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Yes, the throwaway society. I have sitting around the house several pieces of electronic stuff which are inoperative for one reason or another.

The problem is the cost of labor. I just got a quote on fixing my old home movie projector. It needs two rubber belts (glorified rubber bands) and a cleaning. The quote: $150. The cost of materials $.10.

Some entrepreneur could make a living off taking in broken stuff shipping it off to a third world country for repair where labor is cheap and then shipping it back. This seems to work for fixing people and didn't I read that some fishery is Scotland is shipping local shrimp to Thailand for cleaning and then shipping them back to the UK?

Many items are made in automated factories and contain parts too small to be manipulated by humans, so fixing them is impossible.

The whole thing started with the demise (in the US) of the returnable glass milk bottle and has just gone down hill from there...

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Tue Dec 5th, 2006 at 01:16:28 PM EST

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