They have already killed the American fresh-cut flowers industry, and they produce more and more good and cheap wines. Local (I live in Oregon) fruit and berries growers also can't compete on price.
All the lamb we get here is from NZ. Significant chunk of the farmed fish industry is moving from Norway and Canada to the South america et al.
When the government revenues fall even more, there won't be money to subsidize the agriculture anymore.
The reason is a huge size and population of these countries.
Unlike the US with the federal "minimum wage" that makes the life approximately the same expensive (on a big scale, certainly), these countries can do it forever.
I have read an article about China that was telling how Shanghai and the coast are more expensive than some places deep inside the country, and how they start competing on cost with more established areas wooing Western and intraChinese investors.
A lot of crap happens with people because they don't work out their issues and don't follow their purpose.
To describe it in a simple way, imagine how a patient with a leading archetype of "Victim" comes to a doctor whose main archetype is "Guilt". The probability of something going wrong is much higher when their hidden desires contact. And this is just one example.
Another thing is finding and following your purpose. If you do it, everything helps you; otherwise some crap might happen in order for you to stop doing what your subconscious does not want you to do.
In my opinion, certain professions (such as doctors, pilots et al) should put a requirement of not only being able to read a certain amount of books and pass certain exams, but also be a different person who is psychologically healthy and does not have a hidden subconscious agenda.
This is probably true about all the population. At the same time, certain forces whithin the society REALLY do not want it to happen. F.e., Vultures at Law promote the "Righteous victim fights back (while enriching lawyers)" archetype, leftists inflict Guilt on everyone (think Duncan McLeod), and the government (not as republicans/democrats/green, but as a system) wants everyone to be stupid and controllable.
Even though some might want to outsorce psychologies by the means of a tele- or videophone, I still believe that it will be impossible to do so because of human contact that won't be there.
And the US will need a lot of these since people are really screwd up (don't erceive it as a flamebait, just look here: http://www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaLanguage.htm l ).
you'll need to work on your personality though.
Sales is also something that will stay to some extent, even though it is probably not for geeks.
I'd consider your rant to be a typical one for clueless anticorporate types.
HMO is a desperate (and failing) attempt to control skyrocketing medical costs. Traditional system includes the insurance company and doctors as separate entities with the doctor making any decisions they want and insurance just footing the bill.
Unfortunately, newer expensive treatments ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=8283 832 ) and general health degradation in the US caused insurance to experience losses.
So, they decided to hire their own doctors and put them through the cost-control through the approval of procedures.
Eventually many other non-HMO companies followed suit. They now need to approve certain medical procedures beforehand, otherwise the doctor is not getting reimbursed.
Even despite all of this crap, the costs for the customers (i.e., these who pay premiums for the healthcare) continue growing. Major cause: expensive drugs and more people requiring them permanently.
To the contrary to the popular belief, lawsuits are not he culprit of the major cost rise at the medical insurance level, but they greatly affect doctors themselves and their malpractice insurance causing many doctors to drop out of practice in certain litigious areas.
P.S. I used to contract at a small healthplan company.
No Tantra here, use Dao! ;-) (more in the post)
on
The Science of Love
·
· Score: 1
Somehow I feel that Daoist techniques are cleaner and closer to my perception of the world.
As for the sex itself, you might find a used book "Sexual secrets. The Alchemy of Extasy" by Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger.
Benefits - in short - more energy. Every time you ejaculate, you lose some significant amount of energy. Ability to split orgasm and ejaculation allows you to save this energy, have a rock-solid erection for pretty much unlimited amount of time and even have multiple orgasms (me personally haven't achieved the multiples yet). This will become the foundation for the next step - orgasm of the entire body and exchanging the energy with the female. Chinese Daoists were even using such a sex as a medicine.
Hope it helps.
P.S. If you go Mantak Chia's route, you'll need to open the Microcosmic Orbit, it will help a lot (I'd start doing it simultaneously with practicing the preparation sexual exercises). The description is in the book called "Awakening healing energy through the Tao".
P.P.S. I can't help it, but if one can master these techniques, they will consider whatever they had beore to be not better than a goatse.cx;-)))))
Unless you read the book, you won't understand. The connotation for "game" Eric Berne uses is a bit different.
And, believe me, everyone who plays these "games" does not think he plays games; it is all-encompassing occupation made with a full seriousness, just like you describe it;-).
