BEFORE2030 - A LIVABLE FUTURE For people, planet, and all life
50% REDUCTION IN CONSUMERISM
As a society we have the responsibility to fulfill everyone’s needs, (not necessarily wants), through a Basic Needs Economy, it would be unethical to behave otherwise. So, let’s state these needs as a baseline for our exploration:
Nutritious Food and water
Adequate shelter in all seasons
Adequate clothing for modesty and protection
Adequate healthcare from the healthcare industry and lifestyle responsibility from the people (not currently the case)
Sufficient income for the needs
Safe neighborhoods
Inclusion within a community or communities
Some communities succeeded in doing this during homo sapiens’ past of years of history, , according to recent anthropological findings described in the book, The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow. However, far too many in the modern world are barely satisfying these needs. Of course, we have a capitalist society, which means profit is the measure of everything. But we are a human society, where is the caring, perhaps some of society’s needs should be organized outside of capitalism?
I want to bring in the history of production here to help inform our discussion. Since the 1920s we have been able to overproduce most goods with relative ease, including agricultural products. I think we should congratulate ourselves on this, not just the wealthy industrialists, but, the whole workforce that makes this happen – Us. For the capitalist this is a dilemma, but for any animal species this is a relief.
“Ok, we’ve got it solved, let’s have some leisure time and enjoy our family and relationships. I’ve always wanted to be creative and paint some landscapes, now I can. I’ve always wanted to read all the classics, now I can. This is the good-life and I’m not stressed anymore and in fact I feel healthier.”
How come we don’t have a life like this? It should be possible for everyone. We’ve solved basic needs! What happened? Who or what drives the consumption monster? Is it our desire for stuff, or the super-wealthy owners/shareholders wanting more and more wealth?
Watch out here comes advertising, “but the thing I have is fine,” no it’s not, according to advertising. “But I can’t afford all these things,” then here comes credit. Then, you’ll notice, that despite inventing amazing technology for over a hundred years, things break all the time. That is until 2015, when France became the first country in the world to make this new law: “Planned obsolescence means the techniques by which a manufacturer aims to deliberately reduce the life of a product to increase its replacement rate. It is punishable by two years of imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 Euros.” It started with light bulbs in the US. Wow! Nowhere in the world was it illegal to make something that breaks deliberately. (More on this in Make Planned Obsolescence Illegal).
We now have what I call the trinket economy as opposed to the one mentioned above, the basic needs economy. Personal consumption expenditures are 70% of the US economy, a massive amount of non-essential items in that. Apart from the financial burden of this, the social implications are debilitating. Apart from the immorality of this, now, the Planet moans under its load: Resource extraction and depletion, waste disposal, resultant pollution, biodiversity loss, energy expended and emissions load, etc. This is why I quoted Shakespeare from Hamlet, with my modification: “Time is out of joint, oh, cursed spite, that we were born to set it right.” Because we, the world population delayed and continue to delay sufficient sustainability, our only position is to take extremely bold steps, despite altering the entire course of the world economy. It seems only the profiteers were watching the store, and with people being bombarded endlessly with messaging to buy, buy, buy, or you’re worthless, the mass-mesmerism of the consumer ecology won the day, despite being contrary to planetary ecological boundaries. But consumerism runs deep, for some people their very self-image is caught up in their ability, choice and act of consuming products.
We need to move from being be-witched, to de-witched. The Plague of the early 2020s (Pandemic) started to erode this be-witchment. We have people really assessing their place in the workforce. In China the students are ‘lying flat’ in protest of hyper-competition and in defense of rest and relaxation, similar to ‘quiet quitting.’ And ‘letting it rot,’ a way of expressing dejection and fatigue about the expectations around the ludicrous study and work schedules. The Chinese government has expressed displeasure around such protests, but I’m heartened to see that they are not living the life of automatons, but experiencing introspection that could even lead to wisdom and maybe sensible human existence.
A backlash to consumerism must become a movement for the Planet’s and by extension our survival. The pushers of consumerism – celebrities, corporations, politicians, and the wealthy, etc. – will cower to public pressure.
“There will always be limits to growth. They can be self-imposed. If they aren’t, they will be system-imposed.” (Donella meadows, Thinking in Systems.)
It’s estimated that the U.S. lifestyle consumes the equivalent of 4 planets worth of resources. It’s only because some of the world uses less than 1 planet’s worth of resources that this is possible. As those nations lift themselves to a higher standard of living, the industrialized countries will ultimately have to reduce their consumption to prevent world-wide chaos.
