Too much stuff?

"Unashamedly "disposable" cheap goods, you could argue, are turning us into traders rather than curators of our possessions. It is another victory for capitalism: we have internalised the unsentimental stock control of the modern retailer. Juliet Schor, an American economist and leading critic of the bargain boom, thinks this new form of ownership is less pleasurable than the old one. "The psychologically satisfying process of personalisation that occurs when products are acquired and retained, is truncated," she writes in a recent essay. "Attachment is briefer and there is the constant pain of divestiture [getting rid of things]." What individual possessions represent to us is, she says, "more externally driven" - by marketing and advertising - and "less under the control of the individual consumer"."

Interesting article over at BoingBoing. Original Guardian Article.

It makes you wonder where things are heading, if you can buy a brand new Dell laptop for £289 with DVDRW, etc (£336 for 15.4" widescreen), and a multi-region DVD player for £20, then what will happen to the second hand market, especially for cheap stuff like DVD players... (should I buy one with MPEG4/DIVX playback, or a free scart lead?)