consumerism - a dud sell

"Normal" in our world is to buy stuff, the latest this and the newest that - and it's respectable to be working our lives away to pay it. I've long felt a slave to this system and find it difficult to fight. But I still get caught up in buying things, having things; and having to work - as much as I hate it.

And what's more, it's not real, it's not even necessary.  We've been sold a dud. Our society has been deliberately engineered - literally - to a consumer culture. To see that we have been sold this helps me challenge this 'conventional wisdom' but living this challenge is not easy. 

Two useful articles are
1.  Anti-Consumerism is the new democracy
A choice not to consume is far more than an environmental choice to reduce resource use. It is a political statement about the structure and function of our society.


The choice about the placement of our dollars is a different kind of democracy - like a vote, it sends a message to those that contribute to our economy. A choice of one company over another communicates - through a lengthy supply chain - your preferences as a consumer. Whether your preferences are based primarily on price, animal testing, environment-friendly packaging, or simply because it came in a nice colour, the message is transmitted.


2. The Gospel of Consumption
Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many of his corporate cohorts, he was defining a strategic shift for American industry—from fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.


In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”