February 25, 2009
Great follow-up to No New Stuff Conference Call
We got a really great follow-up question to the awesome Conference Call we had last night and I wanted to share it with all you guys because it brings up a lot of important issues and it’s something I wish we had gotten a chance to address during the call.
I’m sure you guys have thought this through, and I really admire what you’re doing with the No New Stuff movement. However, I think the situation is somewhat more complicated than simply not buying stuff. I work at a Borders bookstore, and I know we’re really suffering right now because people just aren’t buying. And so they cut down our hours, and they’re probably going to close our store.
So I truly agree with you guys when you say that you shouldn’t spend beyond your means. I think we all need to reasses what we’re buying, but I think the WHERE is more important than the WHAT.
I think we should focus more on spending at small, local stores, rather than just on not buying new stuff in general.
So more a thought than a question. It’s just a struggle – I hate big corporations, and what they do. But I also work for one and am dependent on them for my paycheck, as are many others.
What do you guys think?
You are absolutely right, and I’m not sure anyone can put things in a better perspective than you just did. I wish we had a chance to address a question like this during the call.
This is a really complicated situation. How do we, as a culture, dig ourselves out of this gigantic consumerist hole that we’ve been digging for generations? And is there any way to do that without jeopardizing our financial well-being? As we were discussing on the call, it’s so easy for these giant companies to come into communities and destroy local businesses. On the flip side of that, it is so much more difficult is for a new local business to start fresh and take on these large corporations. This is a problem that cuts clear across the country and changing it is not going to happen anytime soon. But I hope that a project like No New Stuff will lay some framework for things to come. It all starts with education and hopefully consumers who are conscious of what they’re buying will breed better spending habits on a larger scale.
I totally agree that WHERE you buy is nearly as important as WHAT you buy. Matt and I should probably try and make it a little bit more clear that we’re taking a real extremist approach with this project. And we’re doing that simply for illustrative purposes: to prove this can be done and to hopefully raise some interesting questions along the way. It’s very much in the vein of that documentary ‘Supersize Me.’ If Morgan Spurlock, the filmmaker, had only eaten McDonalds once or twice a week, it probably wouldn’t have been quite as interesting as doing it for one month straight. Hopefully projects like this will help people reevaluate their spending priorities.
There are no easy solutions to this problem. It’s been growing and growing for years and years. But I think one thing is clear – something needs to change. When the US has 5% of the world’s population and consumes 30% of the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste, something is totally MESSED UP and we need to change it!! And while approaches may differ, I think any kind of attempt to counter this problem is going to do more good than bad in the long run.
Thanks so much for your awesome question. It really helps us to get this kind of feedback.
Paul
