The Real Trap of Consumerism

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In this Our Changing Climate climate change essay,  I look at the real trap of consumerism. Specifically, I dive into why consumerism is not actually the real cause of exploitation and the climate crisis, but instead a symptom of capitalism. Capitalist overproduction drives companies and corporations to create false needs and desires, which leads to overconsumption. We need to shift our attention away from consumerism and overconsumption and towards overproduction.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

With every passing moment, a chance to buy something is at your fingertips. That new pair of pants you just saw on Instagram, the latest gaming PC that your favorite streamer uses, or the newest line of Teslas to make you feel like you're saving the planet all bombard you with visions of what you could be. In the Imperial Core, buying things has become the stuff of life. To feel good, you shop. If you're bored, you browse things to buy. If you want to be ethical, you don't stop buying. You just need to find the right brand to buy from. Seemingly, our whole lives are wrapped up in the vicious cycle of working all day and then spending all of our money to fill the void in our lives. Consumerism is a problem that runs rampant in imperialist countries like the United States. It's right up in our faces at every moment. It can be easy to see this conspicuous spending and claim that overconsumption is the source of many of our environmental problems. Consumers are, after all, the ones making the choices at the checkout counter. They're the ones voting with their dollars. But today we're going to dive into this mistaken worldview. Consumerism is not the problem. It's a trap. It's a symptom of a much larger and more insidious problem of capitalism that lurks in the shadows. Today we look at the real problem with consumerism and how we really combat the out-of-control waste and accumulation of stuff. Spend enough time on the internet and you're bound to buy something. How could you not when Amazon offers free shipping and an option to click just one button to speed you through the checkout process? Or when the new online marketplace Timu offers rock bottom prices for basically any good you could ever want. Consumerism in the US has risen precipitously, with total retail sales more than doubling since 2013. Indeed, the percentage of households with two or more cars has increased dramatically from 22% in 1960 to 59% in 2020, while the average home size expanded by 149% from 1,595 square feet to 2,383 square feet in 2022. And when families run out of space to put all of their stuff, they've turned to storage units. In the United States, an estimated 14.6 million households rent additional storage to keep all of their additional stuff. This generates the self-storage industry $29 billion in revenue every year. And all this growth hasn't been to accommodate larger families because the average family size has actually decreased by 16% from 1980. And this expansion of consumption has had disastrous effects on the environment. Despite being home to just 5% of the world's population, the United States consumes 15.7% of the world's total fossil fuel energy. In the United States, between 30 to 40% of food gets wasted through a combination of on-farm loss, transportation, store overstocking, and lack of at-home planning. The average American emits 14.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, which is more than triple that of the global average of 4.7. Yet despite unprecedented consumption rates and a glut of almost every gadget and appliance imaginable flooding the market, people in the United States aren't that happy. According to the General Social Survey, only 25% of Americans are satisfied with their life, a percentage that slowly declined since the 1970s and plummeted during the pandemic. In part, this is due to the vast inequalities that cleave the United States. As some fill up their oversized homes and storage units with stuff, many struggle to survive. Over 42 million people rely on food stamps to put food on the table. While more than 650,000 people experience homelessness across the country. As the famous quote from economist William Gibson goes, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. Even for those who do enjoy excessive and conspicuous consumption of the newest Tesla or Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro, more consumption and more income don't necessarily lead to more happiness. A phenomenon that has been deemed the Easterland paradox. A concept that claims that after basic needs are met, economic growth and higher incomes don't necessarily lead to greater happiness. With all this in mind, it's clear that the capitalist hub of the world is on a dangerous path. A path that is not only leaving us overworked, in debt, and unhappy, but is also driving us headlong into a ruinous collision point. Paraphrasing scholar Timothy Jackson, Diana Stewart and fellow researchers write in a paper that considering the biophysical limitations of the Earth, extreme resource and material consumption on a finite planet means it is not a matter of if the economy will contract, but when. In short, the Imperial core is consuming far more than is sustainable for human well-being and the planet. But is consumerism really the problem? Are the consumption habits of the masses really the driving force between our environmental and social ails? These are the crucial questions. Ones that hand us the keys to what Karl Marx calls the hidden abode of production. Behind every dollar spent on that buttermelter you saw on TikTok or that automatic pot stir you saw on Instagram lies a corporation. A company eager to offload its product into your hands to generate profit. The core engine of capitalism is its constant demand for capital accumulation. Capitalists must incessantly expand their productive capacities through new technologies and decreasing labor costs to create the most commodities for the lowest prices. If they fail to do so, they get eaten alive by other, more capable owners who've managed to create more products at cheaper prices. This process of constant accumulation and expansion creates overproduction. Production that generates piles of commodities that must be sold to the