4 ms·

We are not consumers

51 points by v4us 16y ago

wdewind 16y ago
Lacks depth: in order to be innovative we need focus, in order to have focus we need to be specialized, in order to be specialized we need to not focus on growing food when we program (or do brain surgery or rocket science). These support structures are necessary for competitive innovation (though I completely feel your pain). So if you want to make this argument, you need to figure out a way that it doesn't matter if the US competes globally anymore. That's the only way this works. Otherwise you just make us non competitive in the global market. When everyone else stops growing we can too, but unfortunately until then it's going to be pretty hard to convince people to stop consuming.
- roqetman 16y ago
  I think he was trying to get us to focus on not being called consumers first. Personally, I agree, it's an assumption that puts too much power in corporate hands. I agree with you as well, though, that it would require quite a large change for us to stop being consumers.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I think he has conflated two words: "consumer" and "buyer" - he doesn't seem too concerned with consumption as he is with buying things. We are all consumers - I eat 3 square meals a day, I burn some amount of fuel to keep myself warm, and I breathe an awfully large amount of air. The author here doesn't seem too concerned with whether this consumption is excessive, though. Whether or not we start producing more of what we consume, or we go back to a barter economy (which, if you'd pardon the bluntness, is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard recently) doesn't change our level of consumption, so his real problem is with buying crap. So let's not confuse the two terms.
    - shpxnvz 16y ago
      But we are also producers; most of us have to be in order to acquire money with which to purchase goods to consume. His point, initially at least, was that choosing to label ourselves as consumers leads to a discussion framed in terms of that behavior, at the expense of really evaluating all our options.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    Well it's probably not good to not call us consumers if that's what we are doing. I'm a big believer in being honest and trying to be happy with your lifestyle, not repressing the truth to find happiness. As for the comment about us being producers, while partially true the ratio between what you produce and what you consume is much more arbitrary than it should be. So we all sort of have to produce, but few do it in sync with the amount they consume (not pointing fingers or saying I do - I definitely don't).
xenophanes 16y ago
> that we can grow our own food, make and trade and share everything we need Grow our own food? I don't want to be a farmer. It's hard. Division of labor is awesome. As for sharing, how do you rationally decide who to give something to? The idea of "whoever needs X should have it" sounds nice, but the tricky part is figuring out who needs X. Prices have information about that, and we need information to make a rational decision. Also prices have information about when you shouldn't use X (because it's too hard to make) and should substitute Y instead. And as for trade, it's basically the same thing as buying except if you take away money you have to find someone who wants your stuff, and has stuff you want, instead of only one or the other, so it's harder to trade.
- geuis 16y ago
  You miss the point. I am a person, then a customer if I buy from you, a client if subscribe to your service. This is not an argument about economics, but instead the framing of who we are in the economic system.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    How is this not an argument about economics? The author makes specific arguments for growing one's own food, and returning to a barter economy. He makes a slight jab at the notion of not merely being consumers, but also creators, but it seems like the crux of his argument is that we should be disconnecting ourselves from corporations in their current form. Note: I think this idea overall is pretty dumb. A rejection of corporations in favor of cottage industries and barter economies? I'm pretty sure there is free love and tie-dye shirts in his future.
    - DannoHung 16y ago
      Personally, I'd settle for a rejection of the notion of "wealth" as the key indicator of success to something like, "long term sustained production capacity", where production capacity includes knowledge production and long term is on the scale of multiple human lifetimes.
rosser 16y ago
I've always preferred the term "citizen", myself.
- Saad_M 16y ago
  James Kunstler said it best: “Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as ‘Consumers.’ OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, rights, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.” http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_diss...
  - masterj 16y ago
    Kunstler's demeanor rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time, but he makes very good points. That TED talk changed the way I look at a lot of things in life after I saw it years ago.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
euroclydon 16y ago
If you value your time, then it really pays to investigate the ways in which you spend money, and the system that is in place to encourage that spending and even make it seem normal. There are questions you can ask, for instance, if you are an employee of someone else: How much do I get paid per hour? How much money do I need to sustain my lifestyle? How many hours per week do I need to work to sustain my lifestyle? What if it's only 25 hours? Are there full-time professional jobs out there which only require 25 hours of work per week? Why not? Is it because we're supposed to spend the money earned in the other 15 hours on stuff we don't need? When did I make the decision to work 15 more hours to buy stuff I don't really need, and could I be enjoying my life more by having those 15 hours instead of the stuff?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Are there full-time professional jobs out there which only require 25 hours of work per week? Why not? Because by definition, 25 hours/week is part time. Incidentally, if you wish to work little, you can do so. 80% of the poor don't work at all, and nevertheless live a lifestyle which a few decades ago would have been called "middle class". I don't see much reason you can't do the same, unless of course you actually want some of the stuff that extra 15 hours/week can buy. If you do skilled labor, you can almost certainly consult less than 40 hours/week (on average, over a year).
