Anytime anyone suggests we need to decrease consumption people like you complain that it’s a plot by the rich to get us used to poverty.
we should eat less meat
The elites are trying to make the poor eat bugs
we need to drive less
The rich are taking away our freedom
we need to live in denser housing
The rich are trying to force you into a shoe box
You know what the rich really want?, consumption. They want you buying as much as possible because that’s the way we get growth and it also makes it so you have less savings and are more dependent on your job, and less likely to make demands or quit.
I agree we need massive wealth redistribution and consumption by the 1% is magnitudes more harmful then the rest. But the current american lifestyle of heating and cooling an entire house for 1-2 people in a sprawled out suburb where you have to drive everywhere and have meat with every meal is not sustainable either. We need to reprioritize what we value as a society, deemphasizing individuality and private ownership and moving towards community.
I agree, some family situations are shit and any post-capitalist society would have to provide the resources to leave those situations.
The idea that people SHOULD leave there parents home at 18 is consumptively motivated, the idea that people CAN leave there parents home at 18 is liberating
No, not anymore. We exist in a post-capitalist world. Capital used to be the output, whether that’s labour, or a trade, or a craft that’s what capital is. Now, we are the capital. Google is a search engine that made billions selling your private data to amazon, whose effect on the global economy has massively accelerated climate change. Google maps records your phone calls, they copy and scan everything from your phone. Every free online pdf converter, every image editor. Most of all computing and all of the resulting data is collected in the browser. Every app on your phone, generates data points it sells to Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta and all of big tech. The clearnet has shrunk drastically to only a handful of companies. They use this data to profile us, socially engineer us. Your thoughts and opinions are not your own, they are what you have been trained to believe. Advertisers and sellers pay rent to Google, AWS and meta to remain on their platforms so that they have access to us. The rich don’t need us to spend anymore. When you are worth more than the GDP of entire continents, when less than 3000 people have that wealth, they seize control to install themselves as our rulers. Why do you think Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg and Alphabet have said nothing despite reportedly losing “billions.” Because when money becomes meaningless, you go mad with the power to use it to control people and reshape the world into what you want. That is why being a Billionaire is a mental illness, because when you have access to literally everything and anything at anytime you want. You relate to no one, because they exist to please you and you value nothing, because you struggle for nothing. The people who want you to spend aren’t the rich, they’re the farmers that rent the land from the lords that own it. Who will never need money again.
You know what the rich really want?, consumption. They want you buying as much as possible because that’s the way we get growth and it also makes it so you have less savings and are more dependent on your job, and less likely to make demands or quit.
That doesn’t track though. Consumption is just a vehicle for the accumulation of wealth, and is easily wielded as a weapon once it stops being effective. Like, if they were truly in favor of consumption, the whole avocado toast thing would have been encouraged instead.
Consumption is necessary for capitalism, the way you accumulate wealth is by selling goods and services for profit. Many recessions are caused by production overshooting consumption which leads to people being fired to lower production, which lowers consumption… Most of the evaluation of companies and thus the wealth of billionaires is based on consumption increasing. If it were to ever go down in a meaningful way then production would to, and thus the GDP and the billionaires slice of it.
There are other forms of accumulation besides the capitalist mode, eg. Fighting and conquering your neighbors in a feudal system, but I don’t think musk and bezos want to bet there fortunes on there military acumen and they probably prefer this current system.
I think the whole avocado toast thing was way overblown. It was maybe one cnbc article and a cable news segment but the memes and media against it far outnumber the articles that supported it.
I’ve seen far more media supporting consumption of avocado toast, both social media and advertising, then media telling you to stop consuming avocado toast. We have just gotten so used to “tuning” out advertising that we don’t notice it, meanwhile an article shaming you for consuming is far more likely to get a reaction and make you remember it.
If capitalists didn’t value the accumulation of wealth over consumption, they’d be in favor of wage increases. If they really did want us to consume more, they’d let us have more money to spend, knowing it’s going back into their pockets.
This is also colored by my experiences being homeless when the avocado toast thing was going around. I didn’t have regular internet access, so I don’t remember seeing the memes and media against it, but I do remember how regular society grabbed onto it and ran. I remember hearing avocado toast jokes about me from the people behind me in line when I was using food stamps, and that just strikes me as something that wouldn’t happen if the ruling class actually valued consumption.
We need to reprioritize what we value as a society, deemphasizing individuality and private ownership and moving towards community.
Except… how do you do that?
Write a book?
Post on social media?
There’s nothing actionable there. Vaguely encouraging people to consume less will literally do nothing in the face of endless advertisements and algorithms.
There is no way to change the mass behavior of human populations without doing something direct… like addressing the fact that the wealthy are hoarding all of the wealth.
This requires a cultural change. Even if we fully redistribute the wealth, if everyone uses there new money to buy a huge pickup truck then we aren’t helping to make a sustainable system.
Changing the culture is going to require some carrots and sticks.
The carrot is showing how you can enjoy life without consumption. People in the west have been indoctrinated by advertising and other cultural forces to think the path of happiness lies through consumption. Banning advertising and having media show paths to happiness that are less consumptive can help with this. Social media can play a part in this by showing people enjoying life withiut needing to buy anything, eg. Posting a pciture of your friends hanging out in the park. Celebrating a low consumption lifestyle can direct peoples drive for happiness away from consumption towards less destructive pursuits.