"Spiritual" side of love is IMHO based on "Games people play".
It basically means that you are recognizing that the other can become your "playmate" since you both play the same game at the compatible roles.
In order to make this overly dry explanation real, think about a sadist finding a masochist or a "girl" finding a "father" (traditional model of the patriarchal society), alchogolic finds a woman that is willing to fight with him over his addiction et al.
You can find this whole model with a lot of examples in Eric Burne's books (notably "Games people play").
These scientists are friggin' idiots!
on
The Science of Love
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They certainly aren't idiots themselves, but they are digging in a wrong direction.
Try not to perceive it as a flamebait, but the whole point of many branches of Western applied science is to allow idiots to stay idiots and not change themselves.
For example, eat Viagra each time before sex instead of learning Daoist or Tantric techniques and getting a rock-solid erection. Or eat Prozac instead of using psychology in order to get out of depression by eliminating its root causes.
Another example - medicines that allow someone who have never exercised and ate crap at McDonalds to live till their retirement age.
Thus, the entire civilization becomes one of degenerates (or, even better word, CONSUMERS. I consider this word an insult) on prescription drugs because there is only a certain small percentage of people who will do something that is not required for survival. Then longer I look at this world, then more I get disappointed in the effectiveness of a certain socialized institutions. This makes me wish the world be more succeptible towards libertarian ideas that are based on self-responsibility for your being.
And now the right direction;-).
Everything said above brings us to one word that describes the place that is the key: Psyche.
Psyche is the part of us that manages the levels of hormones, chemicals et al, and in most cases it is the level where the problems should be attacked.
Here is the explanation why geeks don't get women. This is a "physical"/"lustful" side of love.
(when reading it, think of Kramer versus George Costanza as the example of high/low rank, and of Klingons versus Vulcans as the example of high/low primativeness)
There is another one - "spiritual"/"psychological" that can be understood upon reading "Games people play" by Eric Bern.
As one can understand, all of this "chemical crap" that we eat in a form of medicine and supplements is just a way of bypassing the psyche and emulating its work. Smarter readers will understand that modern Western medicine often heroically fights with the shit that our own subconscious brought us into (think of a very typical situation with people who nobody needs, and who get sick in order to get attention of their relatives, professionals from medical institutions or good samaritans. Also read this ). And the general population pays through the socialized healthcare. And everyone is happy since everything is a good business for certain groups whithin the society. At the same time majority is swayed by the false ideals of humanism et al.
Sorry for being that vicious and arrogant, but I'm really tired of idiots with bright eyes cheering yet another expensive achievement of the pharmacology that allows somebody to do even less real work for themselves gobbling pills instead.
And, finally, here is the way to change your bad luck and become what you can become: link
One does not need to become religious, but the "correctional" part of mysticism might help one to get both the body and mind healthy and live much more fulfilled life that will sure have some love in it;-).
Most people can't separate three distinct parts of religion (that is also called spirituality in modern speak) from each other. These parts are beliefs, morals and mysticism. There can be myriad systems of beliefs and morals, but most of the mystical systems have a lot in common. And "properly" can be related to the mysticism, but only barely. Most of the properness stuff is usually related to the beliefs or morals.
Beliefs are "Jesus is Lord", "No God but Allah", "Reincarnation exists/does not exist" or even "Communism is our future", "Human rights are mandatory" and "Corporations are evil". Ja, ja, communism as well as modern leftists' views are both religions that only pretend to be spiritual since they are not based on the mysticism. The essence of beliefs is "The world is the way I think it is, and it is supposed to be the way I want to see it".
Morals are based on beliefs, and describe one's interactions with the world in the form of "In this situation I should behave like that", "I need to strive for this" and "This is acceptable, that is not".
Mysticism is the way of getting to know your true self and transforming your body and mind. It is based on one fundamental axiom that states "Everything that happens with you happens because you need it on one level or another". This cause brings the effect "If you want to change your life and the world, change yourself". I can talk about mechanism of this process in details, but the condensed version will state that you have a lot of different motivations inside you, and they are competing for the resources of your mind and shaping your life according to their often simplistic desires. So, Guilt will form events where you either feel guilty or manifest it some other way; Judgement will make you lock the horns with others, demand proof or even send you on the barricades or Crusade; Victim or Abuser will make you play these roles et al.
