Zeitgeist: the Tinder of objects

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It’s the 24/7 virtual flea market, the treasure hunt that never gives you a break, capitalism disguised as Fanfreluche who forgot to take off its fishnet stockings. You can desire it, covet it, compare it, ask yourself if you really need it, regret not having jumped on the occasion or negotiating and running the economy without taxes or plastic packaging.

Each object is unique (or almost), which reinforces the feeling of being the chosen one. At a low price, you participate in a good ecological conscience, in the second life of the useful or the useless, in the rebirth of wear, in the makeover, in the recycling, in the revaluation of the patina. You give into the circular economy while having the impression of saving heritage or escaping planned obsolescence, especially that of others.

Since the pandemic, as several stores struggle to supply usual demands and prices increase, the second-hand market has exploded worldwide. Objects that have lived in transit at breakneck speed, caught up in our frenzy of $ 15 vintage lamps, antique dressers free, $ 4 wicker trivets, $ 1 old English porcelain dusting in the wood cabinet, itself “give away, come get”.

With the help of a new house to renovate, I was able to measure recently the extent of this market which I frequented less assiduously than these last two months. Since then, I have become a voyeur, shopkeeper and customer.

This summer, I found myself paying a vacuum cleaner (newer Electrolux) $ 25 and left with a blender and two teapots for the same price. In a few weeks, while touring the garages or basements of friends and garage sales of their deceased parents, I had four coffee makers (including two with capsules and one with espresso), three vacuum cleaners, several sets of old dishes. (but more soup tureens than plates), hair dryers, microwaves, TVs, Christmas decorations and so on. I had the choice of almost free in abundance. Anyway, I’ve always preferred the second hand: objects, houses, lovers, pets.

An extra story

a death boom being to be expected in the wake of the famous baby boom, no more a single everyday object will need to be made new, apart from the iPhone of the year. Everything certainly already exists somewhere in the backdrop. You just have to find it in this jumble of transactions that represented $ 27.3 billion in Canada in 2018 (1.23% of GDP) according to the Kijiji index (bit.ly/3aA6CzU). It is predicted that this market could overtake the first-hand market as early as 2030.

Each of these objects tells a story, that’s part of its charm. And there are novels that will never be written. I bought an old dish set (to complete the others) from a gentleman in a suburb of the second crown. As soon as he opened the door, I felt death blow in my face. Indeed, everything was for sale in this museum of heterogeneous objects that had belonged to a young fifty-something who died of a slow ethyl suicide.

And after the fleeting rise of every purchase came the descent, which left us depressed, empty, alone and helpless

His friend and liquidator told me about a family drama worthy of the Sopranos while negotiating a rolling pin and a hook for me. I walked around the house, left with the car full of things that had obviously not made anyone happy. Despite four or five sets of dishes (including one from Limoges), three ice buckets for champagne, silver cutlery, pompous sculptures with gilding worthy of Versailles and lamps carved in alabaster, what a misery behind the screens.

I have always liked to hunt around, without a second thought. But our overconsumption and material insecurity translate in multiple ways into this last-ditch market that makes us feel like we’re rich at little cost. This does not necessarily limit the exploitation of resources. And how many of these objects, after Marketplace or Renaissance, will end their useful life in the ecocentre, in poor countries or in the trash? Mystery.

Capital garbage collectors

It is in an anti-capitalist work which advocates a decrease in the economy and the end of the company, Heal from infinity evil, from professor at HEC Yves-Marie Abraham, that I learned what the “garbage collectors of capital” were. It was while reading it that I began to wonder about the second-hand market, a variation or an externality of the new market considering the amount of aberrant objects that are consumed there.

Marketplace (et al.) Is just one symptom of a much bigger problem. “As long as we get up on Monday morning to go to work and go to work the following Saturday to buy goods, however ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ they may be, capitalism will remain firmly in place,” said the sociologist of economics. .

In short, the quest for “responsible consumption” perhaps reduces “eco-anxiety” for those who indulge in it, but actively contributes to the maintenance of the causes of this anxiety.

Regarding the company, Abraham writes: “The human being is fundamentally interested in this organization only in two ways: either as a producer or as a consumer. “

This economic essay puts forward solutions to our current way of life (it would be the subject of a column) which goes far beyond the companies of sharing or the exchange of second-hand objects. According to him, there is no responsible consumption possible in Western societies as long as each Canadian among the poorest has an ecological footprint of 5 global hectares / person (the richest 10%: 10 hectares), while the planetary biocapacity is estimated at 1.68 global hectare / person.

In all this waltz of objects, I recovered the beggar’s bench and the rocking chair of my Gaspé great-grandparents stored at my colleague Marco’s two years ago. These perennial bequests were made in the XIXe century and have come down to me. They are worth a fortune to me because they remind me of what the word “sustainable” means, as in “a little trick of sore buttocks in the cushy chair”.

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