20190117 - Nomads are not good Consumers

     I bet if it happened once it has happened dozens of times; you are heading home after work and your spouse calls you on your cell phone and says "will you stop and pick up some bread on the way home?"  You don't think much about it and stop at the grocery.  Or late in the evening you are working on one of your "honey-do" items and you realize that you don't have a piece. With the mutter of a few choice words you get in the car and drive to Walmart or Home Depot. Other than recognizing some minor annoyance, when was the last time you gave going to any type of store a thought?  Would you be more likely to think about it if your closest grocery was a half an hour away or the nearest Walmart and Home Depot was almost 100 miles away? That's the case for the nomad. That was us until yesterday.
      Yesterday we moved to a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) dispersed camping area in California west of Parker, AZ so that we would be within 20 miles of a Walmart. It's time to do our bi-weekly shopping and laundry and I have a couple of things I especially need from Walmart. It isn't that we're big Walmart fans, but living on social security means that you're not going to shop at the local organic health food store, assuming that one is available. Even Walmart prices are going up and making money tight. Thankfully, as I've said before, Pamela and I are about as tight and frugal as any two people can be.
     I guess the thing that bothers me most is that capitalism requires copious consumption and encourages a throw-away society.  That just isn't us. How many televisions, cars, computers, or cell phones does one need? And all of these things get thrown away when a new model comes along. Have you ever seen a television, car, computer or cell phone with the label "x% recycled materials"? Where do they go? The rare earth materials used in electronics is not a renewable resource and mining them does significant damage to the environment.  Within a year of purchasing my Galaxy 5 I had cell phone people telling me that I needed a new phone because mine was outdated. The Galaxy 6 came out exactly a year after the Galaxy 5.  My Galaxy 5 still can not be five years old even if I bought it on the first day they went on the market. Actually I bought mine in September which means that it is just now four years and four months old but it is considered obsolete. Sad! Truly sad!!
     I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts. I happened to notice that there's a hole worn in it.  I do have enough money to buy a new shirt, but we got this shirt at a thrift store and I really like it. Pamela said that she would fix it. I'm happy.
     Copious consumption is not sustainable. Being a throw-away society is already coming back to bite us as we witness every time we try to get rid of our trash. Capitalism is not a sustainable economic system, but it makes the rich richer so they do want you to believe that it is the only way.  To be good Americans we must all pitch in, buy copious amounts of everything, and keep them rich.
     Meanwhile, on the road with the nomads, if it doesn't have a place in our rig we don't buy it.  If we don't need it, we don't buy it. If we can't pay cash, we don't buy it. None of this makes the capitalist happy.
     When I lived in Ireland the banks thought that if they closed their doors the entire country's economy would collapse and people would give them what they wanted, which was, of course, more money and power.  It's the capitalistic expectation. Rather like our government shutdown. What happened was people found other ways of carrying on commerce. There was a hiccup as we all adjusted, but soon life was going on without a hitch. The banks were the ones who had to acquiesce.
     Remember Tennessee Ernie Ford's song  "Sixteen Tons"? "Lord don't call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."  That's modern America.
     Gotta go do laundry.  Talk to you later.