Americans are drowning in their own stuff—and this is where it ends up. The discards of a lifetime of vacations and dinner parties and lazy afternoons were strewn about at the Washington, D.C., estate sale in February for deal-hunting strangers to pick over. The owners had died, and their children had already claimed keepsakes. The leftovers were advertised online.
It is easier than ever to buy things, thanks to the rise of online shopping. But it is physically and mentally taxing to get rid of them. The result is overflowing basements and rented storage units.
I have lived in the same house for 40 years. I used to be in exurb. Now the local town has expanded. I am still outside the city limits but consider myself now in a suburban locale. The third storage facility is finishing construction within 5 miles of my home.
The era of cheap stuff might be over, thanks to President Trump’s globe-spanning tariffs. His Treasury secretary recently gave a speech saying access to low-cost goods “is not the essence of the American dream.”
I dunno. He might have a point. What if all that money spent extraneous krap was put into retirement savings? Perhaps we wouldn’t be reading about boomers not having enough retirement savings?
But it is extremely difficult to change human behavior be it conspicuous consumption or eating junk/processed foods.
My daily walking route takes me through a subdivision that was built in the 80s. Houses typically have a full basement, and a two car garage. Many houses have two, or more, cars parked in the driveway. Occasionally, the garage door is open when I pass, and I see the garage is packed to the door with stuff.
Part of my Puritan cultural background (with a smidgen of Norwegian Lutheranism thrown in as leavening) is a deeply embedded distrust/disgust of “spendthrift” behavior, and a moral perspective that literally sees such delusional behavior as hellish, living life controlled by fiends.
from wikipedia:
Spendthrift derives from an obsolete sense of the word thrift to mean prosperity rather than frugality,[1] so a “spendthrift” is one who has spent their prosperity.[2]
Exactly. And how better to factually show the ugly costs of that than the mushroom like growth of “storage units” (an extremely commoditized vision of waste) that hold almost nothing of value, and do so at significant expense.
Each box of crap (having helped an old friend clean out her dead husband’s secret three storage units gave me insight), almost all of the stuff is crap…. and exists in a deadening depressing realm of eternal decay and meaninglessness.
What would furture archaeologists imagine if they opened one of those up?
The current crisis in USAian political/cutural life reflects increasingly immoral choices in consumption untutored by thought or maturity.
Zero.
Many of the old ones lost their manufacturing jobs with good pay & health benefits and were forced into low pay retail jobs with little or no health benefits. They are just angry & p*ssed off.
This brings up another moment of reflection.
15-16 percent of Americans have IQs under 85. The military does not accept those with IQs under according to Jordan Peterson.
In the advanced nation there is an increasingly less need for those folks. What is a nation’s responsibility toward this segment of the population for a decent living? Is a decent living a human right?
The federal minimum wage is still at $7.25/hour. It is only recently, within the last 10 years, that major corporations filled with low skilled workers have started to pay living wages of $10-$13/hour and provide some level of health benefits. Prior to that they paid the federal minimum wage and their employees relied on SNAP & Medicaid benefits, in effect government provided corporate welfare.
Last night I view a program on Teotihuacan an ancient city in Mexico.
The first human establishment in the Teotihuacan area dates back to 600 BCE, and until 200 BCE the site consisted of scattered small villages.
It flourished from the sale of volcanic glass [obsidian]. This civilization was not run by priest or kings but business persons. People flocked to the city. It have wide inequality. The very rich and the very poor whom died from disease and lack of food.
Scholars originally thought that invaders attacked the city in the 7th or 8th century, sacking and burning it. More recent evidence, however, seems to indicate that the burning was limited to the structures and dwellings associated primarily with the ruling class.[43] Some think this suggests that the burning was from an internal uprising and the invasion theory is flawed because early archeological efforts were focused exclusively on the palaces and temples, places used by the upper classes. Because all of these sites showed burning, archeologists concluded that the whole city was burned. Instead, it is now known that the destruction was centered on major civic structures along the Avenue of the Dead. The sculptures inside palatial structures, such as Xalla, were shattered.[44] No traces of foreign invasion are visible at the site.[43]
The poor and those with zero societal influence in Teotihuacan took matters into their own hands.
Is that what happened here in 2016 & 2024? hm?
With modern police forces & private security that is very unlikely to happen. But they do have the vote. And the consequences of the ise of that franchise might have some disruptive actions/results.
But dear Jordan is smart enough to have studied the mannerisms of intellectual poseurs who make lots of money, and to do that really well, starting off with profoundly impressing insecure young males….
His statements are a Gish Gallop. You can’t possibly unpack everything he is saying, and if you try, he’s made an equal and opposite statement that refutes his previous position.
But since you asked. Right off the bat in the video he says “people don’t like the idea there are dumb people.”
There is no evidence this is the case. I’ve literally never heard anyone disagree that human intelligence can be measured by a bell curve. As far as I can tell, this is a complete fabrication on his part.
Then he goes on to argue that this bizarre fabrication that only exists in his mind doesn’t actually exist.
I agree. His straw man argument is so unbelievably stupid that only a person on the lower intelligence part of the bell curve could even come up with it. Um, that would be him.
That whole video was so consistently silly I felt like I lost IQ points watching it. I’ll have to watch something intellectually stimulating by comparison to make up for it. Like reruns of the Love Boat.
@WendyBG - Yup. They even have (at least one) television show based on the very concept.
Don’t recall if it was Storage Wars. But, in one TV show, a couple were going thru a storage unit that had lots and lots of guns and ammunition. That ended up with a decent size dollar total - decent amount of zeroes on the end.
People do not wish to believe that fact. They might rather believe a person is lazy. If they just need to work harder. Or that just needs some further training or education. But low IQ means they are stuck in low pay jobs with little or no prospect of advancement due to their intellectual ability. And that lack of intellectual ability also means they would gather little benefit from further training or education. I would think those with low IQ have low adaptability and make poor decisions as they lack planning skills.
People of average & high intelligence believe they can fix things and people. That’s not always the case. Not everyone gets saved.
Keep in mind though, the whole premise of the show is based on the concept the storage companies themselves aren’t interested in abandoned storage units.
They could capture all this value themselves…but they aren’t interested. They believe it isn’t worth their time. I believe they are correct.
It is heartbreaking to a certain degree to see valuable items (valuable to someone) going to the landfill, but that’s the world we live in.
I highly recommend joining your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Stuff that has zero value to you, does have value to someone else, and they are willing to pick it up off your porch. It is a good system..
I binge watched Storage Wars for a month or two. Most abandoned units had junk. Occasionally some coins were found. or early a decent piece of furniture. And once a BMW Isetta was found in one. But that vehicle was buried under junk. I never saw any guns or ammunition found. I might of missed that episode.
^ This is exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve never heard, ever, anyone say that no one has a below average IQ. Feel free to provide some examples, but I’ll save you the trouble. There aren’t any. This is a complete fabrication on Peterson’s part.
Then he attacks his own straw man, to the applause of people who desperately hope they have an above average IQ, but probably don’t.
I strongly believe in this system, which in my area is called Freecycle. I have given away a hot tub, TV set and a whole wardrobe of women’s office clothing. I have received a Black & Decker lawn edge trimmer, a large pot for canning, chicken manure for fertilizer, a dog kennel and railroad ties that were cluttering up a woman’s yard and too heavy for her to move but my husband turned them into raised beds in our yard.
In all cases these were win-win transactions with no money exchanged.
Wendy