Mystic gradually learns to recognize and shut off these "incorrect" motivations thus freeing the resources of his/her mind and redirecting the energy into further self-improvement and creative work. He untangles and unwinds the true source of his beliefs and morals in order to forge and shape the true foundation that will stay with him for the length of his life. And it is sometimes not up to him to decide what will become the part of it. This process will also move him beyond many of his beliefs and restrictions or looseness of some of his initial morals. At some point he will be ready for the next stage that can be called spiritual development versus the psychotherapy of the first stage.
That process also resolves most bottlenecks within you and eliminates situations where you "hang", i.e. you learn to operate even in uncomfortable situations where you have no control at all. I know how hard it can be to achieve, and how ugly can certain situations get, but the result is IMHO worth it. Also go away pain of the past and most insecurities. They certainly still exist in reduced form, but they no longer affect your decision making process.
The next stage of mysticism really starts only after your intention is clear, your motivation is proper and strong enough, your soul and spirit receive enough of your energy and you know how to stay yourself even while inside a stampeding crowd. I know that in the modern world "only after" does not always happen this way, and it often spawns "immature enchanters", "closet warlocks" and "psycho therapists;-)" who play their games by using magical methods to compensate for their weaknesses (pick-upers who use NLP methods for seduction make one good example of that).
This second stage allows you to get or strengthen all kind of gifts and achieve enlightenment.
Now returning to the Open Source. One can open beliefs and morals (and they are usually open), but with mysticism you can't do that. Information needs to be given gradually, by stages, and only when a student is ready for it. Otherwise
After Americans put men on the Moon, Brezhnev calls for the cosmonauts and tells them: - In order to win the space race, you will land on the Sun! - But we'll burn there, Leonid Il'ich! - Don't worry, the Communist Party's Central Commettee is not stupid! You'll fly there in the night!;-)
P.S. Anyone can translate the anecdote about Challenger and "zalpy saljuta"?
"are pissing away a highly trained workforce for short term gains and making a present of high technology to India which is only too happy to accept it since the technological exchange will eventually allow her to dispense with the Americans and compete with them" because greedy little American lawyers sue the shit out of companies whose stock dropped when the quarter earnings were lower then what greedy little American "industry analysts" forecasted.
The goods that are getting cheaper are usually not whatever people buy every day. There are certainly exceptions, but still most of expenses are incurred on living/food/gas et al whether consumer goods made in a different country are not bought that often.
Different languages and even some of the dialects have different tones encoded in them. And these tones from your mother tongue are often preserved when you speak non-native language.
For example, whatever is normal for a male Japanese speaker might be interpreted as rude and offensive by the system that is targeted at Americans.
Speakers of the tonal language such as Chinese and Vietnamese will be a total nightmare for this automatic system.
Again, 3K Toyota was competing with 3.5K Chevy mostly on the merit, especially build quality.
7K$ Indian programmers do not leave a chance to the 50K$ American ones.
As for the savings in the channel, it mostly affects cheaper goods. AFAIK, significant percentage of what we pay in the supermarket is marked up at the post-production stage.
Shipping and handling, retail spaces, credit card processiong - all of it diminishes the role of savings in the manufacturing.
Also, I think that certain things MUST be more expensive. Look at consumer electronics that is a field where many people throw away perfectly working equipment because of the trendy fads (the worst offenders here are cell phones). Most of the replacement equipment does not give much advantage in functional department or quality.
Making it more expensive will lead to less natural resources wasted, less stuff at the landfills, less pollution et al.
Slashdot Mirror
Think South America and Australia/New Zealand.
They have already killed the American fresh-cut flowers industry, and they produce more and more good and cheap wines. Local (I live in Oregon) fruit and berries growers also can't compete on price.
All the lamb we get here is from NZ. Significant chunk of the farmed fish industry is moving from Norway and Canada to the South america et al.
When the government revenues fall even more, there won't be money to subsidize the agriculture anymore.
... is hire a greedy lawyer and sue the Internet on behalf of all hipohondriacs for damages.
It will bring the justice and punish the evil corporate offenders.
The reason is a huge size and population of these countries.
Unlike the US with the federal "minimum wage" that makes the life approximately the same expensive (on a big scale, certainly), these countries can do it forever.
