If I'm not mistaken, Bush at one point urged consumers to go out and spend money, in fact that was the whole intention of the stimulus package earlier this year. Since many consumers don't need a stimulus check, doesn't this cause people to go out and buy stuff that they don't really need? I don't understand how this could be good for the country in the long run. A country that spends money on frivolous items is not an efficient country, and thus not productive.
Why is it good to have consumers spend money...
- Thread starter eilute
- Start date
It isn't really. Materialism, consumerism, and the like are inherently negative for an individual and a nation as a whole.
Because many people work for the companies that provide luxury items. If all anyone bought was food, water, gasoline, and housing, there would be no jobs.
frostedflakes
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When people spend money states/local governments collect taxes on sales (assuming you didn't buy online and skirt around them). And when you buy stuff it gives incentive for employers to have more employees around which injects money into federal income tax and even more money back into the economy.
It's hardly a pyramid scheme. It's the basis of economies for centuries.
It's hardly a pyramid scheme. It's the basis of economies for centuries.
On multiple levels.
1. Psychologically it's extremely damaging to encourage fulfillment from material goods. Not only does it detract from positive emotional growth through relationships and other 'human' factors, but like all physiological attractions it has an ever increasing hunger that must be appeased or the individual will face real consequences.
2. From a product aspect consumerism is only sustainable through the production of products with increasingly limited use, or decreased life expectancy. Moreover consumerisms power is increased the cheaper the products become. That cheapness must come from either reduced production costs (hurting the workers) or cheapened quality (hurting the consumer). Consumerism therefore encourages poor product quality.
3. It requires increasing resource dedication, both in materials for the goods, and materials/land to create those goods. This multiplication of resource depletion on unnecessary items raises costs on required goods and services.
4. It diverts focus of development and the workforce away from beneficial or necessary areas (medical, technological, environmental recovery, etc). This further increases the costs of development in these areas as competition for the best and brightest is pulled to non-essential fields.
5. It encourages crime and other anti-social behaviors as obtaining money to appease material greed becomes more important than relationships, the social contract, etc.
6. It shifts consumer spending from required big tickets (house, savings) to meaningless frivolities. This is usually accompanied by ever-increasing debt far outstripping actual purchasing power - resulting in the situation we have now. People are losing their houses because they think having a big tv is more important.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
- Oct 28, 1999
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There's definitely a balance act between "healthy" spending and "unhealthy" spending. Easy money (Low/no interest) can be a major risk if not managed properly.
It's interesting how the extreme edge of over-consuming leads right into the far end of underspending. Neither extreme is healthy for an economy.
Ozoned
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- Mar 22, 2004
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There are a lot of things that you don't need, that improve the quality of life. Like having a computer with an internet connection that gives you access to information. You want basic non frivolous entertainment? Revert back to the days of gathering as a family unit around the bible in candlelight.
Don't really need ?Frivolous? Careful where you draw that line.
halik
Lifer
- Oct 10, 2000
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1) 1 would only be true in very very extreme case, where all your worth is judged by what you own. That's neither the case nor the destination.
2) Technology is replacing manual works in all aspects of life, so that that cheaper or higher replacement frequency. We just need more stuff (think how many things you carry with you today as opposed to 10 years ago), not cheaper or commodity goods.
3) Empirically false, again with onset of technology we've gotten more efficient at manufacturing. Look up six6 or LEAN.
4) Welcome to capitalism... compensation attract the best talent. That's got nothing to do with consumerism.
5) Point, although that has more to do with mass media and glamorization more than consumerism in general.
6) That's more of a product of the instant gratification generation more so than consumerism. I can buy that plasma right now, but i need to save up for a house.
i think he might be saying that we are buying too much of our own crap and not selling enough to other places
No, though that's also true.
We're buying too much period. We're FAR too focused on money, income, investment...basically far too focused on economy and not focused on anything that actually matters (creativity, improvement, family, relationships, self-fulfillment, knowledge, etc).
Anything relating to materialism and greed is inherently bad. Period. Anything which encourages it is inherently bad. Period.
1) Is true in ALL cases. Read about it sometime, there's plenty of research out there on the psychological pitfalls of greed and materialism.
