“They don’t make them like they used to”

We all know the phrase, and we all, in one way or another, feel it every day with products we buy and use, but why is it so true today even more than it ever was before?

And we all know the answer to that too.

Profits.

You can make a hell of a lot of money making things quick, cheap, and very, very nasty.

Clothes that fall apart after 6 months, tools that break down, technology that starts to fail, things that don’t work as well as they used to.

All because they made sure costs were down, production was up, and the owners and shareholders could get richer and richer.

Of course this doesn’t count the cost of all these things being thrown away, building trash heap after trash heap, leaching chemicals and such into the soil, the water, sometimes when we are all really lucky, catching fire and filling the air with a smoke so toxic that the firefighters have to take their oxygen tanks to get near it.

Profitable all right, monetarily of course

And that is all that counts.

Not how much it costs our time, our health, our very lives.

That doesn’t get accounted for on a balance sheet does it?

And then you have to imagine the people making this stuff aren’t really in it for anything but to keep themselves fed, clothed and housed.

All these people, millions across the globe, with skills that allow them to build and assemble goods of all types, utilising that talent in the only jobs they could get, making soon to be useless trash that makes their bosses richer and everyone else fundamentally poorer.

There used to be a time where products were made to last, quality was something cared for, aimed for, a guiding principle of those who made things, of brand names in so many industries that told you this would last, it would do what you asked for, for a considerable time, and you would get your value out of it.

But of course progress taught us better didn’t it?

We now know we can make 20 things instead of 2, charge overall more, have them all break, have them all go to landfill, have everyone pay for the cost of all that except those making the profits, and make not only our society, but our planet worse off in the long run.

Quality. It used to mean something, but now its only an impediment to a rising share price.

We could do better, but not if it costs more.

But only in the short term.

The long term, well, we are all going to pay that bill one way or another, aren’t we?

Leilani Cowern - Speech at Resources Symposium