I was thinking of writing this as something other than a daylog, perhaps under the title "This is a Heck of a way to run a Recession". But, as of yet, I don't have any complete thoughts on the matter, so this if merely my random observations.
I have volunteered for a long time at Free Geek, and recently, since I am mostly done with graduate school, I have been spending more time there. This Saturday, I showed up bright and early for what I knew was going to be a busy day. December is Free Geek's busiest month, as people clear away old electronics in anticipation of holiday purchases, and towards the end of the tax year. So December is always busy, but this Saturday was also the day of a clean-up event, where people would drop items off-site, which were then driven to Free Geek in our truck, over and over. So I spent all of my unloading trucks of computers, monitors, printers, and everything else. I actually enjoy doing this, there is a type of total concentration in the act, because it is fairly unambiguous and simple, while still being diverse enough to stop from getting boring. Moving stuff around is one of the great loves of my life.
But, other than that, I have to think about what it means that so much stuff is coming in. As I said several times throughout the day "this is a heckuva way to run a recession". Although the current financial crisis is billed as the worst since The Great Depression, I find it hard to compare them, because the physical state of our economy is so much different now. In recent years at Free Geek, it seems people are a little more savvy to the value of their old computers, but Saturday was a return to old form, with people telling me, with total good nature, that their Packard-Bell pentium computer works well, besides the CD Drive needs to be jiggled a little bit sometimes. Which makes me think that many people, including probably many people making decisions about economic policy, might be a bit out of touch with what is really going on in the United States. Apparently, recession or not, people are still willing to give away 422 computers and 293 monitors in a day, and to pay for the privilege of doing so.
This is just some observations and ruminations. I don't think that just because a computer recycling center in Portland, Oregon has lots of computers lying around, Lawrence Summers needs to totally change his game plan. But I do think that it is worth noting that even in the middle of a recession, the material productivity of the United States is still very high.