I've been reading books by Adam Minter this year. First was Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, and now Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. Most of the time he's a journalist for trade publications that I wouldn't come across, but these two books are eye-openers about how we are as a society - a consumer society. It's the kind of story I'd like to see someone like Michael Moore tackle in his documentaries - spend time with Minter researching these books and articles. About Secondhand:

When you drop a box of unwanted items off at the local thrift store, where do they go? Probably across the country--or even halfway across the world--to people and places eager to reuse what you don’t want.

In Secondhand, Adam Minter delves into the vast, multibillion-dollar industry that resells used stuff around the world. He follows the trail of unwanted objects from the closets, garages, and storage units of Middle America to huge used-goods markets in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Ghana, India, Malaysia, and beyond. Secondhand takes us through the often painful and heartbreaking process of cleaning out a lifetime’s worth of possessions and shows that used stuff still has a place in a world that values the new and shiny--it entertains us, makes fortunes, fulfills needs, and transforms the way we live and work.

That much of the world lives for used clothes, books, devices, and appliances discarded in the US, in Japan, and in Europe, there is something to be said about the level of entitlement to use and discard so much stuff, and in the business model that has generated planned obsolescence in appliances, disposable fast fashion, and private equity in general.

He refers to the film Pretty Woman at one point, when she's asking Edward about what he does, and he tells her about buying companies and selling off the parts. She responds that it's like stealing a car and selling the parts. There was a book by Cameron Hawley that was made into a popular film with James Garner and Natalie Wood, in which he is basically into private equity before it had that name, and he comes out fairly heroically, as I recall. I haven't watched films like Wall Street to know if they cover the same material, but it certainly is something that could and should be addressed by popular culture productions.