I have read an article about China that was telling how Shanghai and the coast are more expensive than some places deep inside the country, and how they start competing on cost with more established areas wooing Western and intraChinese investors.
Exchange rates are.
India and China have artificially lowered exchange rate. Thus everything they produce is more competitive outside of their economy.
In 70s (IIRC) the doctor himself was getting about 70% of all medical expenses, now it is just 15%.
Expensive drugs, a lot of expensive equipment, lawyers et al consume a very high share of the total medical expenses.
A lot of crap happens with people because they don't work out their issues and don't follow their purpose.
To describe it in a simple way, imagine how a patient with a leading archetype of "Victim" comes to a doctor whose main archetype is "Guilt". The probability of something going wrong is much higher when their hidden desires contact. And this is just one example.
Another thing is finding and following your purpose. If you do it, everything helps you; otherwise some crap might happen in order for you to stop doing what your subconscious does not want you to do.
In my opinion, certain professions (such as doctors, pilots et al) should put a requirement of not only being able to read a certain amount of books and pass certain exams, but also be a different person who is psychologically healthy and does not have a hidden subconscious agenda.
This is probably true about all the population. At the same time, certain forces whithin the society REALLY do not want it to happen. F.e., Vultures at Law promote the "Righteous victim fights back (while enriching lawyers)" archetype, leftists inflict Guilt on everyone (think Duncan McLeod), and the government (not as republicans/democrats/green, but as a system) wants everyone to be stupid and controllable.
Even though some might want to outsorce psychologies by the means of a tele- or videophone, I still believe that it will be impossible to do so because of human contact that won't be there.
m l ).
And the US will need a lot of these since people are really screwd up (don't erceive it as a flamebait, just look here: http://www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaLanguage.ht
you'll need to work on your personality though.
Sales is also something that will stay to some extent, even though it is probably not for geeks.
Sage Report
Trial Lawyers, Inc
Doctors are paid more, but the others are paid more too. This is more expensive country in general.
As for the outcomes, one needs to blame not doctors, but the general population that prefer to gulp pills instead of getting healed.
I'd consider your rant to be a typical one for clueless anticorporate types.
3 832 ) and general health degradation in the US caused insurance to experience losses.
HMO is a desperate (and failing) attempt to control skyrocketing medical costs. Traditional system includes the insurance company and doctors as separate entities with the doctor making any decisions they want and insurance just footing the bill.
Unfortunately, newer expensive treatments ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=828
So, they decided to hire their own doctors and put them through the cost-control through the approval of procedures.
Eventually many other non-HMO companies followed suit. They now need to approve certain medical procedures beforehand, otherwise the doctor is not getting reimbursed.
Even despite all of this crap, the costs for the customers (i.e., these who pay premiums for the healthcare) continue growing. Major cause: expensive drugs and more people requiring them permanently.
To the contrary to the popular belief, lawsuits are not he culprit of the major cost rise at the medical insurance level, but they greatly affect doctors themselves and their malpractice insurance causing many doctors to drop out of practice in certain litigious areas.
P.S. I used to contract at a small healthplan company.
Somehow I feel that Daoist techniques are cleaner and closer to my perception of the world.
;-)))))
Here you'll find the literature
As for the sex itself, you might find a used book "Sexual secrets. The Alchemy of Extasy" by Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger.
Benefits - in short - more energy. Every time you ejaculate, you lose some significant amount of energy. Ability to split orgasm and ejaculation allows you to save this energy, have a rock-solid erection for pretty much unlimited amount of time and even have multiple orgasms (me personally haven't achieved the multiples yet). This will become the foundation for the next step - orgasm of the entire body and exchanging the energy with the female. Chinese Daoists were even using such a sex as a medicine.
Hope it helps.
P.S. If you go Mantak Chia's route, you'll need to open the Microcosmic Orbit, it will help a lot (I'd start doing it simultaneously with practicing the preparation sexual exercises). The description is in the book called "Awakening healing energy through the Tao".
P.P.S. I can't help it, but if one can master these techniques, they will consider whatever they had beore to be not better than a goatse.cx
>(Godzilla 2000 for instance, one of if not the most boring of the Godzilla films)
;-).
Godzilla XP has improved reliability, new intuitive interface, new multimedia capabilities and better Internet security compared with Godzilla 2000.