  - dhyasama 16y ago
    Do you have data to support the statement that 80% of poor people don't work? How do you define poor? How do you define middle class? I have a hard time believing someone poor enough to receive food stamps for example is living a life anything like what my parents were living when they were my age (30 years ago).
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Poor is defined by the US poverty line. The actual number of poor people who don't work (and aren't looking for work) is 78% as of 2008. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf Lifestyles of the poor, in terms of consumer goods and services. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/01/Understanding-Poverty-in-America http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/01/Understandi...
colincopley 16y ago
I'm poor so I don't buy a lot of things, books from charity shops, refurbished computers, so I feel like big corporations are after me because I'm a bad consumer. Am I a bad person?
- mbubb 16y ago
  At times it seems like an undeniable conclusion. Notsure exactly why but your pithy post reminded me of the Ginsberg poem "America"
csallen 16y ago
What's so wrong with buying? What was so great about the tribal lifestyle? Trading and bartering are just raw forms of buying: You work, grow potatoes, then trade those potatoes for something you need. Why is that better than working, earning money, and trading that money for something you need? I'd be more inclined to indulge the author's suggestion that we stop being consumers if he actually provided some supporting arguments.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  Exactly. Would people a thousand years ago still have bartered if they had a stable currency to use instead? I doubt it. They bartered because a currency the king offered might be gone next week if he died in the latest city siege.
Isamu 16y ago
"Consumer" is a role. Roles are not exclusive. A role makes sense in a particular context, e.g. where there is a producer of a particular thing and a consumer. I am absolutely a Consumer. And I am a Producer, or a Creator, which provides my income for my consumer lifestyle.
mbubb 16y ago
A good point and a valid concern. I didnt read this as a return to barter nor tribalism but instead a comment of the reduced subject. Late Modernist and Postmodernist debates on subjectivity tend to see the Enlightenment idea of a coherent subject as being completely fragmented to the point of collapse. It is a double-edged issue. The 'death' of the subject means on the one hand we are free to imagine and invent new relationships. But on the other hand because our notions of freedom derive from notions of subjectivity there is danger of losing freedom. Consumerist culture exploits this exact split - as consumers, we are told how free and unique we are as an advertising ploy and then end up all wearing the same thing... We are also easily manipulated by mass media distracted by nonissues while serious threats to freedom remain relatively ignored. If we 'buy' too much into this identity, what is left are relationships in which subjectivity is inverted. Subjectivity in this case lies more in the corporation than in the human subject. (As reflected in that bizarre Supreme Court decision of the last year.) We do need to fight this. And it is not a right nor a left issue. Both sides decry the erosion of freedom but see different causes. What is generally lacking in us today is what Kant referred to as 'Speculative Reason' or more colloquially the ability to think - creatively, imaginatively,actively and constructively. Consumers dont do that - nor do constituents nor employees, etc. "Hackers and Painters" do. Makers do. That is a key - we (as consumers) forget that we can make, create. And if we as humans have any purpose, that is it. In fact we are only knowable in what we create (Vico "verum factum") I had a long rambling talk in the dogrun last night with an intelligent and non-technical lawyer who reads Popular Mechanics for fun. So I babbled on for awhile about makezine, OReilly press, Linux, Arduino stuff he did not know about. And it made me think of how exciting this field can be at times - not because of the technical advance but of the remarkable creativity. So I dont think the point is for 'tiedyes' and subsistence farming but to become very conscious of the breakdown of subjectivity and the potential danger in the greatly reduces roles that are left in its fragmentation.
theorique 16y ago
The things you own, end up owning you (Tyler Durden)
alsomike 16y ago
This is naive. Creation is just the new form of consumerism! Think about how much money changes hands today based on work of millions of creators all trying to be the latest YouTube star. To cope with the meaningless and alienation of modern life, they're buying attention instead of commodities, using what they create as currency. In that sense, it is a barter economy, except the middle man takes his cut by selling ads on top of the content. And, oh yeah, don't forget about all the actual consumption you have to do in order to be a creator: a nice computer, a video camera, some video editing software, fast internet connection, etc. I guess that doesn't count as consumption if you're a "creator". It's weird how profitable all this "anti-consumption" is! Is this really liberation? It's certainly marketed that way by the people who profit most from it. What if it's really just exploitation marketed as liberation?
SkyMarshal 16y ago
You are a Citizen, not a consumer.
gruseom 16y ago
Use of "consumer" as the default for a human being in our society is emblematic of everything that is wrong with it. Consumption is a natural part of normal life; it is not who we are. Every time I hear that word -- which is whenever I listen to media, approximately -- I think of pigs at the trough.

