News & Articles

“Just because it’s broken doesn’t mean it belongs in the trash...” This is the opening line in the  Duluth Reader “Northland News” about clinics being organized in Duluth to help people learn to troubleshoot and repair their household stuff. (“Fix-It Clinics: Broken things made good as new,“ November 7, 2024). 

Western Lake Superior Sanitary District (WLSSD) is the main sponsor. Their goal is to keep your broken stuff out of the landfill. WLSSD wants to encourage everyone to “reduce, reuse, recycle, repair and re-imagine waste in our community.”

You can find out more, or volunteer to help, at wlssd.com/fix-it or call 218-740-4786. 

Coming from a poor background I learned at an early age to “reuse, repair and re-image.” Being a lifelong do-it-yourselfer was a financial necessity in addition to being good for the environment. 

Now, having been the beneficiaries of a number of much maligned “socialistic” features of our society, my wife and I are well off financially. But we still practice a waste-not-want-not lifestyle.

 Recently our microwave oven went on the fritz. After a brief internet search, we identified the problem, learned how to test for the defective part and how to make the repair. The $7 part was available from an appliance parts company in Duluth. Replacing the part was easy and required no technical skills. Even if a repair person had been available – an increasingly unlikely option in many communities – the cost would have exceeded the price of a new microwave.

This example is typical of many appliance and mechanical repairs I have made through the years. I learned these skills mostly by doing it but also by reading and learning a little about mechanics and electricity. 

Today the internet is a good source of information and videos to help even people with minimal handiness learn to do things themselves.

The Fix-It Clinics sound to me like a wonderful resource to develop personal skills and foster some independence from mega-corp. All of us have the ability to be less dependent on the corptocracy if we would just do it.  

In a consumer-driven economy what we buy, or don’t buy, does have an impact. If we reject the foreign-made products, they go away. If we bank at the local credit union, big banks would no longer be too big to fail. If we support local businesses our communities are stronger. If we reduce, reuse and recycle we are better off financially and our communities are cleaner. If we garden, cook, sew, repair things and build our own stuff we build financial security for ourselves rather than make money for the corporate plutocracy.

Henry George in his classic book Progress and Poverty (published in 1879) said that all wealth resulted from the labor of workers. Workers use their labor and skills to transform natural resources into things to satisfy human needs and desires. 

Capital alone does not create things, jobs or wealth. Capital is built from the excess “value” from the worker’s labor and this – not capital – is the foundation of all economic activity. Today we need to take more control and create our own “wealth” and well being.

There are many ways most of us could reduce our waste and our spending without significant sacrifice. Most of us could get by with less and it would be good for our family budgets. We could stop all the “impulse” and “recreational” buying. Much of our consumption is pure waste. 

On average Americans generate 4.5 pounds of garbage per day, per person. Ninety nine percent of the stuff we purchase gets thrown away within 6 months. We all have garages, basements and closets full of things we haven’t touched in years. When is the last time you used that fondue cooker? Or that exercise machine? How about that collection of VCR tapes?

Waste wasn’t the norm in the past. Our grandparents valued frugality, thrift and making do with what they had. Often they had no other choice. 

The shop-til-you-drop culture is relatively new. It has only existed since the 1950s. Today we consume twice as much, and live in houses twice as big, as people did 50 years ago. Yet we are not happier, or better off, for this excess consumption.

Waste is a human invention. Nature has no waste. In nature everything is recycled. A fallen tree is shelter for animals and food for insects. Everything decomposes and becomes soil or nutrients for plants, bacteria, and fungi. Dead organisms become food for other organisms. There is no garbage, landfills, or toxic Superfund sites. Humans are the only animal that fouls its own nest. We are the only one creating toxic materials that do not exist in nature or cannot be broken down or reused.

In economics what is good for individ-uals may be bad for the economy and visa versa. What is insignificant for an individual can be very significant for society as a whole. The waste or pollution from one individual’s bad habits doesn’t matter much but 300 million people doing the same thing is disastrous. This is why we need norms of behavior – laws, regulations, building codes, etc. – that promote the common good.

As I wrote several weeks ago, most Americans are in for hard times in the near future. The disastrous choices made in the last election are going to have significant negative consequences. 

As the Republicans, and their billionaire backers, dismantle much of the federal government’s regulatory responsibilities and dismantle, or privatize, public services, we will be forced to pay more for health care, education, child care, insurance, transportation and many other formerly “free” or subsidized needs. 

We all will pay more for the deregulated, privatized, profit-motivated “gig” economy the Republicans plan to impose. So it behooves us to learn to be more self-sufficient and more careful with our spending.

This means people need to tighten their belts and learn to get by with less. But this necessity is also an opportunity to use the power of individual consumer spending to help fight for democracy and resist the coming fascist agenda. 

In a consumer-based economy, people do have real power if they would collectively use it. 

How to do this will be the subject my next article.