If it’s not good for at least 100 years, why did you design it, build it, sell it or buy it?
Why?
Imagine how much bounty the Human Race (and the God-Zillions of other critters we share this planet with) could have if every thing we made or did was meant to last at least 100 years?
Think it through.
Every time you buy some thing from W******t that lasts a week or two and gets thrown away, think about this. Or from Amazon and it comes with about 10 pounds of throw-away packaging and then isn’t what you had in mind anyway.
Waste. There’s no excuse for waste. It’s doesn’t come from the consumer, not that much — though the consumer has certainly been thoroughly trained to throw stuff away at the least impulse. Mostly it comes from the Big Corporations who believe if their stock value isn’t constantly increasing then they are not surviving.
Bull. Though it is mainstream thinking in both accounting and business management, Bull, all the same.
We build homes that are old in 10 years. That’s really too bad. My thinking is that a home 10 years is just barely old enough to have the Bugs worked out of it. Or should be. (The Uniform Building Code is woefully insufficient — postings about that elsewhere here.)
I knew an architect in San Francisco many years ago and he told me (and I triple checked it to be sure I was hearing him correctly) that new skyscrapers are designed to last no more than 10 years, then to be torn down and replaced. That *might* be ok if all that material was reused. Well, it *could* be reused, only it isn’t. Buildings are demolished and the debris is hauled away. Buried some place and forgotten. Then we “break ground” on a new piece of construction and somebody’s income goes up. When it should have gone down from all the fines for Wastage of Public Resources and for Setting a Really Bad Example (the latter being the greater crime, obviously).
If it isn’t going to last 100 years, why design it, make it, sell it or buy it?
Standard goods can last 100 years, then High Quality goods should last at least 400 years. So there…
Bounty and Material Luxury for everyone. It would all, already be there. Alas… we have stock values instead of Real Wealth. How many of you live off of Stock Returns?
(By the way: “Cent’anni” — the title of this posting — is an old Italian toast, meaning “100 years.”)
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