But wouldn't you prefer to buy a T.V. which can be returned and updated or reused as opposed to being broken up at a dump leaving toxins to leach into the soil. I think that the plasma T.V. is particularly toxic.

I am reminded of the Original Tahitians and their encounter with Europeans. Until they had the misfortune of meeting sailors and missionaries, they were a merry, generous, happy, loving and healthy people. Then the missionaries arrived, determined to make them work, accumulate stuff, observe private property rights and generally feel guilty about things. And of course they gave them guns and diseases. "They knew that Europeans were cleverer than them, but they did not envy their skill. So far as they could see, it only made life needlessly complicted. One of them put it neatly when dining on a ship he was told that the Tahitians should work harder. "What for?" he replied "You people need so much. Just to eat you need knives and forks, plates, chairs and tables. It costs work to make these things and eternally wash them. But we eat w/o them so we save work" In the end Tahitians were wiped out not only by disease of the body but also by the destruction of the communal way of life, injecting envy backed up with guns in a once peaceful society.

I think consumerism is a cultural phenomenon encouraged by the Western reverence for private property. Could we turn it around so that our baubles will nourish or enrich someone else when we are done with them. Like the parrot which takes a few bites out of a grape and then drops it on the forest floor.