our way to happiness. I am sceptical of all this consumerism.
And here is the other thing. I go to our local "dump", landfill/recycling yard at least three times a week in search of interesting discards, something I can make "art" from and I see what gets thrown away. These areas are the biggest monuments in a modern city, taking up far more volume than the Empire State Building!
We don't keep things. When they have lost their allure we toss them and most of us have no clue as to what happens to this stuff after we put in in our trash cans. Most of it is buried, creating mountains, and covered in plastic, leaching chemicals into the waterways for thousands of years to come. Buried and forgotten.
The steel is mostly recycled and that is a good thing. More steel is produced today through recycling than from mining iron ore. I have seen truckloads of brand new imported steel products, chairs and tables, trellis's
and exercise equipment that have been taken to the dump because of a slight defect, missing one bolt, or a chip in the paint. From the beginning these are not worth repairing!
Here is another interesting example of what I am trying to say. I can buy an American or German grinder, a hand-held machine I use in my shop every day. This might cost $100 and twice a year I will have to replace the electrical brushes, costing about $5. to keep this machine running in top form. These are repairable machines and will easily last ten years, maybe longer. Also on the market (and I admit I own some) are cheap Chinese imports costing less than $20. These will last, maybe, three months and are not repairable. They are designed to be thrown away. Which one is cheaper?
We don't repair anything any more, from grinders to kitchen appliances to televisions and electronics, to Chinese "garden art" and paintings on the wall. Everything has become for now and when finished it is tossed. This has become normal. I think it is all nuts, that is all I am saying.
The first is interesting actually. Why do we buy things to make us happy? I have spent most of my working life creating additions onto houses to accommodate more stuff. I have seen four car garages so full of stuff that you can't even walk in them let alone park a car. We don't use this stuff. We accumulate it and store it, have garage sales and haul it to the dump. It seems in my experience that the wealthier people buy less stuff than those with less money, but they buy things of better value. Maybe that is a trap of poverty, always spending money on junk and never saving enough to buy something that might last.
Food, shelter and medicine, these are things people need and for most of the world people spend every waking moment to secure these essentials and they are not given the luxury of wondering what would make them happy. For others, "happiness" become a vessel to be filled. We get the attitude of "make me happy"
or buying our way to happiness. I am sceptical of all this consumerism.
And here is the other thing. I go to our local "dump", landfill/recycling yard at least three times a week in search of interesting discards, something I can make "art" from and I see what gets thrown away. These areas are the biggest monuments in a modern city, taking up far more volume than the Empire State Building!
We don't keep things. When they have lost their allure we toss them and most of us have no clue as to what happens to this stuff after we put in in our trash cans. Most of it is buried, creating mountains, and covered in plastic, leaching chemicals into the waterways for thousands of years to come. Buried and forgotten.
The steel is mostly recycled and that is a good thing. More steel is produced today through recycling than from mining iron ore. I have seen truckloads of brand new imported steel products, chairs and tables, trellis's
and exercise equipment that have been taken to the dump because of a slight defect, missing one bolt, or a chip in the paint. From the beginning these are not worth repairing!
Here is another interesting example of what I am trying to say. I can buy an American or German grinder, a hand-held machine I use in my shop every day. This might cost $100 and twice a year I will have to replace the electrical brushes, costing about $5. to keep this machine running in top form. These are repairable machines and will easily last ten years, maybe longer. Also on the market (and I admit I own some) are cheap Chinese imports costing less than $20. These will last, maybe, three months and are not repairable. They are designed to be thrown away. Which one is cheaper?
We don't repair anything any more, from grinders to kitchen appliances to televisions and electronics, to Chinese "garden art" and paintings on the wall. Everything has become for now and when finished it is tossed. This has become normal. I think it is all nuts, that is all I am saying.
