Second Hand Transfer and the Exhaustion of Value. Part I

September 6th, 2007 Posted in Analysis, Concepts, Second Hand

Life requires the collection and transformation of materials in our environment to usable forms that we consume. The newly produced (made-up or found or defined) is full-of-use. It falls into the hand of an initial consumer who begins the process of using it up. The full tube of toothpaste is squeezed until it is empty, the hamburger is eaten, the shirt is worn until it reaches a socially unacceptable state. Each object goes from use-full to use-less unless it is trashed before its time with usefulness remaining.

The maker can take all the forms it implies including the user producing the good for himself. It can be a private process from start to finish. A hiker in the woods finds a long, straight and sturdy stick on the forest floor that he retrieves and uses as a walking cane. The initial consumer can himself use up the value within the object

But frequently he does not complete the using up and he gives up the only partially exhausted good. Maybe he has died or maybe he has outgrown his initial need or desire. Maybe he is willing to rent it out or trade for another object or cash. Maybe he has lost it or had it stolen from him, or maybe he has lent it out. It could be a gift or maybe it is seized by a creditor or a tax collector or an invading army. There is a moment when he gives it up and the second hand process can begin.

Hand is a person of some competence. Handy. A sailor called on deck for an emergency. A farmer’s assistant. Hand implies a capacity for control as in having a situation in hand. A good earns the sobriquet “second hand” when it passes from its first user to its second and to any subsequent.

The second hand is mainly economics but I find it has a metaphorical quality that goes beyond. People talk about a second hand life, about being used, feeling exhausted, used up.

My first impulse was to travel the world, to visit in detail the varied corners where traders and consumers of each commodity elaborate markets. Instead I substituted journalists’ reports. Then I wanted to track down every non-commercial setting where the second hand metaphor either has been or could be used.

Second hand is personal. It started for me way back Clouded images: the welcoming mystery within the neat complexity of a cousin’s junkyard. My father’s constant complaint about his first car that worked in the used car lot but collapsed and expired before he could get it home. And in the depression years my hope of possessing a book depending on either a cheap find in our neighborhood used book store or a free find in the jumble of old books in dusty cartons in my aunt’s dank, dark and scary basement.

The markets for used goods are popular subjects for feature journalists. The hidden drama is ever fresh. The story of the used good, jaded and worn like the classical rogue or the fallen woman, finally salvaged and returned to respectability. Or the story of the pristine and rare good found amid the rubble of an antiques sale. The detailed recounting of the journey of the simplest item from one hand to another can be fascinating in itself. I recall a particularly enthralling story datelined Kabul in Afghanistan in the time, a few decades back, when that country had enough peace and security to allow tourists to roam. Western style men’s jackets were the fashion, but the lack of local industry and a shortage of ready cash limited the demand to cheap imported discards from Europe and America. Still the careful shopper could find enough high quality merchandise that even sojourners from the West, including the American ambassador, were among the browsers at the public market. (In my files I find this story under author James P. Sterba, titled “Afghanistan’s Market for Used U.S. Clothing Shrinks” from the Saturday, July 15, 1972 issue of the New York Times.)

Tracking back through the chain of traders and middlemen the reporter found large firms, part of a viable and ongoing industry, that gathered the discarded clothes people in industrial societies donated to churches and other neighborhood groups. These rags, as in the rag trade, were then sorted and graded and baled into massed accumulations for sale to jobbers and agents representing markets around the world. Someone throws an item away and several thousand miles later a second person picks it up. An almost invisible link, and a useful good continues in service in spite of being trashed. This type of tale, with expected variations for differences in product and situation, is repeated for the great variety of goods made and recognized.

I started collecting these feature articles, but I also found other descriptions of human activity that were not considered part of the second hand experience but seemed to share in the form. Most startling was a psychiatric study of parents who fed a disfavored young son leftover foods while treating themselves to the freshly cooked. It directly characterized the relationship as emotionally distant and neglectful and even vindictive, something like that of Cinderella and her stepmother. Sad and painful, but notice that the leftovers of a meal newly prepared for the parents are later presented to the son. There is a transfer of the remaining value of a good to a second hand. (I got this story from Jules Henry, but I can’t give an exact citation.)

Another example: among old-time Japanese peasant families without piped hot water for winter baths, the wooden tub of heated water was the preferred way to clean up. The problem: a one-person tub, a limited amount of hot water, and several family members waiting. How to share? The water is pushed to a very hot level and a traditional line formed. The men in first since they had the highest status and were presumed best able to withstand the heat, followed by the women and then the children. Note the transfer of available value from one user to another.

I became aware that the class of second hand goods is larger than commercial sales alone and I decided to construct a general model of this social experience that would reflect the underlying unity of the set.

There is a user queue built over time through which the good passes until it is exhausted or until it is trashed. Simple enough. Good produced, good consumed. End of story.

A few additional notes of interest to the sociologist.

One: Goods can fall into limbo when they drop outside the control of a user and into an intermediate marketing process instead of immediately into the hand of the next user. They become commodities, trade goods, only seen as objects for exchange. Direct transfer from user to user is not always possible. There is no guarantee that the item offered by one will at that exact moment be needed or wanted by the other. An agent, the dealer, smooths over this embarrassment by providing a continuous market. He is prepared to buy or sell his specialty item at any time, holding for the anticipated buyer or searching for more items to meet current demand. He profits by discounting both in-coming and out-going traffic. The commodity state is rational, objective, purely monetary and subject to precise accounting. The goods have a public life, are available for inspection and evaluation, are discussed and advertised, handled, poked and prodded. This is when the horse gets its dental check-up.