Further info:
Azby Brown, Just Enough: Lessons in living green from traditional Japan, 2012
Gregory Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after consumerism (Many pages dedicated to the history of utopianism, the book really gets going at page 355)
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW
As a society we have the responsibility to fulfill everyone’s needs, (not necessarily wants), through a Basic Needs Economy, it would be unethical to behave otherwise. So, let’s state these needs as a baseline for our exploration:
Nutritious Food and water
Adequate shelter in all seasons
Adequate clothing for modesty and protection
Adequate healthcare from the healthcare industry and lifestyle responsibility from the people (not currently the case)
Sufficient income for the needs
Safe neighborhoods
Inclusion within a community or communities
Some communities succeeded in doing this during homo sapiens’ past of years of history, , according to recent anthropological findings described in the book, The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow. However, far too many in the modern world are barely satisfying these needs. Of course, we have a capitalist society, which means profit is the measure of everything. But we are a human society, where is the caring, perhaps some of society’s needs should be organized outside of capitalism?
I want to bring in the history of production here to help inform our discussion. Since the 1920s we have been able to overproduce most goods with relative ease, including agricultural products. I think we should congratulate ourselves on this, not just the wealthy industrialists, but, the whole workforce that makes this happen – Us. For the capitalist this is a dilemma, but for any animal species this is a relief.
“Ok, we’ve got it solved, let’s have some leisure time and enjoy our family and relationships. I’ve always wanted to be creative and paint some landscapes, now I can. I’ve always wanted to read all the classics, now I can. This is the good-life and I’m not stressed anymore and in fact I feel healthier.”
How come we don’t have a life like this? It should be possible for everyone. We’ve solved basic needs! What happened? Who or what drives the consumption monster? Is it our desire for stuff, or the super-wealthy owners/shareholders wanting more and more wealth?
Watch out here comes advertising, “but the thing I have is fine,” no it’s not, according to advertising. “But I can’t afford all these things,” then here comes credit. Then, you’ll notice, that despite inventing amazing technology for over a hundred years, things break all the time. That is until 2015, when France became the first country in the world to make this new law: “Planned obsolescence means the techniques by which a manufacturer aims to deliberately reduce the life of a product to increase its replacement rate. It is punishable by two years of imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 Euros.” It started with light bulbs in the US. Wow! Nowhere in the world was it illegal to make something that breaks deliberately. (More on this in Make Planned Obsolescence Illegal).
We now have what I call the trinket economy as opposed to the one mentioned above, the basic needs economy. Personal consumption expenditures are 70% of the US economy, a massive amount of non-essential items in that. Apart from the financial burden of this, the social implications are debilitating. Apart from the immorality of this, now, the Planet moans under its load: Resource extraction and depletion, waste disposal, resultant pollution, biodiversity loss, energy expended and emissions load, etc. This is why I quoted Shakespeare from Hamlet, with my modification: “Time is out of joint, oh, cursed spite, that we were born to set it right.” Because we, the world population delayed and continue to delay sufficient sustainability, our only position is to take extremely bold steps, despite altering the entire course of the world economy. It seems only the profiteers were watching the store, and with people being bombarded endlessly with messaging to buy, buy, buy, or you’re worthless, the mass-mesmerism of the consumer ecology won the day, despite being contrary to planetary ecological boundaries. But consumerism runs deep, for some people their very self-image is caught up in their ability, choice and act of consuming products.
We need to move from being be-witched, to de-witched. The Plague of the early 2020s (Pandemic) started to erode this be-witchment. We have people really assessing their place in the workforce. In China the students are ‘lying flat’ in protest of hyper-competition and in defense of rest and relaxation, similar to ‘quiet quitting.’ And ‘letting it rot,’ a way of expressing dejection and fatigue about the expectations around the ludicrous study and work schedules. The Chinese government has expressed displeasure around such protests, but I’m heartened to see that they are not living the life of automatons, but experiencing introspection that could even lead to wisdom and maybe sensible human existence.
A backlash to consumerism must become a movement for the Planet’s and by extension our survival. The pushers of consumerism – celebrities, corporations, politicians, and the wealthy, etc. – will cower to public pressure.
“There will always be limits to growth. They can be self-imposed. If they aren’t, they will be system-imposed.” (Donella meadows, Thinking in Systems.)
It’s estimated that the U.S. lifestyle consumes the equivalent of 4 planets worth of resources. It’s only because some of the world uses less than 1 planet’s worth of resources that this is possible. As those nations lift themselves to a higher standard of living, the industrialized countries will ultimately have to reduce their consumption to prevent world-wide chaos.
Further info:
Azby Brown, Just Enough: Lessons in living green from traditional Japan, 2012
Gregory Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after consumerism (Many pages dedicated to the history of utopianism, the book really gets going at page 355)
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW
