A return to goods made by hand, made to last
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While it is, more or less, obvious that in the post oil world most goods will be made by hand once again and will be made to last, we should, in order to reduce our impact on the environment go over to this common sense approach already now.
Hand-made must also mean locally-made as long distance transportation does not make sense and will also be somewhat difficult and different when the oil is gone.
Unless we can run some factories, as it was done with some woolen mills and such before the wholesale introduction of the steam engine, with water power, there will be no other option, in a world after the end of oil, than to manual production, to making things by hand.
Certain goods may still have small scale factories powered by renewable energy, but in general, I should think the small workshop and making by hand will be the order of the day.
Many of us will feel rather alien in this new post oil world when it happens having been used to having everything on demand as and when, as long as we had the money to pay for it.
When everything – or almost everything – is made entirely by hand again it means at times having to wait for the item to be made to order as used to be with clothes, with shoes and with many other things.
In days gone by, if you wanted a knife, for example, and you could not make one yourself, often it was the case of ordering it from the village smith and having then to wait a couple of days or weeks even before it would be ready. But you would then have a tool that would last you and even your son for a lifetime.
It will be like this with, I should think, (almost) everything and while some goods may be produced in some quantities as were trade knives and axes and such in years gone by, even if made by hand, others will be a case of “Made to Order” only.
The “drawback” with everything handmade is that the prices will be rather high but then so should be the quality and thus the things should last well.
Handmade must return, and will return, as there is going to be no other way. When we have no longer the cheap oil that has been fueling our industry, our mechanized production, and economy, for so long, most production will be hand-operated, regardless of what.
A lot of what we need and want will also be a case of DIY, of making it yourself, by hand, and the more of those DIY skills of this nature that you have the better you are equipped for a world after oil.
Being able to make things that you and others want also means that you will always have something to trade, be this goods or skills, or services.
For most of us who have grown up with predominately mass production it is and will be hard to imagine what it would mean is everything has to be made by hand once again, even those who are now in their fifties and such.
It will be harder still for those younger who have been used to an “on demand” world, where everything is available almost instantly if not indeed instantly.
The majority of good obtained in such a way and manner, however, are of low quality, even if they have the name of a once very good maker, such as, say, Grundig, an d have one to three year maximum lifespan factored in only.
Your PC and mine has about 5 years maximum life and use factored in and while this does not mean that the computer will stop working after this time – I have some that are older than that and world fine – but by that time it may not be able to handle the latest proprietary software. This is the “built-in obsolescence “ and it so very wrong.
No one factored obsolescence in in the olden days. On the contrary. Things were made to last and that was true still up to the 1970s when radios and TVs could actually still be repaired and such and radio and TV repair shops were still legion.
The same was true for other things, such as shoes and boots but today it is nigh impossible to get shoes or boots, at a reasonable price, that still can be repaired. The soles, nowadays, are welded to the leather and often there is not even a midsole, thus making resoling a shoe or boot impossible, basically.
This is not sustainable and when the oil is finally gone those things are too and we will have again real products and good, made to last.
But there will be many who have grown used to the oil-fulled economy as to how the economy going to grow when things are made by hand and to last, once again. Many economists certainly also, as well as the governments, will ask the self-same question.
But who says that the economy has to grow? Business must change from the more, more and still more to a perception of “enough”.
© 2010
A book entitled “The End of Oil”, about Peak Oil and a world after the oil age, by this author is available to purchase as an E-book via http://tatchipenmedia.tripod.com/the-end-of-oil.html
