> (population growth is) the primary driver of increased consumption I disagree. My suspicion is that the primary driver is marketing, telling people that happ

> (population growth is) the primary driver of increased consumption I disagree. My suspicion is that the primary driver is marketing, telling people that happiness and self-realizations comes from what you buy rather than what you give/create. My argument is better made by Adam Curtis in "The Century of the Self" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self which documents marketing over the 20th century. The basic thesis is that the industrial revolution was so successful at producing goods that it produced more than people were willing to buy. It took tremendous effort to convince people that they should consume more.