The Real Trap of Consumerism
Heyyo!!
Happy Friday!! This month, I spent time unpacking the idea of consumerism. In the environmental space, there’s a large emphasis placed on overconsumption as a large driver of climate change and environmental destruction. For a while now, though, I’ve felt like that analysis was missing the bigger picture. So, I decided to make a video about it. I dove into the bowels of production as well as the driving forces of the advertising industry, to shape and inform this video. If you’re interested in learning more about the actual problem behind consumerism feel free to watch the video below! As always, below you can also find three links and three quotes I found useful during my research process.
Also, if you’re interested, consider supporting Our Changing Climate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OurChangingClimate
Three Quotes:
“In order to survive, capital must expand therefore it must synthesize needs and implement planned obsolescence in order to produce and maintain a market for its growth. A systematic manufacture of discontent places commodities as an affordable means of social achievement therefore contentment by upholding an understanding that has elevated capitalism to a position synonymous with freedom by the mere fact that it provisions the goods.”
— Climate & Capitalism
“…firms engage in production (create supply) on the basis of short-term profitability. To produce, they must buy raw materials, hire workers, purchase investment goods, and distribute dividends and interest to their owners and lenders. So profit-based decisions to create supply generate the demand for raw materials, and through the payments of wages, dividends, and interest, 201 Overconsumption as Ideology o generate the consumption demand.”
— Anwar Shaikh
“The ruling class, benefiting from the labor of others, perpetuates ideas that mystify, elude, and deceive workers into falsely believing that they benefit from the current system, can move up in the system, and have freedom in the system, as well as that no other system is possible.”
— Diana Stuart et al.
Three Links:
Ecosocialism and consumerism (Climate & Capitalism)
Overconsumption as Ideology - Implications for Addressing Global Climate Change (Diana Stuart et al.)
How consumerism presents itself as activism. Does watching leftist YT contribute to anything? (Yugopnik)
You can support Our Changing Climate directly through Patreon: www.patreon.com/OurChangingClimate
Hope you have a wonderful weekend,
Charlie