stores and WalMart still exist, because people who can't buy $150 hats and lack the skills and time to make them themselves still need to have warm heads. It is a lovely hat, too. If it was purple, I might even spend $150 to own one -- but then, I'm extraordinarily lucky to have that kind of disposable income. Most of my dearest family and friends only wish they had $150 free to do with what they want. It goes to feed their kids, to pay their bills, and maybe a little extra to treat the family to pizza or a movie or something. It's not necessarily right, but it's reality. I'd love to see more emphasis on crafts and useful skills like knitting and crochet in schools -- the more we as community members work together to build the infrastructure needed to support our artisans, the less our artisans will have to struggle to create (and live well) off of their art. We (as in society as a whole, particularly North Americans) as terrible consumers have created all of these problems, and are the reason why there are people that can't afford $150 hats. We have this perception (partially due to massive marketing machines) that we all need the biggest, the best, and LOTS of it. Big Box stores like Walmart exist because we enable them to, and it all just feeds this huge, vicious, inflation-prone, constantly-growing-economy driven cycle. FYI, a constantly growing economy is not sustainable folks, and