this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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But the transaction cost of borrowing my neighbors is much higher. I have to talk to him for 20 minutes, he has to find it, it's not charged, it's a piece of crap and the Chuck doesn't work. An hour process for a 10 second job to hang the shelf.
I think a drill is a terrible tool to use as an example since it's used for many purposes and almost any household chore. A better tool would be a Sawzall, it's built for a niche tasks and can be essential for that one cut. I will absolutely have a chat with the neighbor to avoid trying to make a cut with a hand held hacksaw blade trying to cut a stud in half. I use it so infrequently I absolutely don't need my own.
But an awful lot of households do have electric drills and apparently the average one gets less use than yours. Mine certainly does. Whatever the exact number of minutes-per-lifetime, you're gonna have difficulty persuading me that every single household of all the 8 billion people on earth needs its own electric drill and that there's not a better way of organizing things.
And that's my whole point: America's hyper-consumerist comfort-oriented lifestyle, where everyone has a closet overflowing with semi-useless junk, where talking to one's neighbor is a waste of precious time, is just not a realistic goal for a sustainable civilization. Nor even particularly desirable, I'd say. Again: please don't take this personally, I'm criticizing a whole system and I too have an electric drill (though not a Sawzall, whatever that is).
a drill is the most useful power tool that people tend to own… most of the time you could get away with just a screw driver and a self tapping screw, but we don’t because a power drill is a convenience object
i think we all tend to agree that we should be less wasteful, but a power drill is a shit example of that, and will only push people to write off the idea
rather than “we should all borrow a power drill rather than owning”, it should be something more like “yknow that 1 time you needed a nail gun? wouldn’t it be nice if you could just borrow it” (for me that item was a circular saw, and i use it maybe once every 5 years - i’d love to put it into a tool library or similar if i could borrow other things from time to time)
Word up. A drill being a poor consumer choice is right up there with plastic straws being the worst environmental offense. How about sharing a lawn mower or weed whacker? Let alone a car.
You shouldn't be lamenting the lack of skilled trades and also be arguing for less tools. I'm all for borrowing and lending, but we all need a basic tool kit.