The stick, which most people don’t want to do, is shame. Christianity was able to channel people’s sexual drive into monogamous heterosexual married relationships for centuries using shame. If it’s able to control such a fundamental desire as sex, it can stop people from buying useless junk. This will have to wait until the culture gains majority, because a minority shaming a majority just results in the minority being ostracized.
Anytime anyone suggests we need to decrease consumption people like you complain that it’s a plot by the rich to get us used to poverty.
You know what the rich really want?, consumption. They want you buying as much as possible because that’s the way we get growth and it also makes it so you have less savings and are more dependent on your job, and less likely to make demands or quit.
I agree we need massive wealth redistribution and consumption by the 1% is magnitudes more harmful then the rest. But the current american lifestyle of heating and cooling an entire house for 1-2 people in a sprawled out suburb where you have to drive everywhere and have meat with every meal is not sustainable either. We need to reprioritize what we value as a society, deemphasizing individuality and private ownership and moving towards community.
We have to do that as free equals, not the family hierarchy system
I agree, some family situations are shit and any post-capitalist society would have to provide the resources to leave those situations.
The idea that people SHOULD leave there parents home at 18 is consumptively motivated, the idea that people CAN leave there parents home at 18 is liberating
No, not anymore. We exist in a post-capitalist world. Capital used to be the output, whether that’s labour, or a trade, or a craft that’s what capital is. Now, we are the capital. Google is a search engine that made billions selling your private data to amazon, whose effect on the global economy has massively accelerated climate change. Google maps records your phone calls, they copy and scan everything from your phone. Every free online pdf converter, every image editor. Most of all computing and all of the resulting data is collected in the browser. Every app on your phone, generates data points it sells to Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta and all of big tech. The clearnet has shrunk drastically to only a handful of companies. They use this data to profile us, socially engineer us. Your thoughts and opinions are not your own, they are what you have been trained to believe. Advertisers and sellers pay rent to Google, AWS and meta to remain on their platforms so that they have access to us. The rich don’t need us to spend anymore. When you are worth more than the GDP of entire continents, when less than 3000 people have that wealth, they seize control to install themselves as our rulers. Why do you think Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg and Alphabet have said nothing despite reportedly losing “billions.” Because when money becomes meaningless, you go mad with the power to use it to control people and reshape the world into what you want. That is why being a Billionaire is a mental illness, because when you have access to literally everything and anything at anytime you want. You relate to no one, because they exist to please you and you value nothing, because you struggle for nothing. The people who want you to spend aren’t the rich, they’re the farmers that rent the land from the lords that own it. Who will never need money again.
That doesn’t track though. Consumption is just a vehicle for the accumulation of wealth, and is easily wielded as a weapon once it stops being effective. Like, if they were truly in favor of consumption, the whole avocado toast thing would have been encouraged instead.
Consumption is necessary for capitalism, the way you accumulate wealth is by selling goods and services for profit. Many recessions are caused by production overshooting consumption which leads to people being fired to lower production, which lowers consumption… Most of the evaluation of companies and thus the wealth of billionaires is based on consumption increasing. If it were to ever go down in a meaningful way then production would to, and thus the GDP and the billionaires slice of it.
There are other forms of accumulation besides the capitalist mode, eg. Fighting and conquering your neighbors in a feudal system, but I don’t think musk and bezos want to bet there fortunes on there military acumen and they probably prefer this current system.
I think the whole avocado toast thing was way overblown. It was maybe one cnbc article and a cable news segment but the memes and media against it far outnumber the articles that supported it.
I’ve seen far more media supporting consumption of avocado toast, both social media and advertising, then media telling you to stop consuming avocado toast. We have just gotten so used to “tuning” out advertising that we don’t notice it, meanwhile an article shaming you for consuming is far more likely to get a reaction and make you remember it.
If capitalists didn’t value the accumulation of wealth over consumption, they’d be in favor of wage increases. If they really did want us to consume more, they’d let us have more money to spend, knowing it’s going back into their pockets.
This is also colored by my experiences being homeless when the avocado toast thing was going around. I didn’t have regular internet access, so I don’t remember seeing the memes and media against it, but I do remember how regular society grabbed onto it and ran. I remember hearing avocado toast jokes about me from the people behind me in line when I was using food stamps, and that just strikes me as something that wouldn’t happen if the ruling class actually valued consumption.
Except… how do you do that?
Write a book?
Post on social media?
There’s nothing actionable there. Vaguely encouraging people to consume less will literally do nothing in the face of endless advertisements and algorithms.
There is no way to change the mass behavior of human populations without doing something direct… like addressing the fact that the wealthy are hoarding all of the wealth.
Banning advertising would be a good start.
This requires a cultural change. Even if we fully redistribute the wealth, if everyone uses there new money to buy a huge pickup truck then we aren’t helping to make a sustainable system.
Changing the culture is going to require some carrots and sticks.
The carrot is showing how you can enjoy life without consumption. People in the west have been indoctrinated by advertising and other cultural forces to think the path of happiness lies through consumption. Banning advertising and having media show paths to happiness that are less consumptive can help with this. Social media can play a part in this by showing people enjoying life withiut needing to buy anything, eg. Posting a pciture of your friends hanging out in the park. Celebrating a low consumption lifestyle can direct peoples drive for happiness away from consumption towards less destructive pursuits.
The stick, which most people don’t want to do, is shame. Christianity was able to channel people’s sexual drive into monogamous heterosexual married relationships for centuries using shame. If it’s able to control such a fundamental desire as sex, it can stop people from buying useless junk. This will have to wait until the culture gains majority, because a minority shaming a majority just results in the minority being ostracized.