51 points by v4us 16y ago

Lacks depth: in order to be innovative we need focus, in order to have focus we need to be specialized, in order to be specialized we need to not focus on growing food when we program (or do brain surgery or rocket science). These support structures are necessary for competitive innovation (though I completely feel your pain). So if you want to make this argument, you need to figure out a way that it doesn't matter if the US competes globally anymore. That's the only way this works. Otherwise you just make us non competitive in the global market. When everyone else stops growing we can too, but unfortunately until then it's going to be pretty hard to convince people to stop consuming.

roqetman 16y ago
I think he was trying to get us to focus on not being called consumers first. Personally, I agree, it's an assumption that puts too much power in corporate hands. I agree with you as well, though, that it would require quite a large change for us to stop being consumers.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I think he has conflated two words: "consumer" and "buyer" - he doesn't seem too concerned with consumption as he is with buying things. We are all consumers - I eat 3 square meals a day, I burn some amount of fuel to keep myself warm, and I breathe an awfully large amount of air. The author here doesn't seem too concerned with whether this consumption is excessive, though. Whether or not we start producing more of what we consume, or we go back to a barter economy (which, if you'd pardon the bluntness, is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard recently) doesn't change our level of consumption, so his real problem is with buying crap. So let's not confuse the two terms.
  - shpxnvz 16y ago
    But we are also producers; most of us have to be in order to acquire money with which to purchase goods to consume. His point, initially at least, was that choosing to label ourselves as consumers leads to a discussion framed in terms of that behavior, at the expense of really evaluating all our options.
- wdewind 16y ago
  Well it's probably not good to not call us consumers if that's what we are doing. I'm a big believer in being honest and trying to be happy with your lifestyle, not repressing the truth to find happiness. As for the comment about us being producers, while partially true the ratio between what you produce and what you consume is much more arbitrary than it should be. So we all sort of have to produce, but few do it in sync with the amount they consume (not pointing fingers or saying I do - I definitely don't).

xenophanes 16y ago

> that we can grow our own food, make and trade and share everything we need Grow our own food? I don't want to be a farmer. It's hard. Division of labor is awesome. As for sharing, how do you rationally decide who to give something to? The idea of "whoever needs X should have it" sounds nice, but the tricky part is figuring out who needs X. Prices have information about that, and we need information to make a rational decision. Also prices have information about when you shouldn't use X (because it's too hard to make) and should substitute Y instead. And as for trade, it's basically the same thing as buying except if you take away money you have to find someone who wants your stuff, and has stuff you want, instead of only one or the other, so it's harder to trade.

geuis 16y ago
You miss the point. I am a person, then a customer if I buy from you, a client if subscribe to your service. This is not an argument about economics, but instead the framing of who we are in the economic system.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  How is this not an argument about economics? The author makes specific arguments for growing one's own food, and returning to a barter economy. He makes a slight jab at the notion of not merely being consumers, but also creators, but it seems like the crux of his argument is that we should be disconnecting ourselves from corporations in their current form. Note: I think this idea overall is pretty dumb. A rejection of corporations in favor of cottage industries and barter economies? I'm pretty sure there is free love and tie-dye shirts in his future.
  - DannoHung 16y ago
    Personally, I'd settle for a rejection of the notion of "wealth" as the key indicator of success to something like, "long term sustained production capacity", where production capacity includes knowledge production and long term is on the scale of multiple human lifetimes.

rosser 16y ago

I've always preferred the term "citizen", myself.

Saad_M 16y ago
James Kunstler said it best: “Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as ‘Consumers.’ OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, rights, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.” http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_diss...
- masterj 16y ago
  Kunstler's demeanor rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time, but he makes very good points. That TED talk changed the way I look at a lot of things in life after I saw it years ago.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

euroclydon 16y ago

If you value your time, then it really pays to investigate the ways in which you spend money, and the system that is in place to encourage that spending and even make it seem normal. There are questions you can ask, for instance, if you are an employee of someone else: How much do I get paid per hour? How much money do I need to sustain my lifestyle? How many hours per week do I need to work to sustain my lifestyle? What if it's only 25 hours? Are there full-time professional jobs out there which only require 25 hours of work per week? Why not? Is it because we're supposed to spend the money earned in the other 15 hours on stuff we don't need? When did I make the decision to work 15 more hours to buy stuff I don't really need, and could I be enjoying my life more by having those 15 hours instead of the stuff?

