Thoughtful Thursday: Free Box Economics
By
Sara Gilbert on Get Rich Slowly
"When I think about it back at home, this chair — and the others at my kitchen table — are pretty radical. I’m rejecting the idea that I must buy a new chair from IKEA or a furniture store, one that’s made in a factory by workers who earn a wage (living or no), and purchased at a retail store whose workers are also paid. I brought it home on my bike, oil companies and American car manufacturers be damned. I did not create any new demand for new things.
But I saved an inestimable amount of future costs, from the disposal of the old chair to the environmental costs of manufacturing and shipping, to the health costs of workers who manufacture and ship these products, right down to my own feelings of well-being and not-argument. I don’t have to ask my husband for money to buy a new chair; we won’t argue about money, today."
