Comment by James_K
10 days ago
That was because you could make money by turning old things into new things. Not so with garbage disposal, a service for which you almost always have to pay.
10 days ago
That was because you could make money by turning old things into new things. Not so with garbage disposal, a service for which you almost always have to pay.
> Not so with garbage disposal
There is already a healthy trade for second-hand clothing to 3rd world countries (see pics of kids with "<Final's losing team> World Champions 2022"). The prices will be better for brand new clothes. The gray distribution channels already exist and will readily pay for new clothes - at steep discounts, but pay for them nonetheless.
Describing it as a market is not entirely correct. The clothes these people wear are garbage. As a species, we produce more clothes than we could ever wear. I am reminded of a story of a charity that accepted clothing donations for the victims of an American hurricane, and immediately had to stop because their warehouse filled up. Many clothes are not even worn once before they're thrown away, and one of the cheaper ways to dispose of them is dumping them on 3rd worlders. It's quite dystopic really the underclasses who dig through our trash.
… and put local African cloth producers out of business. The same happened with shoes sent to African countries by NGOs. Well intentioned, but local shoe manufacturers went out of business. The local population did not really benefit, because traders would get a hold of the free shoes and sell them on for just a bit less than locally produced shoes.