I guess it's a sewing sort of day. Mended several t-shirts and pillows cases to put back into circulation. One shirt needs a little more attention, hand-mending over pinhole spots probably from a couple of cat claws. Ouch!

There are some built-in problems with the free-cycle and Craig's list places that I haven't completely articulated but that register in the "ethics of stuff" part of my brain.

A lot of what I see for sale on Craig's List is stuff people in their right minds should never have bought. Now they have to sell it and they are trying to get a high price for it. There are also people trying to sell junk on Craig's list and want a high price for it. Both seem to be waiting for either the sucker or the savvy shopper, hard to say which they are unless you see the use they make of the items. The medium is overseen by a self-appointed group of users who delete messages they deem "inappropriate," not because they say anything wrong, but because they don't fit a narrow format, much of which is not published anywhere for people to learn from. As gatekeepers they probably overall try to protect their venue, but for some it looks like a power game. Big fish, small pond.

Free-cycle has a lot of people throwing out the used because they got the shiny new version of the thing they are discarding, and I guess it's good because at least they're giving someone else a chance to use the old one. But on the "wanted" side, the complex and expensive laundry lists of things people are looking for, seem to feel entitled to receive free, are staggering. It's a juggernaut of spending and discarding and entitlement that is very unattractive to view.

I realize that I'm the fish in the water, I can't remove myself from my environment to truly view my role in it objectively, but when I watch what is going on around me and sample these services, I find them off-putting and I can't sustain a steady diet of reading these ads and offers.

eBay the corporation has a thumb on the scale of every transaction that goes down, and is tightening it's control more by limiting outside payments for sellers and buyers. There are sellers and buyers who try to take advantage of others, though I would say that out of all of my transactions I've only had trouble with maybe 1 or 2 percent. In the general scheme of things, though, it tends to reveal more closely a true market value of things via a larger audience than the local lists and cycles notices do. It does help people become local consumers if the cost of shipping is too high--look around and see what is in the neighborhood, that's a good way to shop when you can, and eBay will facilitate that as well as enable the exotic purchases from half-way around the world. It's all there in black and white in the shipping charges.

Enough of my Wednesday morning philosophy pondering, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

SRS