> I admit that I am surprised that I am finding myself wishing that we, the Western world, were poorer again.

Luxury belief.

Doesn’t it feel a little suspicious that the only people to ever say “we should become poorer” are people from rich countries where even the poor can afford cars and gadgets? Go to the countries actually manufacturing your goods and ask the average factory worker if he wants to be poor and prepare to get flipped off.

On a gdp scale, basically every country on earth is "poorer" than the united states. As you point out, even the poor in America can own cars and tvs and smartphones.

But if you visit any of these other countries you can often be shocked by how much they accomplish with so little. Vastly better standards of customer service, much higher quality public transportation systems, and they often have cheap quality goods and services which compromise in the right areas instead of being so crappy as to basically be a scam

Poorer than average American != poor in 3rd world country.

These words sound similar but mean vastly different things. Poor people in 3rd world countries need more income, not a larger quantity of cheap T shirts.

> Luxury belief.

Sure.

But I've lived on both sides though and think we've gone too far to the other end of the spectrum.

It's great having the option for cheap, low-quality stuff. If I need some oddball tool for a home improvement project then I can just buy the crap at Harbor Freight. If it breaks after a few uses then so what, I won't need it again anyway.

Exactly. I needed an angle grinder for one specific use. I bought the cheapest model from HF and then threw it in my garage to sit. 15 years later I needed it again. It did the job. No reason to buy the higher end model.

I did spend the extra to buy better quality wheels though.

I wouldn't knock Harbor Freight.

I bought a screwdriver at Home Depot, and screw stripped the screwdriver! I returned it and bought the same type of screwdriver at Harbor Freight and it's been great.

The only product in Harbor Freight that I haven't liked so far, was their moving blankets - very thin.

Yeah, fuck the externalities

What are you proposing as an alternative? Spend a fortune on a high quality tool, and then either have it sitting in my garage unused for years or waste a bunch of time trying to sell it online?

Tool rental is a thing (I don't imagine many people own their own cement mixer for example.)

I recall my grandfather having (decent) tools sitting in his garage. Neighbors/relatives often borrowed tools in those days.

To be a little more nuanced though, some tools don't benefit from "quality" versions. Perhaps an angle grinder is a good example. (The consumable grinding disk is probably the place not to cheap-out.) Maybe the cheap one is fine.

But other tools, like a wood plane, you're going to have a bad time if you cheap out on those and wind up with steel that doesn't hold an edge for example.

(Though I kind of wouldn't want to loan out a nice hand plane of mine to someone that might not worry as much as me about hitting a nail in a board they're planing.)

Tool rental is barely a thing. And then only for larger tools. I've done that before for larger items like extension ladders and air compressors but for smaller stuff no one actually rents those. If I need to plane one piece of wood then I'll buy the cheap tool. Good enough.

Borrow, rent, pay someone else to do it, or throw your hands up in the air when you've tried nothing, are all out of ideas, and fuck the externalities.

I think that if we fully incorporate all the environmental costs of production into the end prices of customer goods, we will become poorer, at least in the short run.

In the long run, that could actually spur some development re cheap and safe energy etc.

Poorer in terms of $ accounting. Perhaps richer in terms of health, happiness, and the environment.

Given how much money people are spending on the latter things I think becoming $ poorer might be the cheapest way of getting healthier and happier.

Possibly. Human happiness is complicated and rarely conforms to what it theoretically ought to.

> One wonders what the Great Depression would resemble in the 21st Century. Would we still have the latest, but crappy, gadgets and such

Think Star Wars. Live in a hovel, but have some magic gadgets.

Much of the third world lives this way today. Atrocious living conditions but society runs on their personal cell phones. A cell phone can be more important in poorer parts of Asia than it is in the US.