laws and throwing stuff away
I have been subjected to a lot of political commercials lately and i am shocked by one the proposes new "tougher" laws are required to deal with DWI! I disagree!!!!!!! How about instead of passing new laws that make more people criminals, we better fund our executive branch so that they can enforce the laws that we have? The legislature can write all the laws they want, but if they do not provided funding to the executive branch, the people in charge of enforcing the laws, then what does it matter? Fines and mandatory sentences do very little to reduce crime, catching criminals, and prosecuting them for their crimes is the deterrent. No one speeds in Va, ok well almost no one, and it is not because they have strict laws, but because your chances of not getting caught are much less than in NC where you can be charged with reckless driving for anything above 15 over the speed limit. Quit righting laws that make more people criminals and start enforcing the laws that we already have.
Now on to our disposable lifestyles. A friend of mine is trying to sell her car because the maintenance bills are getting high and she "no longer feels safe in the car." To that friend I am sorry but this got me going on all the things we replace because, we no longer like them or are not interested in repairing them. I am guilty of this also, to some extent. Sometime around the advent of the home PC americans started living a disposable life style as things failed to work instead of repairing an appliance the appliance is just replaced and the old one thrown away. Now don't get me wrong there are plenty of things that when they break cannot be reasonably repaired, toaster oven that catches on fire and resembles a pool of ash, is probably worth not repairing. A car whose frame is bent is probably in the same boat. However most things that are replaced in the US are repairable provided parts are available. Yes sometimes we have to buy a subassembly (a hard drive, instead if the motor or controller) instead of the actual part, but still repairable for less than the cost of a new one. It just drives me mad to hear that well it was X yrs old and it would have cost more to repair it than it was worth? How do you define worth? I determine worth as the cost of a replacement (of the same quality) not the depreciated value of the one that is broken. Before computers became common in *everything * we owned people would attempt to repair something before writing it off as a loss. Now that computers are involved if the computer breaks (90% of the time this is probably the case) the whole appliance is replaced. Why not just replace the circuit board? Yes I know there is a small percentage of people that could go a step further and start replacing components on the board, but replacing the board itself would be good enough. Do you throw a computer out because the keyboard fails, because the mouse fails, because the monitor fails, NO! Then why do you throw out the keyboard monitor and mouse when the computer fails? Americans need to retake the can do, it has to work attitude if we are going to remain as a competative country. We can not pay india, china, korea, hong long to make goods for us multiple times while they repair the things we make for them an not expect them to export more than they import. The problem may not be that the amount we export has dwindled but that the amount that we import has grown exponentially. Recycle does not just apply to cans, glass, and paper! Reducing the amount of stuff we throw away not only helps the environment but also helps our economy and that not as fat wallet that we sit on.
Now on to our disposable lifestyles. A friend of mine is trying to sell her car because the maintenance bills are getting high and she "no longer feels safe in the car." To that friend I am sorry but this got me going on all the things we replace because, we no longer like them or are not interested in repairing them. I am guilty of this also, to some extent. Sometime around the advent of the home PC americans started living a disposable life style as things failed to work instead of repairing an appliance the appliance is just replaced and the old one thrown away. Now don't get me wrong there are plenty of things that when they break cannot be reasonably repaired, toaster oven that catches on fire and resembles a pool of ash, is probably worth not repairing. A car whose frame is bent is probably in the same boat. However most things that are replaced in the US are repairable provided parts are available. Yes sometimes we have to buy a subassembly (a hard drive, instead if the motor or controller) instead of the actual part, but still repairable for less than the cost of a new one. It just drives me mad to hear that well it was X yrs old and it would have cost more to repair it than it was worth? How do you define worth? I determine worth as the cost of a replacement (of the same quality) not the depreciated value of the one that is broken. Before computers became common in *everything * we owned people would attempt to repair something before writing it off as a loss. Now that computers are involved if the computer breaks (90% of the time this is probably the case) the whole appliance is replaced. Why not just replace the circuit board? Yes I know there is a small percentage of people that could go a step further and start replacing components on the board, but replacing the board itself would be good enough. Do you throw a computer out because the keyboard fails, because the mouse fails, because the monitor fails, NO! Then why do you throw out the keyboard monitor and mouse when the computer fails? Americans need to retake the can do, it has to work attitude if we are going to remain as a competative country. We can not pay india, china, korea, hong long to make goods for us multiple times while they repair the things we make for them an not expect them to export more than they import. The problem may not be that the amount we export has dwindled but that the amount that we import has grown exponentially. Recycle does not just apply to cans, glass, and paper! Reducing the amount of stuff we throw away not only helps the environment but also helps our economy and that not as fat wallet that we sit on.