Peter Shawn Taylor says no
Senior features editor at C2C Journal
Such an open-ended question brings to mind an old Charley Pride country song. “When people say their life is rough, I wonder compared to what,” he sings in “I’m Just Me.” “Some are wantin’ more and more’s gettin’ less. I just want what I’ve got.” Wise old Charley was singing about being content with your lot in life, but he also posed a general theory of the relativity of consumption. Do we buy too much stuff? Compared to what?
“Too much” is clearly subjective. A hermit in the woods might consider anything more than a cast-iron frying pan, a reliable pair of underwear and a year’s supply of flour to be proof of unseemly extravagance. A young urban family with a couple of toddlers in tow will have a very different conception of their bare necessities. Are disposable diapers too much? A folding crib? Video baby monitor and running stroller?
Given the exigencies of modern life, we can probably all agree most of us buy a lot of stuff. But how to decide the appropriate limit, beyond which lies the realm of too much?
If you believe, as I do, that Canadians can generally be trusted to make utility-maximizing decisions given their personal income and other constraints, then there’s no need to fret over the amount of stuff being bought. We’re all buying exactly the right amount. If that differs from person to person, who cares? Marie Kondo isn’t the boss of me.
That said, experience tells me this topic is likely meant to be a forum for lamenting the excesses of Western consumerism and the allegedly coercive powers of corporate marketing while promoting the increasingly ascetic demands of the environmental movement. Such an argument is found in Ellen Ruppel Shell’s 2009 book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, in which she admonishes North American consumers for their love of fast fashion, fast food and inexpensive furniture from stores such as Zara, Walmart and IKEA.
The genius of cheap-chic purveyors “is that they have made fashionable, desirable and even lovable objects nearly devoid of craftsmanship,” Shell wrote. “The environmental and social implications are insidious and alarming.” Her concern is that we buy too much cheap stuff that quickly gets thrown away. Better to purchase artisanal goods that will last forever, lovingly made by expert craftsmen free from corporate control.
But this once again obviates the notion of personal autonomy in the stuff-acquiring decision matrix by making someone else’s preferences the standard against which we’re all measured. Not everyone can afford heirloom furniture. Cheap products like IKEA’s famous flatpack Billy bookcases are popular because they fill a requirement at a necessary price point. If they end up being replaced later by something more water-resistant, that seems perfectly reasonable. We buy what we need, when we need it, at a price we can afford. Results may vary. And that’s okay.
David J. Parker says yes
Former leader of the Alberta Greens
Examples abound of how consumerism has become ecocide. Children, as they are indoctrinated into the culture of consumption, now get more toys than they can ever use. Weddings should be renamed coronations, on par with Charles and Camilla’s; people have a fun time riding in carbon-spewing stretch limos and dressing up in costumes they never wear again. Then there are our mega-mansions, gentrification, urban sprawl and energy-intensive, long commutes. The large lots that could be used for denser housing.
The main cause of the ecocide crisis we’re presently suffering through is rampant consumerism and the belief that we cannot exist without exponential economic growth. Without ever-growing consumerism, the environmental crisis wouldn’t be happening. Why do we suffer all the long hours of work, the separation from our families and constant worrying about our finances, the purchases that need frequent repair, storage space and general upkeep? Who gives us, and why do we have, the impulse to buy into the consumption-on-steroids paradigm? The answer is the corporate elite and investors, who “know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.” Who place the acquisition of wealth above all else. We’ve been duped into believing that no alternative exists, and that civilization would collapse without a growing GDP.
Readers might say “Nobody is pulling my strings; I act on my own volition.” But advertising is all-pervasive—on buses, the internet, TV, radio, newspapers and wherever you drive or walk. Take, for example, those massive LED billboards specifically designed to grab your attention while driving. If they were for anything but commerce they would, for reasons of safety, be banned. Social media mammoths such as Facebook or Google collect our data for sale to marketers.