2) You totally missed the point. If you manufacture a TV that will last 10 years, your purchase cycle is 10 years. If you build one that will last 3, your cycle is 3. Consumerism demands that there be a constant need for purchases, which does not occur with long lasting products (assuming a shallow, or stable, population growth, which we are moving towards). Moreover you don't even need the TV itself to be the cycle ender...all you need is market agreement to transition standards, FORCING a change of goods to continue to work. While many mistakenly see this as advancement, it's more often just a way to require the purchase of new goods/services. I also included specialization of product in this section, even though it's a slightly different issue. If there is a product, say a cell phone, that can fill the roll of multiple products (say a camera, mp3 player, pda, and phone) then there is no reason to purchase multiple products. The companies therefore find ways and reasons to encourage you to purchase separate products even though it is possible for one to do it all. The people aren't being helped by this, only the corporations which retain the vast percentage of wealth to the top 10% anyway.
3) That's all good and well, and is a positive step...however it almost totally fails to address my points. Regardless of how little waste you have in a business process, the products and the process itself DO require materials and resources. If, due to increased population or increased purchasing power, twice as many cars are able to be sold from one year to the next, then more raw materials are required to make them. It's great to waste less in the process of making them, but there's still a net increase in the amount of materials used. Moreover, the increased demand needs more manufacturing centers, more distribution methods, and so on. All of those things require resources be used to build them - and those resources are only going to infrastructure, not directly to the use of the people. Finally the ability to retrieve and refine those resources is increased, which means expended resources to expand those operations. Again, it's great to make the processes better, so that more is obtained with less...but there is still a net loss of resources. That's a many-fold increase in resource expenditures on an item that isn't even a necessity in most cases. There is a finite limit on all resources, and therefore such expenditures are ill advised.
4) Capitalism hardly invented rewarding invention, but I'll let that part go so I can address my initial point. It has everything to do with consumerism because it pulls talent (a finite resource) out of important fields (medicine, energy production) and puts it into non-essential fields (toys, video games, makeup, etc). If you have someone who is a genius in biology and chemistry and they have the choice between a job researching cancer cures and a job making makeup to make women look even more fake, it's a bad situation. I'm not saying there shouldn't be some options like this, but with rampant consumerism there is far too much of the trivial and not enough of the important. You wanna know why we still have AIDS, cancer, dirty power, etc? It's because we're spending our focus on bullshit, and then rewarding the choice.
5) I agree it's driven by other forces, but it originates in the psychological impact of consumerism itself (see point #1). Humans have a nature and consumerism exploits that nature to make a very small percentage of people very wealthy. This is at the expense of everyone because not only do jobs earn less money, debt increases, and so on - but insurance costs go up, medical expenses go up, police costs go up...all in order to deal with what people are willing to do to keep up with the Joneses. If we didn't encourage greed and materialism, and instead gave focus to positive outlets like creativity and relationships, everyones bottom line would improve.
6) Where do you think the instant gratification generation came from? You think there's a sudden genetic abnormality that causes people to want to buy stuff??? It's instilled from birth through behavior modification exploiting known psychological weaknesses. It's advertising and marketing (used to fuel consumerism) that has created this monster. It's the positive reinforcement of greed and materialism that are the root.
Steeplerot
Lifer
- Mar 29, 2004
- 13,051
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Overproduction is a disaster for capitalism, thus the Freudian advertising mind games since the 20th century getting you to believe you need to buy useless shit for your own self-worth instead of the actual need or utility.
Good BBC documentary about this called "The Century of Self".
-----------------------------------------
"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.
-----------------------------------------
Great watch that shines the spotlight on the manipulation of the masses that created our shallow consumerist culture and how we pretty much are the corporate elites bitches now from cradle to grave thanks to combing the "art" of psychoanalysis with advertising.
The Century of the Self - Part 1
The Century of the Self - Part 2
The Century of the Self - Part 3
The Century of the Self - Part 4
It is long, but you will never listen to a commercial or look at a billboard the same.
Edit: Link madness
Good BBC documentary about this called "The Century of Self".
-----------------------------------------
"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.
-----------------------------------------
Great watch that shines the spotlight on the manipulation of the masses that created our shallow consumerist culture and how we pretty much are the corporate elites bitches now from cradle to grave thanks to combing the "art" of psychoanalysis with advertising.
The Century of the Self - Part 1
The Century of the Self - Part 2
The Century of the Self - Part 3
The Century of the Self - Part 4
It is long, but you will never listen to a commercial or look at a billboard the same.
Edit: Link madness
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
There'd be plenty of jobs. There just wouldn't be frivolous jobs for manufacturing stuff like banana holders and insanely expensive massage chairs.
The market would adapt. Maybe more people could spend their lives on engineering or scientific research instead - jobs to advance humanity's overall level of technology and standard of living.
*cough*
Diamonds.
Steeplerot
Lifer
- Mar 29, 2004
- 13,051
- 6
- 81
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