Consumerism and Consumption in our Modern $ociety (part II)

Consumerism and Consumption in our Modern $ociety (part II)

This entry is long overdue. Some of you loyal long term readers might still remember when I wrote part I, incl. Children as Consumers and Effects of Consumerism,  on 21st Feb 2004.

Now, finally it's time for part II.

Let me begin with a little statistic to warm-up:

We consume a variety of resources and products today having moved beyond basic needs to include luxury items and technological innovations to try to improve efficiency or entertainment value. Such consumption beyond minimal and basic needs is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, as throughout history we have always sought to find ways to make our lives a bit easier to live. However, increasingly, there are important issues around consumerism that I feel need to be understood.

For example:

• How are the products and resources we consume actually produced?


• What are the impacts of that process of production on the environment, society, on individuals?


• What are the impacts of certain forms of consumption on the environment, on society, on individuals?


• Which actors influence our choices of consumption?


• Which actors influence how and why things are produced or not?


• What is a necessity and what is a luxury?


• How do demands on items affect the requirements placed upon the environment?


• How do consumption habits change as societies change?


• Businesses and advertising are major engines in promoting the consumption of products so that they may survive. How much of what we consume is influenced by their needs versus our needs?


• Also influential is the very culture of today in many countries, as well as the media and the political institutions themselves. What is the impact on poorer nations and people on the demands of the wealthier nations and people that are able to afford to consume more?


• How do material values influence our relationships with other people?


• What impact does that have on our personal values?


• And so on.

The impacts of consumerism, positive and negative are very significant to all aspects of our lives, as well as our planet. But equally important to bear in mind in discussing consumption patterns is the underlying system that promotes certain types of consumption and not other types.

Inherent in today's global economic system is the wasteful use of resources, labor and capital. These need to be addressed. Waste does not just include things like 'via not recycling' etc; it is deep within the system.

The U.N. statistics above are hard hitting, highlight one of the major impacts of today's form of corporate-led globalization.

“Over” population is usually blamed as the major cause of environmental degradation, but the above statistics strongly suggests otherwise. As we will see, consumption patterns today are not to meet everyone's needs. The system that drives these consumption patterns also contribute to inequality of consumption patterns too.

Wasted Wealth, Capital, Labor and Resources

To illustrate what kind of waste I am refering to I am taking the sugar industry as an example where the following points about waste and the effects of sugar and related industries I want to highlight:

• Forests must be cleared to plant sugar


• Wood or fossil fuel is needed in processing steps


• Waste products from processing affect the environment


• Parallel consumption of other items related to sugar, including coffee, tea, chocolate, etc. all collectively put additional resource requirements on the environment


• Numerous “hidden” or “external” costs include (and this is a very limited set of examples):
  
  
  
  • To create, maintain and support the office buildings where people work in these industries
  
  
  • To support the marketing
  
  
  • To support efforts in creating demands as well as meeting real and resulting demands
  
  
  • To distribute and sell
  
  
  • To create new ideas and products
  
  
  • To create, maintain and support factories to make the actual products
  
  
  • To create the materials for packaging
  
  
  • To deal with the waste/disposal of these packages
  
  
  • To deal with resulting health problems and the resources used to deal with them
  
  
  • To pay and support lobbyists to help governments and regulation agencies see their perspectives
  
  
  • and so on.
  
  
  
  

These hidden costs are significant and enormous, and just examples, not complete lists. The sugar industry supports and is supported by soda drinks, fast food, sweets, chocolates and many other products and industries and so the waste (in the efficiency sense as well as ecological sense) and costs multiply.

The above lists could be applied to most wasteful industries, not just sugar. For example, beef, all the other commodities that were mentioned in other entries: automobile, tobacco, tea, coffee, medical/pharmaceutical industry and so on.

This “waste” is deep within our current system. Yet:

• The economic systems of today measure growth and the more the better.


• Hence more demand created by health costs as well as paying for environmental cleanup (if at all), for dealing with poverty and hunger related issues and so on, are all counted towards a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)!


• Gross Domestic Product is the most widely used indicator of economic level. It is basically the total value of all products and services bought and sold, a measure of money changing hands.