Meanwhile our economy is said to depend on unlimited, exponential, never-ending economic growth. Nothing on Earth or in the universe, however, grows forever (black holes may be an exception, but it’s too early to say). Everything that expands in this fashion ultimately explodes, like a supernova, or grows like a cancerous tumour until the host body dies. Is this how we want to continue? Living in a system that will ultimately end in apocalypse? Not a rapid and relatively painless end, as portrayed in the movie Don’t Look Up, but a slow breakdown of our life-support systems in the form of wildfires, flooding, heatwaves, crop failure, mass migration—sound familiar?
December is the month when Canadians annually celebrate our biggest orgy of unbridled consumerism. It also marks the birth of a man who was purportedly born in a barn, lived an austere life and was killed for making a nuisance of himself. He preached living simply, loving thy neighbour and chasing money lenders from the temple. Were he able to resurrect again in the 21st century, methinks he would be a little bit peeved by the society we’ve created.
Peter Shawn Taylor responds to David J. Parker
My first reaction after reading David J. Parker’s contribution is that perhaps he should sit down and take a few deep breaths. Many of his claims seem just a teensy bit hysterical—children have “more toys than they can ever use,” weddings are now on par with royal coronations. But I will endeavour to take him at his word.
Several times Parker refers to the damage done by “exponential” economic growth and says we have been duped into believing it is a necessary condition for success. In truth, what really matters for living standards is growth per capita. And that has flatlined in this country. Since 2014/15, Canada’s real GDP per capita has grown by a measly 0.4 per cent annually. It is our lack of growth that ought to be the real concern.
Parker also gets the causality backwards, claiming consumerism is what makes growth possible. It’s the other way around. Unless an economy is growing, it’s impossible to sustain a vigorous consumer sector or any of the things I suspect Parker might actually favour, such as healthcare and other taxpayer-supported public services. Keeping a population healthy and happy requires a non-moribund economy. As British economist Sir Paul Collier aptly put it: “Growth is not a cure-all, but a lack of growth is a kill-all.”
Beyond his rejection of the necessity of growth, Parker alleges we buy stuff not because we need it but because we are manipulated into doing so by “the corporate elite and investors.” In other words, we buy stuff because we lack the ability to say no. LED billboards play a big role here for some reason.
Everyone gets to spend their own money however they wish on the things they decide they want.
If marketing budgets alone determined corporate success, last summer’s superhero flick The Flash should have been a massive hit. But despite an estimated $100-million spent promoting it, including a deluge of ads during the NBA and NHL playoffs, the movie will go down as one of the year’s biggest flops. New Coke. Clear Pepsi. Google Glass. Windows Vista. Olestra. People won’t buy what they don’t want, regardless of how often Madison Avenue tells them they should.
By the same token, people will pay handsomely for what they really do want. Consider Parker’s pejorative comments about housing. Long commutes, urban sprawl and gentrification are all examples of the freely made choices of individuals and families. For example, survey after survey shows the most desirable form of housing among young families is a single-detached home, despite all the financial and other costs it entails. Reading between the lines, it appears Parker would rather everyone live in massive panelki-style prefab concrete housing complexes of the sort that dominated Communist countries during the Cold War. I suspect very few people in Canada would agree with him.
As I predicted in my opening remarks, the issue of “too much stuff” is really cover for an attempt to impose the preferences of a few cranky activists on the rest of us. What Parker calls rampant consumerism is actually economic democracy in action. Everyone gets to spend their own money however they wish on the things they decide they want. Some folks like a lot of stuff, others not so much. Judging from his comments, Parker appears to have rather ascetic tastes. Fine. He can content himself with my apocryphal frying pan, one pair of long johns and a big bag of flour. But why should the rest of us change our habits for him?
As for his claim that a growing economy is like a cancerous tumour that will eventually consume its host through “ecocide” (hyperbole alert!), I find it interesting that Parker chooses to follow this thought with a seasonal Biblical reference.
He argues Jesus would be “a little bit peeved by the society we’ve created.” Really? Remember, it was his Dad (not Joseph but the Other Guy) who told his people to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” That sounds like a pro-growth platform to me.
And what of Jesus’s own parable of the three servants? Recall that three servants were given bags of gold by their master, who then went away. The first servant received five bags and turned that endowment into 10 bags thanks to some savvy investing. He is praised for his efforts when the master returns. The second servant was given two bags, doubled that to four and is also recognized for his good sense, according to Jesus. The last servant, however, took his one bag and buried it, handing back to his master only what he was given. A zero-growth plan, so to speak. “You wicked and lazy servant!” the master scolds. “You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.”
