Anytime anyone suggests we need to decrease consumption people 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.
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.
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.
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 complain that it’s a plot by the rich to get us used to poverty.
The elites are trying to make the poor eat bugs
The rich are taking away our freedom
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.
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.
We have to do that as free equals, not the family hierarchy system
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.
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.