Do you know %26quot;The Story of Stuff?%26quot;? It will take you about 20 minutes to watch, but there%26#039;s a lot of food for thought.

I%26#039;d be very interested to hear what you think after watching it.

http://www.storyofstuff.org/

Best Answer

The core messages are tremendously important. Bummer that we have the least leisure time since feudal times.

The conditions under which the consumer economy developed are rapidly changing, so there are many scenarios under which it could collapse within our lifetimes.

Unfortunately the message could get lost for some behind some glaring inaccuracies or omissions. At one point for example it is implied that big businesses are driving people off their native lands through habitat destruction, at a rate of 200,000 peple per day. However, that number is equal to the roughly 80 million people added to the planet each year, and that population growth causes a lot of resource depletion. It would spoil the rant though if overpopulating third world countries had to point the finger at themselves.

Another distractingly dumb comment was the one about PCs having planned obsolescence because the upgrade chips were a different shape and an upgrade can%26#039;t be dropped in. There are many interdependent systems in PCs that all evolve; CPU configuration changes are a symptom of the issue, not a cause. A more accurate culprit would be the operating system, which runs slower as you use the PC until you need to buy a new CP and re-buy the operating system.

Another annoying point was the one about how little of what Americans buy is still in use 6 months after purchase. What does that include? Food? Gas? The crappy tent I bought that had all of its zippers fail in the first couple of trips? It%26#039;s somehow my fault by being in that group %26quot;Americans%26quot; that Asia sent us a piece of junk product? It%26#039;s somehow my fault that third world countries don%26#039;t regulate their pollution, require employer-supplied healthcare, moderate raw material exports, etc? That%26#039;s absurd, which distracts from some otherwise useful messages.

The points about raw materials, fisheries, product cost, corporate influence on government, military spending, leisure time, satisfaction, advertising, values, pollution, and so on are interesting and useful to consider. Unfortunately the author seems to have suffered from polarized thinking, either accidentally or intentionally, portraying everything as %26quot;us vs. them%26quot;, %26quot;people vs. corporations%26quot;, %26quot;America vs. everyone%26quot;, perhaps liberal vs. conservative. That approach alienates a substantial percentage of the intended audience, reducing its value as an educational tool (not a problem if it%26#039;s just propaganda intended as a motivational piece for a few like-minded people).

If the goal of the piece was truly to educate and %26quot;give government back to the people%26quot;, it wouldn%26#039;t be so heavily draped in the trappings of one of the two political parties that has a huge vested interest in keeping things exactly the way they are.

We need a third party, with conservative fiscal and social policies and more sustainable environmental policies.

After that video I%26#039;d like to see an economic analysis of what will happen to the value of the U.S. dollar if the utopian ideals of drastically reduced consumption are reached. Most people watching the clip have no idea how far the qualiity of their lives can decline (further) as Saudi Arabia and China continue to diversify away from financing U.S. national debt.

Asker's Rating:

I liked Byderules suggestion, and I think Mark had some good points, too. And Joe, if you get this woman to come to your campus, ask her about the process she used in keeping this to 20 minutes, and about some of these comments and how they are perceived.

Thanks for the answers!

Other Answers (3)

• J.S. hit the nail on the head, she has a great core message however a lot of people will miss the point because she made some glaring inaccurate statements. If she would have stuck to the main point, we are a disposable society and we over consume. It would have been much more powerful.
  
  I disagree with the statement we need the government to look out for us, that is socialism and that won%26#039;t fly. We need the government to serve us, and we need to look out for each other, that is the ideal we need to bring back to our, cities, states, and our nation. Maybe she saying that, it just didn%26#039;t come across that way to me.
  
  I did like the assessment about how having all these material things doesn%26#039;t make us happy. That was right on, we need to realize that helping one another is much better for our humanity and our world.
• beautifull
  not to want to sound like an Eco fascist
  I think mildly that a lot of people should
  have their eyelids taped open ,given caffeine and be forced to watch this
  oh yeah
  LOL.
• We%26#039;re trying to bring Anne Lenard to our campus next year to talk about this film.