If that were worth my time, I would do it.

The environmental cost of a Chinese gizmo is negligible compared to the loss of utility associated with having to rent a USB stick or some nail clippers. We don't have to live like we're in the Middle Ages.

You can work around that disutility in various ways; meanwhile, environmental costs are additive and will come back to bite us hard.

Personally, I'd be much more in favour of "disposable economy" (because of those utility costs you mention) if I could trust that all of the trash actually gets recycled into further products.

> If that were worth my time, I would do it.

Well, now it will be :)

Forcing people into less-optimal behavior isn't a win just because it more closely matches one's expectations for what optimal behavior should be.

Instead of throwing the things away you could donate them to charity. Let someone else use or sell the stuff.

I do, if it's convenient. Traveling 60 miles to Goodwill also has a cost (direct and environmental).

Where could you possibly live that it's 60 miles to the nearest secondhand store (or rather, what's the fraction of people that live similarly far from them)? I have four Goodwills within 25 miles of me, plus a bunch of secondhand clothing botiques, flea markets, a couple Salvation Armies and a Habitat ReStore.

A rural area...

It's remarkable to me sometimes how painfully and obviously ignorant many people on HN are about the lifestyles of the huge portion of the global population that lives in relatively undeveloped rural/agrarian areas. You don't even have to live there, just visit sometimes.

I spend a good fraction of the year in locations that are at least 10 miles to the nearest business of any kind, let alone something like a second hand store that requires a reasonable population to sustain.

Living in a rural area is your choice, and you have to consider your environmental impact. Still, as 'PeterisP pointed out, cases like yours don't have noticeable impact on the topic we're discussing, and therefore don't form a good argument.

I'm not sure how something being a choice is even remotely relevant to demography.

Per the WBG, 45% of the global population absolutely has a "noticeable impact".

Depopulated rural areas by definition don't have many people, so they don't have a huge portion of the population. This article is about the first world, which is highly urbanized; EU had only something like 20% people living in rural regions, and out of these most are living in regional centers. IIRC something like 5% are actually living in rural/agrarian conditions, certainly not a huge portion.

Places that don't have the services which require a reasonable population to sustain are getting emptier and emptier every decade; there are farms with no people living on them, where people commute from a town that does have a reasonable population to maintain all the modern services, do their work and go home.

The growing urbanization means that almost all of society lives in a somewhat urban environment, and the number of people who don't shrinks rapidly every decade, with no sign of stopping.

> Depopulated rural areas by definition don't have many people, so they don't have a huge portion of the population.

I hope for your sake that this was an off-the cuff comment and not something you actually put thought into.

Cities are very small, and unpopulated areas are very big. Amount = density * area.

The US has about 15% of people living in rural counties. China has about 60% of people living in rural areas. 63% of sub-saharans live in rural areas. It's around 45% globally, per the world bank group.

I do mean that seriously - first, as I pointed out, the local rural ratio of EU matters, and that is materially different than the current global average situation or e.g. China.

In Western EU, the depopulated rural areas don't have many people, don't have a huge portion of population, and the size of them doesn't matter.

And rapid urbanization is continuing everywhere. Within a few decades, sub-Saharan Africa will have the urbanization rate that China has now and China will be closer to towards the urbanization rate of the western world than the current ratio.

And if nothing changes, USA will very soon be as urbanized as Western EU (it's currently a bit more rural) and Western EU will be even more urbanized as it is today.

The rural areas are getting more empty, quality of life is decreasing due to depopulation, and because of that they're getting even more empty. In the long run, the population rural areas would likely converge to whatever portion of workforce is needed to run the primary agriculture, which used to be ~2% in 20th century for advanced societies and now with increasing automation is likely to drop to 1%. Within two generations, rural USA will not have anywhere close to 15% in rural counties, and that's unavoidable.

x2.

A lot of them live in a bubble. Just ignore it. The tall nail gets the hammer. Loud minority opinions get run out of town.

Minorities have, by definition, a minor impact on things. This is not a bubble, it's the opposite - taking the global view.

"The global view" is that nearly half of the world population is rural by most metrics.

Your claim is also incorrect for more fundamental reasons, although it doesn't really apply here: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Cooperating minorities can have an effect drastically out of proportion with their share of the population.

Or a lot of us don't like having to subsidize your lifestyle, and are tired of the excuses that are entirely the product of your choice of lifestyle.

At some point, this person is going to have to realize they cannot keep doing what they are doing, no matter how much they may "want" to do so.