Two: Dealers facilitate the exchange of used goods but make the process more complex and convoluted. The two classes of goods, new and used, are usually kept separate—either through distinguishable dealers and shops or through separate sections within the same firm. The new car dealer has a designer organized showroom for the new and a back-lot for the used. But even though separate these exchange systems are interrelated—the supply of the new having some effect down-stream on the availability of the used and the vibrancy, quality and quantity of the used, in turn, sets a limit on the demand for the new.

Three: The public markets for used goods inch out into banking. Pawn shops function as poor people’s banks—accepting an extended range of used goods (of no consequence in regular banks) as collateral for small loans. The good is held in limbo until the debt is paid. Banks lend on larger items that they permit to remain in use so long as the debt schedule is met. Not unexpectedly there also is some penetration of second hand markets by criminal activity. The thing stolen is the remaining use value. The thief and the fence raise a screen of legitimacy and the object reenters the commodity market as just another second hand good. Ultimately all this activity is in the service of keeping useful goods dedicated to their purpose.

Four: It is only in the consumer’s hand that the object receives maximum attention as a value in itself and for what it can do. It becomes private, outside public attention. It is directly subject to the whim and will of its possessor. The useful good experience is sentimental, personal, based on unique identity. There might be some public limits on the use of some items. A license from or a registration with a state authority. A legal rule about care of living things. For historic shrines and fetishes and artifacts and such objects with communal significance there is a moral responsibility for protection and maintenance. And as in the case of houses and buildings there might be limits on design alterations or limits to use as in zoning laws. But ideally the possessor has carte blanche. He is under no outside limit greater than the ambient cultural rules that govern the responsible person.

Five: The confusion of the two modes, public-commodity with private-use, leads to distinctive dislocations. Carryover of the business attitude to the intimate life is a form of alienation, non-recognition and a degrading of personal relationships that can become brittle and dry. Carryover of the emotionality of the personal life to business is a form of inefficiency and introduces what is thought to be irrationality into accounting and money decisions. Sensible control of investment and business practice is endangered.

About a century ago this distinction of the public and the private was thought of as two separate realms called society and community and was identified as a fundamental distinction of the modern world. We are more acclimated to it now and not as troubled by the difference.

Six: There is another intermediate limbo where the user stops using a good which retains active capacity and instead of divesting places it in storage. Is the object on call or is it in reserve or is it wasting and withering away? In measuring waste the user’s stored goods require their own treatment. Sometimes uncounted use value remains locked away like a princess (or prince) sequestered in her lonely tower.

Seven: The list of users is a chronological queue that frequently will have an identifiable social pattern–basically a hierarchal form reflecting the established social class order. Look for an incline with the good seeming to slide down from the wealthy to the poor. Internationally the incline goes from the economically and technologically advanced countries to the underdeveloped, especially visible in the used clothes world but also in used vehicles (air, land, and sea), armaments, farm tools, and so on.

In an egalitarian society the incline dips toward flat. The taking of later position in the queue is resisted. It is either use up for yourself or waste. The transfer off-shore to less developed places perhaps becomes a replacement. The search for the cheap worker is paralleled by a search for the cheap consumer.

Eight: Other slipways: the incline of the dead to the living where the residual goods of the deceased are redistributed according the laws and customs of inheritance among survivors. This is usually a family and kinship net. Another incline is from older to younger. There is a transfer of outgrown clothes and toys especially within the rapidly growing early years of infancy and childhood. Also a transfer of surplus furniture and kitchen utensils and such to newly established households and there is some transfer of surplus tools as inclines from teachers to students or from skilled workers to trainees or from craftsmen to apprentices as part of the socialization or social training process.

Nine: There is a self-conscious ideological movement with fluctuating popularity but with a continuing core of adepts who are found within green politics, within ecological movements, return to the land, communalists. It is sometimes associated with occult and mystical concerns. Look for people on the fringe–refusenicks, opt-outs, those with an indifference to money and a commitment to stewardship. Using up would be natural for these types.

Contrariwise there is a free-swinging devil-may-care type, lively and energetic, busy with commitments and projects, the prodigal, youthful, fun loving: All tending toward less concern with issues of waste and conservation. They have a feeling of abundance, riding the crest of the wave. Throwing one’s hat in the air is this type’s ordinary gesture. “Let ‘er rip” is the battle cry. They avoid the cramped, tight, careful, rigid. Later for adult responsibility and conservation.

Ten: The attempt to impose a regime of social ecology, to insist on strict maintenance and careful use can take an authoritarian form. The self-righteous call for the correct path for all can be onerous, debilitating and depressing for the unconvinced and even for those who know better. The response to the ecological crisis of global warming requires mass education and the establishment of a new consensus. If we were all convinced, there would be a huge saving of energy and material and a vastly reduced waste pile.

Eleven: The majority of transfers take a linear shape. The good goes one way and rarely repeats. It is pass-along and no return. There are some circular shapes visible as in the famous American Indian circle for smoking the peace pipe. Here the smoking pipe is sucked and passed on around the circle and returned to the first smoker to continue around again. Each person in the circle is a user in turn. And around she goes. Marijuana can be smoked this way. It is a favored form among imbibers of spirits on shadowy street corners.

Certain issues and anomalies still to be considered. To be continued.