masses to continue the cycle of capital accumulation. Because exchanging products for even more money is essential to complete the last leg of the money invested into commodities and sold for even more money cycle, also known as MCM. In a sense, consumption is a release valve of production. It expands and contracts, but never creates the flow of goods. As scholar Alan Schneiberg notes, consumption cannot be the leading factor in the expansion of production. Increased consumption may permit expanded production, but it does not generally cause it. Unrestrained capitalist production, then, is the root cause of what we see as the ails of consumerism. According to the average person living in the capitalist stronghold of the United States, and indeed most economists, however, corporations are merely responding to consumer demand. This is a skewed view of reality. The true culprits of all the stuff in our houses, in our landfills, and in our atmosphere is overproduction. Companies like Best Buy, for example, supply a false freedom when you walk into their store. The range of brands and products on their shelves might make you feel like you have freedom of choice, but in reality, you are only served cameras, laptops, or phones that generate profit or allow corporations to stay competitive. Factors that are often determined much more by labor costs, raw materials, and transportation logistics than consumer demand. In the housing market, for example, most people want affordable, comfortable living spaces. Yet the buildings developers construct are often luxury condos or turnkey mansions. Dwellings that are unaffordable for the majority but rake in extensive profit for real estate companies. So capitalists produce goods based on factors outside of the realm of consumerism. That being said, they still need people to buy their stuff. To complete that cycle of money, commodity, more money, capitalists must sell their products on the market to the masses, regardless of whether their products have actual use or not. So instead of focusing on producing things that are actually useful and necessary, capitalism has built a massive apparatus that manufactures false needs and desires. Here lies the true trap of consumerism. To assure the continued success of their businesses, capitalists manufacture desires and needs. We believe that it is wholly inherent wants, needs, and desires that are driving our consumption, that it is human nature, when in fact corporate forces are constantly whispering in our ear: consume, consume, consume. In 1919, Henry Ford and his fellow capitalists were scared. A rising insurgence of anarchist and socialist movements seized the hearts and minds of Americans across the country. Labor strikes, walkouts, and protests seeking a better workplace threatened to disrupt the profit-making machines of Ford's car-making factories. Then Ford had an idea. A double-edged sword wielded against the worker to maintain the status quo. Ford and his fellow industry leaders, as one paper describes, decided to reduce the chances of a worker rebellion by giving workers increased wages, bank credit, and more leisure time, all for the purpose of encouraging increased rates of consumption. As we've already seen, producers required the endless consumption of their commodities to stay competitive and profitable within a capitalist market system. Capitalists must keep consumers on an endless treadmill of consumption to reap maximum profit and continue accumulating capital. This leads to the real trap of consumerism. The manufacturing of what Marxist scholar Herbert Marcuse deemed false needs. To offload all of the useless gadgets, new iterations of the same tech, and just general junk onto the masses, capitalists have to make us believe that we actually need the latest iPhone or the Slap Chop or that latest TikTok trend, rather than just want it. This is where the vast apparatus of advertising comes into play. With ads like this.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Sadly, he isn't me. But if he stopped using lady-sented body wash and switched to old spice, he could smell like he's mean. And this.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

That's my recipe for magic. Companies assign emotional value and meaning to objects whose actual value stems from the labor and raw material costs needed to make that product. This process not only obscures exploitative practices employed during production, but also allows companies to set higher prices because the commodity is now imbued with certain politics and values. Tesla has been extremely effective at this task. Its brand imbues its cars with ideals of luxury, clean, and sustainable futurism. These values in turn mask the exploitative practices throughout Tesla's supply chain. Fellow YouTuber Yukopnik cheekily describes this process of value formation through the example of a chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Advertisers consciously understand that purchasing patterns directly correlate to personal values. Therefore, the chocolate bar becomes a locally grown, eco-friendly, soy-infused chocolate bar with a hipster biodegradable wrapper, and from whose every purchase two cents go to starving Sri Lankan children. Now, what's the actual difference between this world-saving chocolate bar and just a chocolate bar? Almost none. Made in the same factory with the same ingredients and for the same profit motive.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

