The Story of Stuff(Behind the scenes)

STORY OF STUFF VIDEO
<<<>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

-->

Behind The Scenes

The Story of stuff is a great video. It tells public about extraction, production, distribution, consumption, disposal which is called materials economy. The main purpose of the video is to prove and show people that the system is not right. It is interacting with environment, economy, societies and cultures. As it says in the video some things are just missing, like people, government, corporation. Also there is a question in my mind, why does government work for corporation instead of people (public)?

Since the first item of materials economy is extraction I’ll start with extraction. We are using too much stuff that we don’t even need. Yes indeed, because most of the people who live on earth are stupid or ignorant. Also it freaked me out when I heard that in the last three decades along 1/3 of the world’s natural resources has been consumed. 1/3 is a large amount, I’m thinking of if we keep consuming like this probably my grandchild won’t be able to live long to have his/her own kid.(1/3 natural resources in last three decades, so we have 2/3 now, which means we have 60 years left)

Production means, mix of bunch of toxics with our resources and produce more toxic, chemical products. We use those products in our homes, works places and schools. We also take those toxics in our bodies too. On the other hand during the extraction process people who live in those agricultural areas have to move to a city after their homeland gets messed up. Once they are in a city they have to work to survive. These are the people who are in danger of toxics, because most of them work in factories which produce chemical products. So it’s not just resources that are wasted along the system, people are too.

Distribution; selling all the toxic junky products as quickly as possible. Yes this is true, and these stuffs are all over the markets, they are everywhere. Plus, they are so cheap, maybe more than they are supposed to be. Because of externalized costs. Externalized costs mean a negative effect if production or consumption the cost of which is not paid for by the producer but is imposed on others. I really liked her example about this, $4.99 Radio Shack example; she clearly states that she didn’t pay for the radio. People paid with their natural resources, clean air. Kids in Congo paid with their future.

The golden process (as she calls it) consumption. American people become consumers during past decades. They shop a lot, and keep materials flowing. I think there is an important point, if we consume a lot and keep materials flowing, this will have an effect on extraction, production and distribution too. Which means more and more people will lose their homes, future and the faster we consume the faster our natural resources run out. On the other hand government and corporation work together to make people produce and consume more. They say the ultimate purpose of American economy is to produce more consumer goods. There are two facts that she states in her video. Planned Obsolescence; basically designed for the dump and Perceived Obsolescence; convents us to throw away our useful stuff. Her ideas and examples are good and they make sense. However I don’t agree with her example about computer monitor. Because the fact that CRT monitors (big, fat screen) are heavier, takes more space on desk, has a poor resolution and performance. Also most importantly a CRT uses more energy and damage your eyes more than a flat screen monitor. In my opinion except this example her thoughts are almost perfect. It’s scary to know that we each see more advertisements in a year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. As a result, United States has more stuff than ever before, but the national happiness is declining. So there is no success, if we think about why we live? I think almost everyone lives to be happy.

The last part is disposal; an average person in United States makes 4.5 lbs of garbage a day. This garbage is dumped in a land field or burned and dumped in a land field. Either way this pollutes the water, land and it changes the climate, also produces new and worse toxics.