You-Read-It-Here-First

[brian-hansen]

Dateline: Portland, Oregon

As the general economy contracts, more and more people
are being forced out of their previous commercial patterns,
and into patterns consistent with the Hansen Economy.

They're doing without, buying less, buying at extreme discount,
buying used, making do, buying with cash, not taking on new
debt, and generally hunkering down.

This puts a strain on those of us who were doing this already.
If we want to maintain our strangely high quality of life, we
need to adapt. Finding DVD's at the library is harder now since
so many people are cutting their entertainment budgets. To avoid
diminishing one's quality of video entertainment, one now needs
to research the catalog and place holds.

The competition for second-hand goods intensifies, and being
first in responding to a craigslist ad is more important than ever.
The bike rack on the bus may be full more often now during
certain hours. Free lunches are in short supply. Grocery
coupons have lower value, or greater restrictions.

There are a few bright spots for Hansen Economy denizens,
especially if they've saved some extra money over the years.
Bargains in higher-priced goods are starting to appear.
The availability of restaurant discounts is increasing. Buying
a house is starting to become a reasonable proposition in
some markets, after being bubble-priced for much of a decade.
Manufactured goods can still be found at very inexpensive,
chinese-import prices (this is not likely to last for too long).
This is a good time to buy that 10 ton bottle jack you wanted
for less than $20, $14 if you are paying attention.

If you are selling goods or services (as in your labor), you
are going to find that more difficult now, most likely.
Once again, I apologize.

-Brian

[jabailo]

Just wondering, is Cash for Clunkers, part of the War on the Hansen Economy? I say this because it takes working vehicles and removes them permanently from the market (what they do is pour a silicate into the engine which then hardens and makes the car or truck unusable).

Also, I have noticed that at work, when they "retire" old servers, they are no longer putting them into surplus stores, but throwing them out!

Surely the Hansen Economy will be starved if the new paradigm is to remove hand-me-downs from the supply chain.

[brian-hansen]

yes. Cash-for-Clunkers would reduce the pool of used cars, and drive
up prices. For servers, it seems like a different kind of situation.

First, I'm not sure about different locations, but for many areas, you
can't just "throw away" electronics like this. One way or another, they
may be diverted. Even so, the general point is valid, that they are
not re-used at their highest level.

But then I also wonder. Isn't it the case that old technology like this,
often without manuals, perhaps damaged or infected, would require
a large degree of added labor to make them useably functional?

None of the scenarios that I imagine would want them. A typical,
relatively naive consumer would not have much use for them. I could
imagine a hardware hacker that wants to add to his farm of processors,
but, maybe I'm not following the trends, but I don't see much sign that
hackers/nerds/etc are homebrewing a lot of parellel processing,
mini-server farms. And real server farms wouldn't want anything
to do with these. Anything that makes you think of server hardware
as a "count noun" instead of a "mass noun" would be a problem.
If you've got hundreds or thousands of servers, you don't want them
to have different set up and maintenance requirements, or possible
damage.

So many objects can have a "second life" when the original owners
no longer want them. But servers might not be in this category.

[brian-hansen]

From the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/business/08drill.html?nl=your-money&emc=your-moneyema4