Thank you.

You give me hope.

2. If the majority of farmers would fertilize with rock dust (a.k.a. rock flour) instead of the crap they use now, it would revolutionize our lives. Really.

True. That is why I think that the best of the White race still extant exists in North America, Australia, and other White nations which weren’t decimated so badly by the two world wars of the 20th Century. If any resistance is going to occur, it will likely come from those nations which didn’t experience mass-deaths of Whites at the hands of Jewish Communists during the 20th Century. This is a main reason why Jews are trying to destroy the USA – to destroy the last vestige of White resistance on Earth.

http://gethuman.com/

Carson uses a crude but apt term for the shoddy goods that Kurtagic rightly deplores, namely “gold-plated turds.” As Carson defines it (p. 18), these are “horribly designed products with proliferating features piled one atop another with no regard to the user’s needs, ease of use, dependability or reparability. A good example is Microsoft Vista.” Carson also writes (p. 448): “Shoddy product design is another major source of waste. The central villain is what engineers call the ‘gold-plated turd’: a product that, rather than being simply and elegantly designed to perform its primary task as efficiently and reliably as possible, is laden with extra features and options that reduce ease of use and lead to frequent breakdowns. Victor Papanek, an industrial designer who has made a career of denouncing gold-plated turds, gives the example of a cheese grater which works only right-handed and, after several months use, wears out to the point that its own plastic coating is grated into the food. By way of comparison, a cheaper, simpler and more efficient model works both right- and left-handed, and will last virtually forever.”

Such products may look good when new, and may boast a long list of features, but their veneer of utility and quality is quickly stripped away by ordinary use, and they soon need to be discarded and replaced. In the city where I live, local councils occasionally have special collections of household rubbish in which large items such as fridges, freezers, televisions, computers, barbecues, and furniture are taken away. The sheer volume of rubbish discarded by most households during such collections is appalling. (Of course, the household rubbish that is collected weekly is cumulatively greater, but it is less visible because of the manner in which it is collected.)

As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. We should not forget that we cannot simply throw rubbish away, for as the great ecologist Garrett Hardin pointed out, that “there is no away to throw to. Every single thing, including all the things we call ‘waste,’ is necessarily in our world. Sooner or later we will encounter our wastes again.” (Filters Against Folly: How to Survive Despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent, New York: Viking Penguin, 1985, p. 67.) This is especially true when products are ephemeral as useful products but enduring as waste products, and when waste products are treated by producers and consumers alike as “externalities” for which they are not practically responsible.

In 1983 we bought an Amana “Radarange” microwave — one of the first ones on the market. Except for the temperature probe (which crapped out a few years ago), it still works great. Compare that to the ~5-year-old microwave at my workplace which rusted out last week, or to the 1997 home fridge that lasted just 7 years.

Right now there’s a false rumor making the global rounds that Sony products have a “suicide chip” that causes them to break down right after the warranty expires.

Of course, when it comes to “planned obsolescence” no one can top the US auto industry in the 1950s-70s. The running jokes included Ford being an acronym for “Fix Or Repair Daily” or “Found On Road, Dead” and GM standing for “Garbage Motors.”

On the positive side, we bought a GE washer and dryer in 1986. The washer lasted 20 years, and we still have the dryer.

I encountered similar feelings shopping for furniture several years ago. After viewing the last overstuffed, beercan holder equipped, particleboard monstrosity that I could stand, I decided to make my own furniture. I converted my garage to a woodworking shop and I’m well on my way.

To hell with them all!

Those are two excellent ideas. And I suppose it would be technically possible to press for the institution of these mandates by using environmentalist and human rights arguments.

For sure, I have seen those washing machines. I believe my grandmother had one – or something very similar. This was back in the 1970s.

1) Mandate the extension of warranties to 40 years, so that manufacturers have an incentive to build machines to last, and to build machines that are easy for the owners to repair, since otherwise the manufacturers will be stuck with the cost of repairing or replacing defective products.

2) Mandate that manufacturers be responsible for the disposal and/or recycling of their products in perpetuity. Again, this would give them an incentive to build products to last, or to build products like bags and egg cartons and drink containers that degrade quickly and naturally in a compost pile. The reason we have litter and overflowing landfills and the Pacific garbage patch is that the disposal of products is the responsibility of someone other than the manufacturers.

Bravo!!!!

Be sure to acquire a Maytag Wringer Washer. It’s like a kitchen sink with a motor and really cool high varnish wooden dowels for the wringing. They say wringing clothes and hanging them from a line are less wearing than a tumble dryer. Definitely more ecologically friendly and higher EROEI. A Maytag Wringer Washer has no plastic parts. Only porcelain, metal, varnished wood, and rubber.

The big reason I’m into quality is because we need to end all production of plastics. Plastic that’s made just ends up in the Pacific Garbage Patch. We know that. Therefore, we should not simply control the lifecycle of plastic. We need to stop making it altogether. We need to return to using wood, metal, rubber, stone and fabric. No more plastic. Plastic = Ecocide

In the 1970s, the counter-culture wanted solar panels, organic farms, etc.

Nowadays, they all cultivate 100-mile diets (i.e. they eat locally) and build up their “resilience.”

The best single weblog to read about such issues is

globalguerrillas.typepad.com

but exercise discretion, the blogger is not very hospitable to racial ideas.