It comes in several versions - Home Edition, Professional, Server
Unless you read the book, you won't understand. The connotation for "game" Eric Berne uses is a bit different.
;-).
And, believe me, everyone who plays these "games" does not think he plays games; it is all-encompassing occupation made with a full seriousness, just like you describe it
"Spiritual" side of love is IMHO based on "Games people play".
It basically means that you are recognizing that the other can become your "playmate" since you both play the same game at the compatible roles.
In order to make this overly dry explanation real, think about a sadist finding a masochist or a "girl" finding a "father" (traditional model of the patriarchal society), alchogolic finds a woman that is willing to fight with him over his addiction et al.
You can find this whole model with a lot of examples in Eric Burne's books (notably "Games people play").
They certainly aren't idiots themselves, but they are digging in a wrong direction.
;-).
;-).
Try not to perceive it as a flamebait, but the whole point of many branches of Western applied science is to allow idiots to stay idiots and not change themselves.
For example, eat Viagra each time before sex instead of learning Daoist or Tantric techniques and getting a rock-solid erection. Or eat Prozac instead of using psychology in order to get out of depression by eliminating its root causes.
Another example - medicines that allow someone who have never exercised and ate crap at McDonalds to live till their retirement age.
Thus, the entire civilization becomes one of degenerates (or, even better word, CONSUMERS. I consider this word an insult) on prescription drugs because there is only a certain small percentage of people who will do something that is not required for survival. Then longer I look at this world, then more I get disappointed in the effectiveness of a certain socialized institutions. This makes me wish the world be more succeptible towards libertarian ideas that are based on self-responsibility for your being.
And now the right direction
Everything said above brings us to one word that describes the place that is the key: Psyche.
Psyche is the part of us that manages the levels of hormones, chemicals et al, and in most cases it is the level where the problems should be attacked.
Here is the explanation why geeks don't get women. This is a "physical"/"lustful" side of love.
(when reading it, think of Kramer versus George Costanza as the example of high/low rank, and of Klingons versus Vulcans as the example of high/low primativeness)
There is another one - "spiritual"/"psychological" that can be understood upon reading "Games people play" by Eric Bern.
As one can understand, all of this "chemical crap" that we eat in a form of medicine and supplements is just a way of bypassing the psyche and emulating its work. Smarter readers will understand that modern Western medicine often heroically fights with the shit that our own subconscious brought us into (think of a very typical situation with people who nobody needs, and who get sick in order to get attention of their relatives, professionals from medical institutions or good samaritans. Also read this ). And the general population pays through the socialized healthcare. And everyone is happy since everything is a good business for certain groups whithin the society. At the same time majority is swayed by the false ideals of humanism et al.
Sorry for being that vicious and arrogant, but I'm really tired of idiots with bright eyes cheering yet another expensive achievement of the pharmacology that allows somebody to do even less real work for themselves gobbling pills instead.
And, finally, here is the way to change your bad luck and become what you can become: link
One does not need to become religious, but the "correctional" part of mysticism might help one to get both the body and mind healthy and live much more fulfilled life that will sure have some love in it
A bit of lecturing first.
;-)" who play their games by using magical methods to compensate for their weaknesses (pick-upers who use NLP methods for seduction make one good example of that).
Most people can't separate three distinct parts of religion (that is also called spirituality in modern speak) from each other. These parts are beliefs, morals and mysticism. There can be myriad systems of beliefs and morals, but most of the mystical systems have a lot in common. And "properly" can be related to the mysticism, but only barely. Most of the properness stuff is usually related to the beliefs or morals.
Beliefs are "Jesus is Lord", "No God but Allah", "Reincarnation exists/does not exist" or even "Communism is our future", "Human rights are mandatory" and "Corporations are evil". Ja, ja, communism as well as modern leftists' views are both religions that only pretend to be spiritual since they are not based on the mysticism. The essence of beliefs is "The world is the way I think it is, and it is supposed to be the way I want to see it".
Morals are based on beliefs, and describe one's interactions with the world in the form of "In this situation I should behave like that", "I need to strive for this" and "This is acceptable, that is not".
