There was a common theme for the frugality of those who experienced the Great Depression. Most in many facets of their lives in the subsequent years following tripped over dollars to pick up nickels. It resulted in a net lower standard of living than they would have otherwise had. Wasting resources (time and money) that could otherwise be spent elsewhere in order to make those whose life's problems reside at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy is just that...a waste of resources.
I know a few people who came out of the great depression or were reared by those that experienced it full force who did pretty darn well for themselves. As do I. But I know a lot who ended up being time wasting hoarders as well. They still tended to care for their land, were conservationists and tried to do what they could to make the planet a better place. Some did, some didn't. You're speaking in generalities. I know people who were tighter than bark on a tree and dumped all their used motor oil and grease on the ground or burned it. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is not something new. It is what our grandparents and their grandparents practiced mainly due to the scarcity of goods. Everything did not come easy, fast and cheap to them, so they lived with less and without, so much waste and many times, with a closer connection to the land even if they didn't own a large chunk of it. In some facets of their lives, that was a tremendous benefit. In others, it kept them poorer than they otherwise would have been because of their use of time. It always pencils great when you value your time at zero, but reality is that your time has value. We, as a society, have decided it is better to rip through all the crap we can buy and quickly throw it away, rather than design things to last and care for them. Ok, grandpa! (just kidding!) You're really talking about two different issues here. Our throwaway society is predicated the fact that we as consumers almost always will chose something cheaper and disposable because of the cost. The other thing is the factor of time. There are many items which could be repaired, but the time factor makes it economically unfeasible. It is cost effective to program a robot to mass produce a circuit board. It is not cost effective to have a human tear something apart to find and resolder two bad connections. And when we are done with the items, we definitely don't want to be bothered with doing what is right by our future generations and recycle what can be recycled to save resources for them.
LOL. There is not a generation in the history of the world who cared enough about future generations to conserve resources. Those who lived through the great depression certainly didn't conserve and hoard resources for future generations. They did it out of self interest. And like I said, some of those efforts were prudent, and some a waste. Most were just trying to make it to the next day, week and year. Compare that to today where most have aced the first four tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy and are working on self-actualization...worrying about things like recycling rather than where their next meal is coming from and how they're going to keep a roof over their heads.
Also compare that to a place like Iraq where everyone is dirt poor. There isn't a tin can in the entire country that doesn't get recycled by kids roaming the dumps. And it's not because they're concerned about the environment. That's the difference between the top and bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy.
Throw everything in the landfill. And if the day ever comes where raw materials become scarce enough to make recycling economically profitable, the materials for recycling will already be there.
OK, to sum this all up, what you are saying is:
1) We have pretty much unlimited resources, (which, by definition, is not possible).
No, free the market will decide if we have unlimited resources and act accordingly by coming up with cost effective solutions.
2) IF we ever need those resources again (which some generation will) we should spend 10X - 100X the money we would have otherwise, RE-EXTRACTING them from a man made pile of junk and then recompacting the remnants into another man made pile of junk.
One, it's presumptuous to assume a future generation will need to resort to mining landfills, as is your 10x-100x estimate. Two, it ignores the future value of money. Unlike the government that pulls money from the economy and more or less sets it on fire, dollars freed up today can be directed to more efficient uses...such as feeding and educating the poor, creating jobs, saving for retirement, building homes, etc. Three, you're assuming that a technology won't developed that will make recycling landfills cost effective. Here's an idea. Figure out how to make it cost effective now. You'll make yourself wealthy AND solve a problem. That's how the free market works!
3) That leaving natural land and sea alone and free from the scars of extraction, which is one side benefit of recycling, is not something positive for the people of the planet or their progeny.
If you truly care about the scaring on the planet, you need to focus your efforts on Asia (SE Asia in particular) where very little if any trash collection takes place and much of it ends up in the oceans where it causes substantial ecological damage. Any visual scaring from the extraction of raw materials on land I do not own or will likely never visit is much further down my list of things which are important. There are very few if any countries that do a better job of cleaning up after themselves than we do.
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