Just Throw it Away

How did we become a throw-away here in America? When something... anything... breaks we pretty much just throw it away and get another. From lighters to computers, our dumps are filling at an alarming rate with stuff that actually can be fixed IF you A) knew how or B) knew a business that knew how. Good old American know-how is a thing of the past it seems, as are the Mr. Fix-it shops of years gone by. The problem is actually very simple. We buy junk..... junk that is cheap.... cheap because we can't afford to buy the good stuff.... and we can't afford it because we have Mc-jobs that pay little and care even less. Of course, the cheap stuff is SO cheap that it's not worth fixing even if you could find a way to do it. So we just go buy another cheap piece of junk to get us by, but in our heart we don't really want to throw it away because we still believe it's worth something. I know this is true because one of my hobbies while driving is looking at all the crap in my neighbor's yards. If it's not thrown away, it's parked, stored or stuffed in a corner. Cars, RVs, trailers, dune buggies, desks, pallets, the list is endless. It's a sign of rampant consumerism. We, as a people, generally have more crap than we need and an enormous appetite to buy more still (It's brainwashed into us by the never ending ads on the Web, TV, billboards and every place else you look). It's also a sign that this is a very wealthy society (or one that's up to it's ears in debt). We are conditioned to believe that we need this stuff to be happy. How nice it would be if there were "unwanted merchandise" clearinghouses around the country where people could donate their unwanted items and others who could actually use the stuff can have it for free. Wait a minute... a free warped piece of lumber?... a FREE chair?..... FREE half bricks? Nahhh, that could never work here in America... or could it?