In a recent post to his blog, Bob wondered why it’s so much easier to acquire stuff than to get rid of it. This was obviously a rhetorical question, but I e-mailed Bob the following answer anyway. He insisted that I post it here.

Getting rid of things, even things we have no use for, is difficult because we, as a society, lack a single clearly understood definition of value. Instead, we have several mutually incompatible notions of value, most of which are bogus. First of all, the myth of “intrinsic value” persists, bolstered by such things as the appraised and/or tax value of real estate, the “manufacturer’s invoice” or “book value” of cars, and buzzphrases such as “fair market value.” Many people also confuse price with value, which leads them to believe that an item must be worth what they paid for it, even if that was decades ago. Then there is the idea, championed by Labor types, that the value of a thing is derived from the amount of work that went into its creation. In general, there is poor understanding among non-accountants of the concept of depreciation; many people find it hard to believe that an object’s value can decrease over time while it still works, to the point where it’s worth less than the raw materials that were used to make it.
I’m not saying that you don’t understand these things; I’m just saying that the whole notion of value is severely muddled in our culture, and that we all have to make an effort to dismiss these popular misconceptions about it. Even if you know, in an abstract sense, that a thing is worth only what someone will willingly pay for it, it’s very difficult to accept that a gadget you spent your hard-earned paycheck on, that still looks brand new, and that functions as perfectly as the day you bought it, can be worthless. It doesn’t seem fair. But it’s often true.
The only thing more worthless than an obsolete gadget is a gratuitous lecture on economics.

Let this be a lesson to those who tell me that I should post to this blog more often. Be careful what you wish for — you may get it.