Economic Theory of Boots (aka - Sensible Buying)

"The reason the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in the city on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

 Slightly long quote, but as theories go, I'm partial to this one! From the point of view of a student, I have found Penneys (Primark here) a great standby. They do cheap clothes, mostly tops in my case. So I end up with a large number of tops that cost maybe E3 each. Problem is, they last about E3's worth of time too, and after a couple of washes, they look pretty sad.

The sensible approach, I think, is to buy just one item instead of several, but make sure it's good quality. Then, in theory, in three months time, I will still have a nice sweater instead of something that looks like it's been through the wrong cycle. The minus side to this is the original expenditure of course. It's less noticeable to spend E10 every week rather than E40 all at once. But once you get past the pineapple*, it's probably the more sensible way, in terms of both sustainability and economy, as a month and a day later, it'll have paid off, and hopefully I will still have dry feet...

*Guess I'm on a roll with Pratchett references now

Happy Planet & GDP

“By the curious standard of the GDP, the nation's economic hero is a terminal

cancer patient who is going through a costly divorce.” – (Cobb, C. et al., 1999)

            He’s probably not very happy about it though. 

            However, this is The Big Number that countries and economies, which filter down to us, rely on. We seem to be a rather competitive species, and each country wants its number to win. One of Bill Bryson’s books (I think Notes From A Big Country) mentions a study on High School students in the States, where they were asked if they’d prefer a 1% increase in economic growth, if Japan gained 1.5%, or a drop of 0.5% where Japan would drop by 1%. The large majority preferred the latter. Now that’s competitive. (I don’t have the book handy or I’d be more specific, but that’s the gist of it).

Mr. Smith up there is taking one for the team and enabling his country to stand proud with a somewhat meaningless number. It’s reflected in the financial indices used in news broadcasts. The Dow Jones is up by 0.1%, the FTSE 100 is down by 3%, the stock market dived/climbed to record lows/highs, etc. I’m not quite sure how much of the population that watches this part of the evening news understands all this (I know I don’t), but either way, we like our numbers, and the green arrow going up has got to be a positive thing, right?

            The Happy Planet Index appears to be doing much the same, appealing to our love of numbers to quantify how happy we are with our lives and how happy the planet is with us living that way. Mr Smith, our GDP hero, fares rather worse in the Happy Planet index. One of the ideas of alternative living/values in sustainable consumption/New Economics would essentially reverse these two ways of measuring current life standards in importance.

Wonder what sort of effect it would have if instead of showing the Dow and FTSE etc of an evening, newscasters broadcast the fluctuations of international Happy Planet/Carbon Footprint indices with big green and red arrows for approval/disapproval... Gathering the former might be difficult, but these numbers in competition could have an interesting effect on the worst offenders!

Welcome, McEarthlings!

Greetings, McEarthlings, and welcome to my blog. I shall try to refrain from any more 1960s Star Trek speak now.

As a quick introduction; hi, my name is Anne Walsh. I'm from Ireland and I'm in the MSc Climate Change course. I chose Sustainable Consumption as a course module after becoming interested in the topic, partly due to reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation for a similar module in my under-grad (very good, if rather shocking book - highly reccommend!)

The name of my blog is (captain obvious approaching) a reference to everyone's..ah.."favourite" megalithic coporative provider of..food stuff, and their relationship to society ("McDonaldisation"). Depending on how the blogging project is organised, I might ramble on about that at a later date.

Thanks for reading! ^^