So I applaud the throwaway culture that loads of people seem to complain about. We need more of it!
If person A throws away his widget which could have been repaired for $2 and buys a new, identical widget for $10 his balance sheet shows $10 of assets (scenario A). If person B repairs his widget, he now has a widget worth $10 plus the $8 cash he saved - his balance sheet shows $18 of assets. Thus, person A destroyed $8 of assets by behaving irrationally/inefficiently.
One may say person A's frenzied purchasing of widgets drives R&D dollars into the development of better widgets. A good counter-argument is that it was more important to develop things other than widgets and that by focusing so much on accelerating widget development scenario A forsook technological progress in more productive areas.
We saw this happen with the construction industry across the developed world siphoning dollars and talent away from other areas that would have produced more long-term benefit.
And actually this desire for better, shinier versions of existing things drives creativity, forcing companies to innovate and endlessly create newer and shinier things. I think this process of renewal and innovation is generally a good thing, rewarding creative people.
The downside, you could argue, is in this scenario all the cash goes into shiny new products, rather than some boring but vital product or services. There, I suppose, is where the government comes in.
The worst case of throwaway was the 'cash for clunkers' scheme. That saw wholesale destruction of large amounts of serviceable vehicles, with replacements being created on production lines. It was wealth destruction all around and benefited nobody but a couple of car salesmen who got better comission checks that month.
(100 euro cars used to be found; people who don't want to admit their car's worth nothing. They were often bought by teenagers, driven psychotically for a night, and burnt out. These days I assume they're being driven into the ground instead.)
Some guy in Africa will be wondering why his cab fares mysteriously went up, and will have no idea that it was a vote-buying scheme halfway across the world in a country he'll never visit.
Some of the cars scrapped were worth several thousand, and would have lasted for years, both as serviceable vehicles and donor vehicles to keep others on the road. But they were forcibly destroyed and scrapped, taking all their parts with them.
The scheme, in all its incarnations around the world, was stupid and destructive.
Jeremy Clarkson summed it up best with his quip 'we'd be better off giving everyone in the Taliban a decent used car if they promised to stop shooting at us'.
The energy used to create and deliver the new cars far exceeds the energy used to continue using the old ones.
There is no defending this insane scheme unless you want to get into partisan politics and go for the symbolism of it.
Having said that, I am not saying that people should not repair stuff - people can do what they want. I was just pointing to the benefits of buying new things, which has somehow become a contentious issue nowadays. Hence, the downvotes...
(I think scarce vs. abundant resources is too big a topic for a HN comment thread; suffice to say that I disagree, especially with the notion that we "make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else.")
Citation needed/please explain.
In a small-scale economy, say where every village has a blacksmith, a tinker, a tailor, etc. the net effect might be positive, because it allows many people to spend time to become good at expressing their creativity.