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Are there full-time professional jobs out there which only require 25 hours of work per week? Why not? Because by definition, 25 hours/week is part time. Incidentally, if you wish to work little, you can do so. 80% of the poor don't work at all, and nevertheless live a lifestyle which a few decades ago would have been called "middle class". I don't see much reason you can't do the same, unless of course you actually want some of the stuff that extra 15 hours/week can buy. If you do skilled labor, you can almost certainly consult less than 40 hours/week (on average, over a year).
- dhyasama 16y ago
  Do you have data to support the statement that 80% of poor people don't work? How do you define poor? How do you define middle class? I have a hard time believing someone poor enough to receive food stamps for example is living a life anything like what my parents were living when they were my age (30 years ago).
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Poor is defined by the US poverty line. The actual number of poor people who don't work (and aren't looking for work) is 78% as of 2008. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf Lifestyles of the poor, in terms of consumer goods and services. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/01/Understanding-Poverty-in-America http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/01/Understandi...

colincopley 16y ago

I'm poor so I don't buy a lot of things, books from charity shops, refurbished computers, so I feel like big corporations are after me because I'm a bad consumer. Am I a bad person?

mbubb 16y ago
At times it seems like an undeniable conclusion. Notsure exactly why but your pithy post reminded me of the Ginsberg poem "America"

csallen 16y ago

What's so wrong with buying? What was so great about the tribal lifestyle? Trading and bartering are just raw forms of buying: You work, grow potatoes, then trade those potatoes for something you need. Why is that better than working, earning money, and trading that money for something you need? I'd be more inclined to indulge the author's suggestion that we stop being consumers if he actually provided some supporting arguments.

trafficlight 16y ago
Exactly. Would people a thousand years ago still have bartered if they had a stable currency to use instead? I doubt it. They bartered because a currency the king offered might be gone next week if he died in the latest city siege.

Isamu 16y ago

"Consumer" is a role. Roles are not exclusive. A role makes sense in a particular context, e.g. where there is a producer of a particular thing and a consumer. I am absolutely a Consumer. And I am a Producer, or a Creator, which provides my income for my consumer lifestyle.

mbubb 16y ago

A good point and a valid concern. I didnt read this as a return to barter nor tribalism but instead a comment of the reduced subject. Late Modernist and Postmodernist debates on subjectivity tend to see the Enlightenment idea of a coherent subject as being completely fragmented to the point of collapse. It is a double-edged issue. The 'death' of the subject means on the one hand we are free to imagine and invent new relationships. But on the other hand because our notions of freedom derive from notions of subjectivity there is danger of losing freedom. Consumerist culture exploits this exact split - as consumers, we are told how free and unique we are as an advertising ploy and then end up all wearing the same thing... We are also easily manipulated by mass media distracted by nonissues while serious threats to freedom remain relatively ignored. If we 'buy' too much into this identity, what is left are relationships in which subjectivity is inverted. Subjectivity in this case lies more in the corporation than in the human subject. (As reflected in that bizarre Supreme Court decision of the last year.) We do need to fight this. And it is not a right nor a left issue. Both sides decry the erosion of freedom but see different causes. What is generally lacking in us today is what Kant referred to as 'Speculative Reason' or more colloquially the ability to think - creatively, imaginatively,actively and constructively. Consumers dont do that - nor do constituents nor employees, etc. "Hackers and Painters" do. Makers do. That is a key - we (as consumers) forget that we can make, create. And if we as humans have any purpose, that is it. In fact we are only knowable in what we create (Vico "verum factum") I had a long rambling talk in the dogrun last night with an intelligent and non-technical lawyer who reads Popular Mechanics for fun. So I babbled on for awhile about makezine, OReilly press, Linux, Arduino stuff he did not know about. And it made me think of how exciting this field can be at times - not because of the technical advance but of the remarkable creativity. So I dont think the point is for 'tiedyes' and subsistence farming but to become very conscious of the breakdown of subjectivity and the potential danger in the greatly reduces roles that are left in its fragmentation.

theorique 16y ago

The things you own, end up owning you (Tyler Durden)

alsomike 16y ago

This is naive. Creation is just the new form of consumerism! Think about how much money changes hands today based on work of millions of creators all trying to be the latest YouTube star. To cope with the meaningless and alienation of modern life, they're buying attention instead of commodities, using what they create as currency. In that sense, it is a barter economy, except the middle man takes his cut by selling ads on top of the content. And, oh yeah, don't forget about all the actual consumption you have to do in order to be a creator: a nice computer, a video camera, some video editing software, fast internet connection, etc. I guess that doesn't count as consumption if you're a "creator". It's weird how profitable all this "anti-consumption" is! Is this really liberation? It's certainly marketed that way by the people who profit most from it. What if it's really just exploitation marketed as liberation?

SkyMarshal 16y ago

You are a Citizen, not a consumer.

gruseom 16y ago

Use of "consumer" as the default for a human being in our society is emblematic of everything that is wrong with it. Consumption is a natural part of normal life; it is not who we are. Every time I hear that word -- which is whenever I listen to media, approximately -- I think of pigs at the trough.