We Produce Less Crap Than a Few Years Ago

A Trashed Economy Foretold, March 14, 2009 Washington Post

In an extravagantly wasteful society that typically puts 254 million tons of unwanted stuff at the curb to be thrown away each year, landfill managers say they knew something was amiss in the economy when they saw trash levels start steadily dropping last year. Now, some are reporting declines as sharp as 30 percent.

The amount of crap we produce has decreased. Trash is correlated with GDP, but it doesn't have to be as tightly correlated as we usually think. We could produce stuff that doesn't involve trash, just as we can produce stuff that doesn't involve carbon emissions.

While we are doing everything possible to get production back up, we should try to see if we can get that production to come in a more environmentally friendly form. We might also stop to question what exactly we're trying to accomplish with making more stuff. Why do people say they're "scared" they won't get more? What things do we wish we could product but aren't producing? The answer has to be something more than "well the valuation models of my entire portfolio are based on ever increasing production, so I need people to consume as much as possible."

There are tangible things we like to do, some of which require economic production / consumption. Doing things we enjoy is what matters and producing things is just a means to that end. When we we want to produce stuff because of valuation models of businesses we own shares of, something is wrong with our system.