But if disposable artifacts are, indeed, more time eficient, then the question I raised with respect to renting objects arises. Why have things not moved more fully in the direction of a low-upkeep mode of consumerism, by making everything disposable that can possibly be disposable? Why is the market for consumer goods not entirely dominated by a combination of disposable goods and durable goods that are rented? As with rented items, the answer might be that the duration of ownership of a disposable item is closely tied to actual use. Consequently, disposable items cannot signify a quantity of free activity that exceeds actual free time. Of course, consumers can accumulate a very large number of disposable items, to act as a reserve of potentially useful objects. But although some consumers do engage in bulk buying and stockpiling of disposable products, that mode of accumulative consumption quite quickly runs into storage limitations. Accumulating a smaller number of more expensive durable consumer goods is a more practical way to achieve wage-labor commensuration.
A Theory of Mass Consumption as Wage-Labor Commensuration
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