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thetldrplace · 3 years

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Consumerism

I don’t live under a rock, so I’m aware of the term consumerism, but I’ve never really taken the time to think about what it is… or what people mean to do about it when they criticize it.

So I’m going to try and get my head around what it means and what some of the efforts to counter it consist of.

One definition I found is consumerism, on a more individual level, is the preoccupation with consuming more and more goods and services. It is driven by a chronic dissatisfaction with what the consumer currently has. Some of the evils concomitant with consumerism might be greed, selfishness, mistaking getting something new for getting something good, ungratefulness, dissatisfaction, jealousy, focus on things…

From Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge…), I read that on a societal level, it can be correlated with the growth imperative and overconsumption, which can have larger impacts on the environment, like overexploitation of natural resources or large amounts of waste.

While consumerism might foster the aforementioned individual vices, it doesn’t invent them. Those things exist in the heart even for those not in consumerist societies. Reading Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, he spoke of stopping in the Cape Horn region of southern Chile to revisit some Indian tribes there. Their mode of living was such that they shared everything at a mostly subsistence level. When one of the Indians, who had been brought to England, came back and gave his mother a coat, the next day it had been ripped to pieces with each member of the community getting a section. Why? Because if they didn’t share everything, jealousy would arise. Those evils of human nature exist without a consumerist culture.

The bible says God created us to live in and enjoy the world. Deuteronomy 26:11 :

“Then you and the Levites and the foreigners residing among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household.”

The trick is to enjoy the material goods we have, while acknowledging they came from the Lord. Enjoy your stuff, and put the Lord first, not the stuff. In doing so we will avoid the greed, selfishness, jealousy, dissatisfaction, and ungratefulness that accompany just storing up goods.

From a Christian perspective, I get the wariness about consumerism. I try personally to avoid it, but I’m gonna drop a truth bomb here- I too like stuff. I do, however, take measures to avoid being overly attached. I drive a 2009 Honda fit with about 170,000 miles on it. I could afford a new car, but the one I have works fine. I don’t worry about trying to get something cooler because, to be honest, I have better places to spend money. My wife and I contribute …. Well , a lot of money to various ministries and charities, and we give when we can. We’ll pay for dinners, give to those who might want to go on various mission trips, etc. The Lord has blessed, so we feel our abundance of finances is our opportunity to give back. I applaud all you who are giving back in the recognition that- God has given in order for us to give to others.

But on a political level, I’m not sure what we should do about it. I have issues with the growth imperative- the insistence on never-ending growth, overconsumption and exploitation too. Exploitation of resources seems like something we can regulate legal. Curbing the theory of the growth imperative or overconsumption is another issue altogether.

So when did consumerism really take off?

Looking at wikipedia’s page, the industrial revolution dramatically increased the availability of goods at lower prices. When goods and services become widely available, more people, even at the lower classes can afford what was at one time out of their reach.

The Marxists, for example, were perturbed by this. By the late 1920’s the proletariat had not rebelled against the system, as the Marxist had thought. Instead they were improving their lot through cheaper and more widely available goods. They were increasingly happy with their lives. Antonio Gramsci called this false consciousness. Here’s the deal though, the plebes only thought they were happy (according to the Marxists), when they were really just being duped by the capitalists. Rather than being truly set free to appreciate great art and music, great learning and culture, the stupid plebes were happy with cheap crap and football games; bread and circuses, as the ancient Romans might have put it. Gramsci wanted them to realize how impoverished they were, so they could finally rise up, throw off the oppressive yoke and realize the communist utopia he had planned. But plebes, being stupid and all, were just too happy with their junk.

One might be inclined to think there is something deeply elitist of these intelligentsia thinking they know best for everyone else, and plotting to ruin the lives of the working class so they, the elites, could provide them with basic levels of subsistence, and feed the plebes THEIR ideas of high culture, which they knew was much better than what the plebes were choosing themselves. Hold on to this idea, because this freedom to choose versus what some people think OUGHT to be chosen, is at the heart of the divide, in my most humble opinion.

The free market has certainly spurred innovation to produce more and better stuff than ever in the history of mankind. Part of the trade-offs that inevitably happen in complex systems is a series of negative effects that are the flip side of every coin.

As an example, when I was in leadership at a local church, one of our pastors was extremely laissez-faire in his management style. I personally considered that freedom-to-operate to be a great positive. The negative side was that communication was often deficient. But that communication deficiency was the necessary flip side of the freedom-to-operate. That’s the nature of trade-offs inherent in any system. And.....given the nature of the differing ways of measuring success humans have, it is impossible that everyone in a society will be fully happy about the way things are, and almost assured that everyone will be dissatisfied with some aspects of society. Trade-offs.

Returning to problems with consumerism, what would it take, for example, to reduce overconsumption by producing quality TVs, rather than cheap TVs? (and this is going to be the most deficient descriptive scenario you’ll probably see all day, maybe all week, and maybe..... well, we’ll leave it at that.)

The company would have to make some decisions: the quality will be better, so they will be more expensive. That means they can’t sell as many. Which means they’re either going to have to pay employees less, make less profit, or fire excess employees no longer necessary. Making less profit will immediately appeal to those who stand to lose nothing by the suggestion, but what if the profit margins were already thin to start?

The end result will be the price of TV’s will rise, pricing them out of the range of lower end markets.

Now poor people have less options. (Which might be good because they need to understand how miserable their lives are so they can rise up and overthrow the capitalist system!)

Innovation suffers because people buy less tv’s because tv’s last longer, and there’s less reason to push them to buy newer ones.

On the positive side, less cheap tv’s thrown into the waste dumps means less…. Well… waste.....

So, trade-offs. Hooray!

I’m also not sure how we can practically encourage less overconsumption without getting into really invasive laws. But there’s a lot I don’t know, so I’ll just add this one to the list.

In short, I see some problems, but I also think I understand that solving for one problem inexorably means increasing others. Democratically resolving these through a free market means people will almost inevitably choose short term gain over long term good. Free markets are great at figuring out how to do things, bad at figuring out what needs to be done. But I’m interested in hearing other thoughts on this subject. It’s new to me, so I’m undoubtedly missing all the good parts of the discussion.

#consumerism

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