Once upon a time, there was a man named Jeremy. Jeremy was a frugal person, always looking for ways to save money. But his frugality reached new heights when he decided to take the concept of "LBYM" (Living Below Your Means) to a whole new level.

I should add that, whilst most of the humour absurd in character - when the story reached old CD as plates and expired lightbulbs as cups - much of everything else Jeremy was doing in the tale was perfectly reasonable. Repairing items yourself, avoiding the over-purchasing of unnecessary things, using basic effective ingredients such as baking soda or vinegar, are all completely sensible.

I am occasionally dismayed by how much over-production capitalism produces. Last week I had to fill out a printed form for a private business (in this case, a bank) and since I almost never fill printed forms I didn't even have a pen. Fine, I was in the city so I thought it would be trivial to purchase one, and I checked once place and they only sold them in batches of 10 wrapped in plastic; I declined, not wanting to throw the others out, and tried another store, then a third, and instead trying a fourth I went to a cafe and borrowed the waiter's pen.

We are trained to admire how competition increases efficiency. For example, 243 brands of milk compete for a spot in a supermarket, 74 survive their first ten years in business, and 15 reach the shelves, and the consumer having a confusing choice of 15 copies of the same product. But through that extra replication, lower scalability, something in the order of 243 times more marketing expense, the huge time wasting from the non-shared research and non-shared manufacturing infrastructure, the system as a whole isn't anywhere near efficient as it is made out to be.

- Manlobbi