I think George is right on the nail on this one - our expectations of what is an appropriate lifestyle and appropriate level of luxury are so inflated - that we cannot understand even the level of material existance that our parents lived with quite comfortably (it is wonderful not to have expectations of grander things).

That said…. with our current technological awareness - we COULD (but probably won’t) have a thoroughly satisfactory material level of existence - provided a number of issues were addressed:

1) The repeal of the 95% rule of design. 95% of the content of a vast majority of manufactured items are good - but there is always the 5% which is crap - which causes the whole schmeer to collapse (usually 1 day after warranty expires) - the list is endless - cheap plastic bearing inserts in an otherwise excellent pasta maker, Canon printers which have an ink pad which becomes ‘full’ - and you have to chuck the printer, can openers with a bad grab wheel that collapses (as it is too brittle), expensive and complex devices that have custom LSI (Large Scale Integration) circuits, that are only supported for 5 years. Out they go - techno-trash. Go buy a new one.

2) The mantra has to be - REDUCE, REUSE, REPAIR and if all else fails RECYCLE
(Bye the way - RECYCLING means reducing to component materials and re-manufacturing - and that’s all!!) A term taken over by the corporate world as a ‘feel good’ term.

3) Once, re-use supported a whole workforce that now depends on government handouts - the bottle washers in the pop-drink businesses and the small wineries. Repair shops were quite common (but we didn’t pay $60 per hour either - another issue) - shoes were re-soled (and there was, as far as I can tell, no loss of social cachet, by doing so). Our society uses a great deal of containers - jars, bottles etc, which could be standardised - and REUSED (The Germans seem to at least be addressing this issue) - it is the lable and the contents that give brand recognition - you don’t need to make the bottle look like a gherkin or naked madonna! (oh - but the label must strip off easily….). Think about it - there is more energy in the container- for most products- than in the contents (and besides, they have potentially very LONG lives - think of the - no longer- ubiquitous milk bottle). Not a very good state of affairs.

I could go on - we really need to re-assess the technologies that we have availabel and the economic systems that promote certain attitudes to (mis)use.

Changes such as these would hardly impact on our ‘quality of life’ - we would just have to take a modicum more responsibility to ensure that they work smoothly (the German supermarkets with the bottle-sorting and refund scheme are an indication of a way to go).

I could go on - there are so many issues like this that need exploring.

Cheers

Hugh