[peritonlogon]

I liked a lot of what you had to say on this issue. This part bothers me though.

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One only has to look at automotive technology to see that the day of the shade tree mechanic is over, not because necessarily he can't understand the technology, but because the tools needed to work on it are so specialized and expensive that it does not pay to do so for just oneself. And we live in a frustrating time where it is cheaper to throw away many defective products, than to fix them, even assuming a willingness and knowledge to do so.


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This is a bit of conventional wisdow that has come down the line and is largely false. First, the reason why many of the very sepcialized tools exist to fix your car is so that 1) the job of fixing your car can be deskilled and therefore require a lower paying job and 2) so that people have to return to the dealers to have their car diagnosed so that you are required to return and spend more money THERE.

Secondly, the reason that we throw so many things away and that it is considered cheaper to do so is a result of consumerism, not the technology. Things are made so that the same product can be sold again and agian. In fact, the primary reason why people lack the willingness to do fix things is a product of consumerism and marketing efforts. The world we see in America today is not the only one that could have been with the technology we have. Social movements have had a big impact on the form our technology has taken.