• Therefore, the waste that this really is, is not accounted for.


• As Global Exchange also argues GDP is an inappropriate measure of economic health because
  
  
  
  • it makes no distinction between productive and destructive activities. For example, illness, crime, and natural disasters all cause the GDP to increase, as money is spent to treat the sick, jail prisoners, and repair the damage. In this way the GDP rises even as the quality of life declines.
  
  
  • it has no way of assessing the value of natural resources until they enter the monetary economy, or in other words, are consumed.
  
  
  • it completely ignores all activities and services that have no price attached to them. For example, essential functions performed by the family, community, and volunteers, such as housework and child care, don't count in the GDP. When these services have to be paid for because people no longer have time for them, the GDP goes up — putting a positive value on the erosion of the social fabric.
  
  
  
  


• The cyclic system of waste goes on unabated.


• We are sort of locked into this perpetual waste cycle without realizing it, because we see in the wealthy countries additional wealth being created!

Not to mention how many resources are actually being wasted during military conflicts.

At this point it is worth mentioning a quote by J.W. Smith to highlight further power politics etc.:

Except for religious conflicts and the petty wars of feudal lords, wars are primarily fought over resources and trade. President Woodrow Wilson recognized that this was the cause of World War I: “Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?”



- J.W. Smith, Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle for the Twenty-First Century, (M.E. Sharpe, 2000) p.58

The above only begins to hint at the amount of resources not just wasted in the process of war itself, but in maintaining the disparities that the wars themselves were about. This is a huge topic in itself, and J.W. Smith describes this in incredible detail in his above-mentioned book (plus: The World's Wasted Wealth 2).

Another thing also not touched is the immense resources that go into the international finance related industries.

• As mentioned on this blog, the globalization policies of today worsen disparities and poverty.


• Structural adjustments and free trade policies spearheaded by the Washington Consensus/IMF/World Bank/WTO etc. open up entire nations economies for freer and more volatile flow of capital. For most poorer nations this has led to the predicted downward spiral of living standards and even resulted in financial crisis.


• The cyclical pattern throughout the 700 or 800 years of mercantile, imperial and now capitalist history has seen overproduction crisis superceded by an increase in financial (increasingly speculative) activity.
  
  
  
  • That is, money shifts from the so-called real economy to one where there is already money — just different ways of milking it out of the system in a way that concentrates its ownership is sought.
  
  
  • Today's globalization of finance is such a move into this area of “high finance”
  
  
  • (For more about this cyclical pattern and also the look at how most empires that have followed from production into high finance and have eventually collapsed as a result, at least up to the U.S. empire, see Giovanni Arrighi's The Long Twentieth Century (Verso Press, 1994). While he wrote the book in 1994 and therefore didn't see the patterns unfold just a few years, his model that he has developed has therefore not been applied as well as it could have to the U.S. However, one can see his model and re-apply it to the U.S. with the additional years of events that have transpired!)
  
  
  
  


• As a result, incredible amounts of resources are used to support financial centers that promote such systems, such as in New York, London etc.


• As listed above for the sugar example, here too, resources spent on office buildings, infrastructure and so on to support a wasteful system is itself wasteful.


• So much of this would not be needed if this waste was eliminated.


• It is not that none of this should be done at all. International trade and investment are always going to occur as it has for centuries. However, so much of it is wasteful that elimination of the waste would leave only productive functions remaining, and therefore provide more productive use of resources.

Even other issues, such as population-related issues should consider the impact of consumption on the planet more importantly and analyze where that consumption is taking place. Of course, if the entire world's population were to consume in similar ways as the wealthiest, then we would no doubt have even more environmental problems than we are already facing and in relation to how we consume we would have a serious over population issue. Yet, the roots of this would be in how resources are consumed etc, rather than just population growths and declines. Consumption modes, the political and economic models that support certain ways of consumption therefore have a far greater impact on the environment than “over” population, alone.

Note, this is not to say that rapid population growth is not an issue; it is. Historically population growths and declines have gone in line with agricultural and food production changes. But in recent history, there have been additional factors as well, so much so, that the patterns causing population changes a long time ago may not be the same patterns today in all cases. Populations grow and decline are based largely on socioeconomic factors, to the extent that often, when there is poverty, there may be an increase in population. Hence the consumption systems and other underlying causes of poverty are key issues in this perspective too.

