Musings of a Liberal D-Bag College Student

[defying3reason]

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

I've got to admit, this is a big part of why I don't upgrade my tech to whatever's new and shiny. I mean, a lot of it is that I suck at learning new things-heh, but the whole sweatshop-labor and conflict minerals plays a part. So I have a cd and cassette boombox and not an ipod....but I'll probably get a mp3 player once the boombox dies, a 35mm camera that's probably older than you are, etc.

I think that...being aware of your consumerism has merit. There's nothing inherently wrong in wanting something. But knowing that the prices paid in making it are more than just the cash-money you laid down...that's better than blindly buying every new toy you see.

[defying3reason]

Agreed. It's kinda funny, pretty much right after I wrote that rant, I had my second Environmental Geology class, and we were discussing things along the same lines. My professor told us he was going to have a soapbox moment, promised not to make it a regular thing, and then told us about the state of resource extraction right now. Apparently if we want to get the whole world to a first-world standard of living by 2050, we'd need to extract 9 time the resources we're extracting now, and we can't even handle what we're doing right now. He proposed that the only solution was to lower our expectations, and then he held up his phone, which is an old-fashioned flip phone with a normal keypad instead of a mini-keyboard. I have pretty much the same one, so I was like 'Hell yeah!'

I do have some nice pretty-shinies (relatively new laptop, mp3 player, Kindle). When they wear out, I'm going to be more thoughtful about replacing them...It's not like I have no other ways to entertain myself.