Skip to main content

Market Forces in the Everyday

The world has been busy at the production of "stuff"---too busy in fact. This is taught to us everyday for those of us who are trying to divest ourselves of our "stuff", which has been collected over many years and now has to go---not sure to where, but has to go.

Of course, all of this is too good to junk, but not good enough for a high end auction.  In between are the large number of other outlets like donation to charity, yard sale, gifting, etc.
But, the question always arises:  What is this thing worth?  The answer is important to most, because if this "thing" is worth a lot, its a candidate for selling.  If not, then its a giveaway or charitable donation.

The reality is that most of what is treasured is worth very little, all do to the phenomenon of over production. Like, who needs another cookbook?  As a case in point, we assisted yesterday with the semiannual FOL book sale. On the front door, the first day of the sale we posted the sign:  ALL COOKBOOKS 4 for $1.  Wow, that's a price for the last day of the book sale, not the first day.  But, come inside and see whats there: One whole table row of cookbooks two books deep, 60 feet long, all cookbooks.  Many of these, (perhaps most) were donated to the FOL book sale by one person---their lifelong collection.  Four for a dollar---think about it.  The ink on the page cost more than that.

So, what goes out first?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aermotor Windmill Lives

The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise.  Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill.  W e erected the windmill in Fulshear.  It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged.  For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes.  After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...

St. Josephs Church Picnic in Yoakum

Off on this nice day to visit the old town of Yoakum.  Yoakum is like many towns of this size, they grew to moderate size in the mid 1900s, then plateaued and now are not growing at all.  Yoakum has a central area that consists of old brick buildings that are mostly unoccupied or are occupied with marginal businesses. We attended a church picnic in Yoakum a year ago, but that was the Lutheran Picnic and this one is sponsored by the Catholic church.  We first drove directly to the Church, but this was not the place where the picnic was held---it was at the Community center in the old part of downtown, along the rows of warehouses paralleling the railroad tracks.  This town was once a shipping center for agricultural products, like especially tomatoes.  Now there is little of that produce and so the warehouses sit there rather bleak looking. The dinner was the usual, beef stew, sausage, smashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and bread.  And don't forget the desserts...

Cause and Effect

 We have this great world atlas book published by the National Geographical Society, which by the way, we bought at the local library used book sale for $2. Probably this low price of the book pains the Society but it sure makes my reference to maps an easy task without having to wake up my computer. The book occupies a permanent spot on a book stand in our breakfast room, standing ready to supply map information on request. The book happened to be open to the page showing the whole of Antarctica featuring all the outposts and even some commentary of scientific significance. One such comment was on ice coring data of historic temperatures and carbon dioxide content.  I can understand how the CO2 content of the ice can be preserved over many centuries at varying depths, but I am unsure how the prevailing temperature of some thousand years ago can be preserved in the ice cores--but that's another issue that we will not get into here. So here is the comment on the data of the ice...