In short, the advertising industry works tirelessly to wrap products in values like happiness, power, connection, or sustainability because they know it's much easier to sell a product to someone based on appeals to their principles rather than just describing the utility of the commodity. This value generation apparatus, otherwise known as the advertising industry, has become an essential lever in the capitalist machine. Advertising revenue has nearly doubled since 2012, with spending on digital display advertising in just the US alone reaching $63.5 billion in 2022. But in the age of social media, it's not just advertisements directly from companies that are pushing us to buy to boost our happiness or save the planet. Your favorite streamer or Instagram star is constantly influencing you to buy stuff, regardless of whether they're paid to or not. Even I support myself through ad revenue, which I'll get to later on in the video. This has disastrous consequences for our mental health as we constantly strive to fulfill those false needs generated for us. Especially as corporations wield algorithms and data collection to hone in on what product will best seduce you into buying. In essence, every day, a social media advertisement is placed in front of you with a product that you never even thought about buying. But because of data tracking and algorithmic decisions, that product now wiggles its way into your head like an earworm, and you can't stop thinking about how your life would be better with those slippers or that new watch. As a result, the good life becomes synonymous with consuming things. Happiness is equated with having products. Even streaming services keep you hooked and numb with features like the autoplay button. It allows you to constantly consume content and search for that next dopamine hit, giving you a short-term high. But in the process, we stay up way too late, which leaves us tired and burnt out. In fact, in 2017, Netflix's CEO very bluntly claimed that their biggest competitor was sleep. All of this advertising leads us to believe that the current system we live in actually benefits us. That keeping up with the Joneses, going deep into debt to buy a new car, or going on a shopping spree is the answer to our loneliness, alienation, and disconnection from the people and places around us. As Diana Stewart and her co-authors write, the ruling class, benefiting from the labor of others, perpetuates ideas that mystify, elude, and deceive workers into falsely believing that they benefit from the current system, can move up in the system, and have freedom in the system, as well as that no other system is possible. This is especially insidious in the realm of politics. Many of us have become so distant from the cogs of capitalist production and so entrenched in this advertising ideology that often political activism has been boiled down to voting with your dollars. This narrative is exactly what the fossil fuel industry has been hard at work creating for over 40 years through its popularization of carbon footprints, recycling, and individualization of action. When we as worker consumers are placated into believing that the most effective means of change is to transfer our money from one capitalist to another, the owners of production have won. They've distracted us from what's actually a threat to them collective organizing, labor agitation, union power, walkouts, and strikes. Activities that directly disrupt the cycle of capital accumulation. As scholar Douglas Kellner writes, capitalists wield image and spectacle to manipulate people into social conformity and into behaving in ways functional for the reproduction of capitalism. In essence, consuming not only perpetuates the endless cycle of production and capital accumulation, but it also pacifies the masses by narrowing the possibilities of a good life to the purchasing, having, and watching of more stuff. So if we know the root causes of consumerism, how then do we escape it? We already have the means and capacity to fulfill everyone's basic needs worldwide. Let that sink in. We already produce enough food to feed everyone globally, but we're wasting nearly a third of it. We already have the technology to create renewable energy for everyone on the planet, but we're nowhere near that level. We can build a world where everyone lives a good, meaningful, and environmentally ethical life. But that world will mean an end to shopping at Timu or SHIE. It means no Amazon one-click purchases. It means an end to incessant advertising. And here is where I struggle. I am complicit in that manufacturing of consumer desire. My channel is run on the manufacturing of false needs. My livelihood is based on getting you to become a Nebula member or signing up for ground news. Does it make it better if I actually like those services and use them? Or that Nebula is ad-free and based on membership revenue? I tell myself yes, because I live under this massive apparatus that is capitalism, but that doesn't feel good to me. Perhaps I could end YouTube ads if there is more Patreon support, but at this moment it's not financially feasible. At the end of the day, I have no good answer to how to live under capitalism while also struggling against it. In a sense, this is capitalism at work. It insidiously corrupts the very messages of those working to dismantle it, blaming those who must live within it for living within it. But even if I did cancel all ads, my action would only be like spooning a small drop of water out of a vast ocean. This is why we need more than just individual vote with your money approaches. Ideally, a mass revolution would upend our current capitalist system, and the adoption of full worker control of all companies and production would take root. Democratic planning through worker, consumer, and community councils would mean an emphasis on producing for actual planetary and personal needs rather than manufacturing false needs for profit. Of course, this kind of worker-led socialist economy could be a ways off in the future. We will need to build mass power globally if we are to see it come to fruition. This is why we need to employ non-reformist reforms like restricting and regulating advertising on the road to building that power. To beat back the manufacturing of false needs, we need to restrict the reach of corporations in our everyday lives. This could start as simply reinstating child advertising laws that were stripped away under the Reagan administration, or tamping down on social media and influencer marketing. We cannot sit by and simply hope that encouraging everyone to buy ethical, green, or just less stuff will somehow work to solve the multiple crises in front of us, especially as mass marketing and overproduction peck at individual consumers to buy, buy, buy. To truly escape the trap of consumerism, we must approach the problem from the root. We must erode power through regulation and non reformist reforms, and then eventually dismantle and reimagine the factories and offices of production that manufacture our desires. And on their rubble, build a world based on useful goods. A world where the stuff we make facilitates rather than alienates our connection to people and the planet.