Mysticism is the way of getting to know your true self and transforming your body and mind. It is based on one fundamental axiom that states "Everything that happens with you happens because you need it on one level or another". This cause brings the effect "If you want to change your life and the world, change yourself". I can talk about mechanism of this process in details, but the condensed version will state that you have a lot of different motivations inside you, and they are competing for the resources of your mind and shaping your life according to their often simplistic desires. So, Guilt will form events where you either feel guilty or manifest it some other way; Judgement will make you lock the horns with others, demand proof or even send you on the barricades or Crusade; Victim or Abuser will make you play these roles et al.
Mystic gradually learns to recognize and shut off these "incorrect" motivations thus freeing the resources of his/her mind and redirecting the energy into further self-improvement and creative work. He untangles and unwinds the true source of his beliefs and morals in order to forge and shape the true foundation that will stay with him for the length of his life. And it is sometimes not up to him to decide what will become the part of it. This process will also move him beyond many of his beliefs and restrictions or looseness of some of his initial morals. At some point he will be ready for the next stage that can be called spiritual development versus the psychotherapy of the first stage.
That process also resolves most bottlenecks within you and eliminates situations where you "hang", i.e. you learn to operate even in uncomfortable situations where you have no control at all. I know how hard it can be to achieve, and how ugly can certain situations get, but the result is IMHO worth it. Also go away pain of the past and most insecurities. They certainly still exist in reduced form, but they no longer affect your decision making process.
The next stage of mysticism really starts only after your intention is clear, your motivation is proper and strong enough, your soul and spirit receive enough of your energy and you know how to stay yourself even while inside a stampeding crowd. I know that in the modern world "only after" does not always happen this way, and it often spawns "immature enchanters", "closet warlocks" and "psycho therapists
This second stage allows you to get or strengthen all kind of gifts and achieve enlightenment.
Now returning to the Open Source.
One can open beliefs and morals (and they are usually open), but with mysticism you can't do that. Information needs to be given gradually, by stages, and only when a student is ready for it. Otherwise
Link
Challenger letel po orbite, soprovozhdaemyj zalpami saljuta. ;-).
Cherez 75 sekund Challenger upal. Saljut prodolzhal letet' po orbite
"Pomirat', tak s muzykoj" - the literal translation will be "If it is to die, then do it with a music".
After Americans put men on the Moon, Brezhnev calls for the cosmonauts and tells them: ;-)
- In order to win the space race, you will land on the Sun!
- But we'll burn there, Leonid Il'ich!
- Don't worry, the Communist Party's Central Commettee is not stupid! You'll fly there in the night!
P.S. Anyone can translate the anecdote about Challenger and "zalpy saljuta"?
The same industrial/stock analysts who change rating to "buy" as soon as the company announces layoffs.
This is a vicious cycle.
"are pissing away a highly trained workforce for short term gains and making a present of high technology to India which is only too happy to accept it since the technological exchange will eventually allow her to dispense with the Americans and compete with them" because greedy little American lawyers sue the shit out of companies whose stock dropped when the quarter earnings were lower then what greedy little American "industry analysts" forecasted.
S ecReg-P almiter/Handout/Articles/Elkind-Lerach-King-Dead.h tm
Read this:
http://www.wfu.edu/users/palmitar/Courses/
The goods that are getting cheaper are usually not whatever people buy every day. There are certainly exceptions, but still most of expenses are incurred on living/food/gas et al whether consumer goods made in a different country are not bought that often.
Different languages and even some of the dialects have different tones encoded in them. And these tones from your mother tongue are often preserved when you speak non-native language.
For example, whatever is normal for a male Japanese speaker might be interpreted as rude and offensive by the system that is targeted at Americans.
Speakers of the tonal language such as Chinese and Vietnamese will be a total nightmare for this automatic system.
Do I miss something here?
Again, 3K Toyota was competing with 3.5K Chevy mostly on the merit, especially build quality.
7K$ Indian programmers do not leave a chance to the 50K$ American ones.
As for the savings in the channel, it mostly affects cheaper goods. AFAIK, significant percentage of what we pay in the supermarket is marked up at the post-production stage.
Shipping and handling, retail spaces, credit card processiong - all of it diminishes the role of savings in the manufacturing.
Also, I think that certain things MUST be more expensive. Look at consumer electronics that is a field where many people throw away perfectly working equipment because of the trendy fads (the worst offenders here are cell phones). Most of the replacement equipment does not give much advantage in functional department or quality.
Making it more expensive will lead to less natural resources wasted, less stuff at the landfills, less pollution et al.