Growth is good. And so is the stuff that growth makes possible.
David J. Parker responds to Peter Shawn Taylor
Having read Peter Shawn Taylor’s argument, I’m compelled to believe that he and I are living on different planets. He sees the acquisition of stuff, on a material level never seen before in history, as benign and perhaps even virtuous. He seems quite blasé, disregarding any downsides, such as the monumental amount of waste and its concomitant disposal that future generations will have to deal with, not to mention the often toxic nature of said waste. He seems unaware or uncaring that we are permitted to dump absolutely anything (legal or otherwise) into the—euphemistically named—“landfill.”
His basic premise seems to be: If you think it makes you happy, buy it, and damn the consequences. This is the philosophy of libertarianism, which advocates that the individual should live her life in the pursuit of only that which is of personal benefit. Pay no taxes towards anything that does not personally benefit you. Prevalent mostly in the USA, where the concept of absolute freedom is held as a God-given right, the philosophy is resulting in enormous disparities of wealth and privilege. Sadly libertarianism, along with right-wing populism, seems to be spreading throughout the western world.
Taylor does expose his personal bias with “this topic is likely meant to be a forum for lamenting the excesses of Western consumerism and the allegedly coercive powers of corporate marketing while promoting the increasingly ascetic demands of the environmental movement.”
Regarding “the allegedly coercive powers of corporate marketing,” does Taylor deny that the likes of Meta (formerly Facebook), Google, Amazon and numerous other corporate behemoths have a financial clout that exceeds many nation states? Does he really believe that their intentions are even remotely altruistic? This is not to say that the corporate elite are the only villains in the game; after all, they are only performing the actions that their enterprises require of them, expanding their holdings and endlessly growing the “bottom line.”
The question that no one is prepared to ask: Are we happier now that we can buy all this stuff?
If humanity is to survive, corporations must be restrained, humanized and adequately regulated. Whose job is that? Politicians spring to mind. But politicians are beholden to, and often part of, the corporate structure itself. Also they must answer to the population at large, or a plurality of it (supposedly so in a democracy).
So, ultimately, all of us are responsible: the corporatists, the political class and we, the great unwashed masses. We have come to revere the system we created by collectively spending beyond our means and living on credit. The political elites strive to please everyone (but never succeed); the plutocrats increasingly do as they please.
The only solution is for humanity as a whole to recognize the problem, abstain from aggression, value co-operation, embrace win–win solutions, live within our means and ensure that every citizen has access to the basic needs—sufficient food, adequate shelter, universal healthcare and a universal basic living wage.
But then Taylor bemoans the intrusion into his peaceful existence by “the environmental movement.” Why does a certain segment of society feel intimidated by the protests of a group of people who see clearly the dire circumstances we are in and desperately try to raise the alarm? Do they think this poorly financed assembly of thinkers and activists are capable of depriving them? Why are these ecology-based pleas for sanity, which are solidly grounded in scientific rationality, ignored? The same reaction is never elicited when a conventional economist predicts a similar threat to our financial well-being. My experience with the environmental movement is that many of its members receive minuscule remuneration but dedicate long hours trying to make the world a better place and frequently put themselves in acute danger—particularly in the Third World.
The last question that no one is prepared to ask: Are we happier now that we can buy all this stuff? People will almost always answer affirmatively, for fear of losing face or social acceptability. The Buddha said in the four noble truths that life is suffering (a poor translation from the original Pali, which more closely defines the condition as frustration, disappointment, ennui). Further, the root causes of these feelings are “desires, cravings and aversions,” all of which are prime movers in our consumer culture. You deserve that new car, bigger house, luxury cruise, diamond ring, promotion etc. You earned it. This is the message we are barraged with 24/7, and anyone critiquing it is called a heretic and a blasphemer.
So, how to get out of this matrix of consumption? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as popping a red pill. Like any addiction it takes effort, strength of will and the courage to be an outsider. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb must want to change.
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