A post over on Tales from the Hood (??) got me hot under the collar about aid, and used stuff. Basically, the writer – a self-avowed humanitarian and aid worker – is saying Americans have these embedded (and unique) cultural norms around stuff – specifically the resale of used things that the writer dismisses as junk. For all kinds of reasons, the skinny is that extending this “hand-me-down” cultural value to foreign assistance is dumb, and counterproductive. Without taking on the international aid dimensions of this argument, I felt it (ridiculously!) necessary to come to the defense of  the re-sale, appropriation, and re-use of other people’s stuff. Here’s the screed, only slightly edited.

“First, it is incorrect to state that used stuff is junk. Used cars, used clothes, used tools – unless they’ve been abused and are being off-loaded by a huckster, there is much value to be derived in used good. What perhaps underlies your assertion is a tacit recognition that the quality of goods produced by the global economy today is poor, and as a result there isn’t much value to trickle down the reuse value ladder. Nor does the cost of these goods new warrant much benefit over the cost of them new.

Of course, casting your views on “used stuff” as “junk” pays backhanded disservice to the millions of unorganized workers across the globe who squeeze a living out of the waste created by urban centers. “Ragpickers,” “catadores,” “baol baol” – there are many names for these folks who live and die off of the goods scavenged from dumps. Some even take those materials and create completely new, ingenious products that – and this is important – serve the urban poor in ways the formal market simply does not.

Despite years as a humanitarian aid worker, your cultural myopism – and underlying sense of superiority – shines through.

This leads to the second point, which is overconsumption. The reason we’re able to support these bulging, orgiastic summertime sprees [known as "garage sales" and "lawn sales"] is because we consume to much. Of course, this is the program – its what modern life has been boiled down to: the pursuit of the good deal, regardless of utility.

We talk about “industrial” and “non-industrialized” societies etc. We really need to be talking about pre- and post-consumer societies – those that have or have not allowed their primary cultural reference points to become defined by productization (think iPhone or circumcision).

So the fact is, socially “beneficial” sites like Craigslist and Freecycle could not exist without the social pathology of over consumption. The fact that they do suggests there is a sliver of hope, some sanity gene among our population that says, “thrift is good.” Remember that quaint meme, “carrying capacity”?

Anyway, sounds like you’re in the DC area – when you have a moment, take the opportunity to visit the GSA surplus warehouses – as I write, my computer sits atop a dining table (really an office desk – your “junk”) that still bares a US Government Property sticker citing its home in 1960s – the US Peace Corps.

Finally, your third point – stuff can be used for stuff other than what it was originally intended for. Look, to anyone living outside the United States, where privilege trumps sanity, this is a truism, a tautology. This isn’t some American idea coughed up from the lung of the Great Depression – its been around since bone was used to finish off the numbnuts.

Any inventor or problem solver will tell you that appropriation and discovery go hand in hand. And of course, any entrepreneur in the developing world – whether they build charcoal furnaces from diesel filters or sitting pillows from vinyl seat covers or any other ingenious appropriation – will tell you that finding a new use for old stuff that others value is one of the more thrilling experiences one can have as an entrepreneur.

And of course all this is codified into the wonderful work of artists and other cultural creatives – domestic or otherwise – who take delight in finding that old door knob to turn into a coat hanger, the length of rope that can be turned into railing. Thank goodness for the garage-sale surfing, curbside sharking appriator who keeps – and in some cases increases – value circulating in our economy. Pah! on snobs who only see the treacle produced by todays cheap-oil plasticians and WalMart purveyors.”