Behind every silver lining there's a dark cloud

Much has been said about cheap foreign products sold at Walmart and
the affect on local, small businesses and the communities they
support. An undiscussed but significant downside of cheap consumer
goods is that they disempower men (and women) by making it nonsensical
for them to make anything themselves beyond a paycheck.

When a man is not at work and is in the presence of his family, what
productive, meaningful activity can a man model for his children?
He can read, think/write, (house) paint and assemble stuff bought at
the store. The first two activities appear to be ignoring one's
family and the second two are unskilled to say the least. Some of us
are lucky enough to have been taught by men now dead how to 'fix' some
of the things that break around the house. But even then, the current
definition of repairing things is largely a matter of disconnecting
the broke item, throwing it out and then replacing it with a new one.

Here is another example. Gardening been trivialized as to be the
hobby of those who buy their food at a supermarket and have the luxury
of sufficient free time to putter around outside. So rather than
growing a garden, we are reduced to pointlessly chasing a lawnmower
around a lawn so that we can pointlessly chase it again the next
weekend.

Is learning outside of the classroom 'on our own' even recognized as
learning? Or is it learning only after we receive a certificate from
some self-proclaimed Institution of Higher Education? Who writes
poetry, paints pictures, sings, plays a musical instrument, declares
themselves as a photographer or proudly proclaims themselves to be an
amateur botanist or scientist?

Now suppose a person happens to lose their job. As I see it, they are
completely disconnected from any meaningful activity. Can they make
their children's clothing, grow their own food, cut their own wood,
make their own furniture. Or does modern living just make them seem
pathetic to themselves and their neighbors?