
In a recent letter to our local paper, a fellow wrote in that we should buy American products: “Americans all want to make top dollar for their labor but insist on buying the cheapest goods that they can find often made by countries with very low wages and lax environmental protections…We should always try to buy American made products and services as our first choice.” Be American. Buy American.
Now, I’m sympathetic to the argument that products from outside the U.S. have an advantage because of laxer environmental standards. Here in California, homegrown wood is more expensive due to the proscriptive regulations of the Forest Practice Act coupled with water quality and wildlife regs. A Timber Harvesting Plan adds $10,000-$50,000 to the cost of harvest.
Still, why should we stop at buying American products? Why not buy only products from companies in the western U.S.? Why not only California produced products? Heck, let’s keep our money in our county; after all our unemployment is running at twice California’s already high rate of unemployment. Keeping the money in the county will help put people to work; so let’s only buy Lake County products! Better yet, let’s just buy products produced in our own home! That way the money stays at home! Why didn’t anybody else think of that? Problem solved.
We can produce all that we need in our own homes. We can follow Thomas Thwaites’ example of making his own toaster (smelting iron into steel using his microwave is worth the viewing alone):
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
Radley Balko commented on Thwaites’s (unfinished at the time) project in June, 2009 with “I, Toaster.”
Matt Ridley also has a great post on this topic: “Self-sufficiency is another word for poverty.”





