

The Gospel of Consumption - marvin
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962

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Prrometheus
Sorry, I can't stomach another self-righteous screed against people's private
choices that offend the sensibility of the author. It seems that I was born
without the "meddle in other people's affairs" gene, which is so widespread
and popular in society. I can't get worked up in a hissy-fit if other people
smoke, or watch goat porn, or work more than I would chose to. A lot of people
think something is wrong with me, but I enjoy the free time I save from not
caring about others' private lives.

The author's flawed world-view can be summed up in the following quote:

>In other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on
the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back
from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day

The error is that we "as a society" don't make choices. Individuals do. If I
thought a conspiracy of government officials and oligarchs were making work
choices for "society" as a whole, then I might be as offended as the author.

Humans have consistently chosen to live better rather than work less. I live
in much greater wealth than my father did at my age in the '60s and '70s and I
am happy about that. You would have a hard time convincing me to give up
dishwashers, central air, my own bathroom, wireless internet, and satellite TV
in order to work less. The average person in the western world has the
electronic equivalent of hundreds of human servants working for him. It's my
choice to accept the luxuries available to me, and other people are free to
make different choices.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
sure, i'm all for freedom of choice. but you can't ignore that there are
conscious decisions about how society is run that wind up heavily influencing
people's behavior.

what do you think all those government agencies do? FCC, FDA, FAA, IRS, the
Fed, etc. (department of education has a huge influence on ideology). There
are dozens of major ones that affect our decisions by deciding what A and B
will be and excluding C.

~~~
DmitriLebedev
It even doesn't take a conspiracy to start a propaganda. Successful companies
support PR, advertizing and, for example, style magazines, which improves
their business, and other businesses see that and copy that.

The argument, that politicians have elitist views on the society, is also
relevant. It doesn't mean that they conspire, it's just how they see the
world.

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noonespecial
On some levels, I'd like to knock a day off the work week and live like its
1948, but then again, when I'm headed in for laparoscopic surgery, I'm really
glad all of those people put in the extra hours instead of "playing ping-pong
for hours on end."

Humanity in the 21st century is a little like a startup. We have huge problems
to solve and the outcome is tenuous at best. So we work our asses off. Some of
it is on stupid stuff but some not. We're learning the difference. When we
"get over the hump", get ourselves into space, get some of the big killers
cured in medicine, and work out how lo live in peace with abundance for _all_
of the people on earth, then maybe we'll have earned a break.

~~~
Mistone
if most peoples work actually focused on those issues, I would totally agree,
but most people work on ways to "keep consumers dissatisfied" by
inventing/producing/marketing all kinds of useless stuff for people to want.
This has created a massive problem, the cost of having every choice under the
sun is straining our planet and we are consuming our way to disaster.

Maybe if we slowed down a bit, worked a bit less, bought less, and used less,
we would enjoy more and not kill our planet as quickly. Its all a bit
idealistic but i can see no reason why it would not work.

~~~
noonespecial
The stuff I want, I don't find useless. I like having the ability to choose.

As for the consumer being dissatisfied, yes, as a consumer of health care, I
am dissatisfied with still having to die from cancer, heart disease, etc.

Does humanity get distracted and work too hard on dumb stuff that we
shouldn't. Yes. What person, startup, or species for that matter doesn't.
"Lets just give up, accept what we have and work less" does not strike me as
the most appropriate response to that observation.

The great part is that everyone is free to chose in this system. You can move
to Alaska and be a hermit and choose not to work at all. You can choose a life
of quite contemplation free from material goods. I think the line should be
drawn when someone sets themselves up as an authority and tells someone else
that its somehow "wrong" for them to want the Nike shoes he saw on TV. This is
my problem with the article. In it is hidden the implicit suggestion that
there should be a central authority that decides who should work on what and
for how long.

Soviet-style communism fell with a dull thud. It seemed a bit idealistic but
many saw no reason why it would not work. It just didn't.

~~~
Mistone
I think you took this a bit too literally, all I'm saying is that hyper-
consumerism has placed the planet in a precarious condition, and a solution
may be to slow things down a bit to focus on and enjoy what you have instead
of always clamoring for more, more, more.

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subwindow
This is a really great article, if a bit long. This is something that is
definitely coming to the fore in our circle. The 37signals "less is more",
four day work week philosophy is becoming more and more popular, and this
article lays the groundwork for the philosophy quite well.

I sincerely wonder why people don't strive to work less. When most people
finally achieve a comfortable wage, the thought process is always "buy more"
and never "work less." I wonder if we'll see that change in the near future. I
hope so.

~~~
justindz
I hope it changes as well. Competitive living is really unhealthy. We measure
ourselves against others because that is the easiest measurement and we
measure ourselves against others like us and near us because that is the most
readily available and understandable benchmark.

I often hear it said that the desire of any parent is to have their kids be
better off than they were. We seem to think that means our kids should live in
bigger houses and have more stuff, when in reality it might mean that our kids
should be just as comfortable but spend less time getting there and end up
happier. Most people get rich so they can have expensive-looking things around
the house for when guests come over. That's a cold war-like zero sum game that
will eventually leave us unsatisfied and on fistfuls of designer mood medicine
with bizarre cumulative side-effects.

Remember what Tyler Durden said: "The things you own end up owning you."

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calpaterson
This seems to be a poor study of the economics of branding and churn
(apologies, I have forgotten the technical term for that piece of slang).

This really is a terrible article, and it spends a good deal of it's time
dealing in analogy, mixed up (and long disproved) ideas of economics and
sociology.

It is so bad, that I cannot stomach to read all of it.

~~~
Maascamp
Then don't comment on it.

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TrevorJ
Is it bad that I at first read the article as coming from "The ONION" ? About
3 paragraphs down I began to realize that the satire sounded all-to-real.

~~~
kirubakaran
Sometimes I read The Onion and 3 paragraphs down I wonder if I am reading The
Economist.

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chaostheory
I don't agree with all of the author's views, but article is interesting to me
in that I feel that "higher productivity" appliances were key to the sexual
revolution in coming about...