So what has to change?!

All this does not mean we must stop consuming things, and restrict ourselves to the bare minimum to “save the planet.” - it doesn't, although it might be a good idea anyway.

• That is, we don't necessarily have to go from one extreme — the current system — to another extreme, such as stop consuming everything other than the bare necessities.


• The “consumer society” can still consume, but in different ways. The ways that Americans or Western Europeans consume resources today are regarded by many as unsustainable, but that is not the only way to consume resources.


• At the very least, we must look at our modes of consumption and the underlying economic, political, social and other factors that promote various ways of consumption.


• And this doesn't have to infringe on people's rights and freedoms, either! (In fact, what is hinted here is the opposite — that is, this is about extending and increasing rights to all so that the concentrated rights of a few does not dominate and negatively impact so much of the lives of most of humanity.)


• Sensible consumption and elimination of the vast waste and inefficiencies in current economic models (no small task though!) can allow similar levels of development, but potentially for all the people of the world. Consumption disparities are so stark (as highlighted by that U.N. figure — the world's wealthiest 20% consume a massive 86% of the world's resources), that this needs to be equalized in a sensible way.


• The fast food industry for example, doesn't need to be “banned” in some authoritarian manner;
  
  
  
  • A more responsible promotion of health policies, combined with a turn towards more sustainable consumption, etc. would make these over-sized industries come back to a more sensible size without such a forceful and sudden shock that may itself have social ramifications (such as being met with stern opposition and resistance, to say the least.) Of course a simple mass boycott would do as well.
  
  
  • Economically, a number of “external costs” would need to be internalized, such as the environmental damage caused by certain types of industrial agriculture, or other industries. In the example of fast food, the cheap burger may indeed be more expensive when factoring in these costs, but they will also be more realistic and represent the value to people and planet of consuming such items.
  
  
  • And for those concerned about cultural and other influences by the fast food industry, as their sizes comes back to a size more representative of what democracies want, then the large advertising and influencing budgets will also come down in size.
  
  
  • We can in fact see a “chain reaction” of positive effects like this!
  
  
  • Of course, a lot of this is idealistic. An industry on its own cannot do this, as others would just fill the power vacuum. If everyone were to do this simultaneously, that might provide a better chance as there is no vacuum to fill in.
  
  
  • (Of course, one of the challenges here is for those with current power and influence to be convinced that it is in their interest as well, to share, help eliminate this waste etc. When power holders of an era in any segment of society risk losing influence, throughout history, they naturally try their best to prevent losing their power and prestige. One wouldn't give it up that easily! Givanni Arrighi, in his book, The Long Twentieth Century (Verso Press, 1994) documents how even in prior centuries and through other cycles of various powers, protests by people standing up for social justice was often met with violent suppression — as is happening today. An unfortunate result was the strengthening of the belief systems of the power holders who were able to show others that their methods are the way to go!)
  
  
  
  


• Technology doesn't have to be shunned, as some would say.
  
  
  
  • Technologies should be encouraged to be used efficiently.
  
  
  • Efficient and necessary technologies should also be continually researched.
  
  
  • As elaborately described in her book Biopiracy, (South End Press, 1997), Vandana Shiva points out that technology is currently employed in a way that undermines people. Technology then should be used and employed in a way that enhances people's livelihoods, not work against it.
  
  
  • Incentive mechanisms such as wages, but fair wages, needs to be addressed, for example. (J.W. Smith points out one of the root causes of inequality in the world being found in trades between nations that have unequal pay for equally productive work.)
  
  
  • These are just some examples.
  
  
  
  


• However, the processes of how these products are created, sold, marketed, controlled, owned — as well as used — and so on, affect how wasteful or efficient the consumption becomes. For individuals though, there is a ramification of the realization that possibly one's job isn't as productive as originally thought. Real democracy, information from wider angles, cooperation and accountability is needed.

That's it for today.

~peace~

tags: consumerism  modern society  capitalism  

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