Discuss: The Gospel of Consumption

Fantastic article.

For our family, the burden of the 40 hour work week is directly tied to health insurance. If there were another way to get reasonable health insurance for our family, my husband and I would each work 20-hour weeks and have more time together as a family. (yes there are private insurance options out there but we’ve been down that road and they suck.)

Best article on economics I’ve read since Schumacher’s wonderful little book, Small is Beautiful--Economics as if People Mattered. Now you have to admit, just on a commonsense basic level, an economy that depends on everyone being chronically dissatisfied is nuts! If enough people decided that, well, what I’ve got is enough, its good enough. I’m satisfied with my current computer, cell phone, refrigerator, TV etc. The economy would die. That kind of system is just insane.

For more, watch Adam Curtis documentaries. You can search for them on Google Video.

Having people dissatisfied is not all that bad! What better motive for progress and change there is than people not being 100% contended with their conditions of existence?

The thing is, that motive for change has to be used for better things than lining up the pockets of salesmen…

I agree with Bill Chisholm that our enormous population is going to create a whole mess of problems (well, it already is).

Pre-industrial revolution most, if not all, of the energy consumed by the earths population was that which came from the sun. Industrialization made it possible for us to work past capacity. Increased production means a huge boom in population. Do a google search for “graph of world population” and you can see that since the 1800’s there has been a 600% increase in the global population!

The most important thing that every human being needs is food. We are animals after all and all of our actions should in one way or another secure that need. Seems we’ve gotten a bit sidetracked, eh?

It’s unfortunate that the climate has gone to shit at the same time we’ve recognized that getting ourselves off oil is a top priority. We’ve been working past what I will call “natural capacity” (please let me know if there’s a better term) for over a hundred years. Our immediate goal should be how much can we preserve in the wake of the necessary undoing. (??)

One of the things that gets me here in America is how many pursue the perfect lawn. Couldn’t that space be used for something else? Imagine Kellog’s idea of a 6 hour work day followed by a mandatory couple of hours spent in the garden. I don’t know about you but besides rent the greatest pull on my income is feeding myself.

Just a few thoughts before I get to work…

Goodday!

A truly excellent read in regard to a more “organic economy” is Helena Norberg-Hodge’s Ancient Future about Ladakh. We aren’t just talking about economics here, we are also talking about culture and human satisfaction.  As a former wilderness survival instructor, I can say that I felt the most complete as a human being when I had the least of the modern world and was relying on my own knowledge, work and imagination.  The more you do for yourself, the more engaged in life you feel.

I’m encouraged by the the sheer numbers and tenor of the responses to Jeffrey Kaplan’s article.  It seems that many of us are concerned about the same things, and are (for the most part) thinking along the same lines.

Many posters have made resource suggestions I plan to pursue, and I’m especially grateful to Erich Vieth for the link to his timely blog post. I’ll add Dangerous Intersection to my own blog roll, as well as a link to “The Gospel of Consumption” in my related post, “Surviving Plutopia” on Owl’s Farm (http://owlfarmer.blogspot.com).  I am not by nature a sanguine person, but this discussion has been helpful--and reassuring.

We will need to end direct “competition” between slave labor (people not allowed to form a union) from China, India, etc and free men and women that have fought for their basic rights. It is only the business owners that want us to lower our salaries to the level set by pointing a gun to the head of labor and dictating terms.