The problem is not simply that capitalism produces too much, but that it produces the wrong stuff: SUVs, fast fashion and planned obsolescence instead of public transit, affordable housing and universal healthcare. It overuses resources and still fails to meet even basic needs.
In this respect it is a wildly inefficient system. This is the sort of irrationality you get when production is organized around the interests of corporate profit and elite accumulation, rather than around human well-being and ecology.
The antidote to this madness is economic democracy. Right now decisions about what to produce and how to use resources are made mostly by the 1%. So, democratize production. Under democratic conditions people choose to focus production more around social and ecological goals.
@jasonhickel Hold on a moment. You seem to be implying that the capital owning classes are making arbitrary decisions about what to produce in some sort of vacuum. They are not. 100% of the goods and services produced are to fill demand, whether real or perceived, and the fact is that the majority of comsumer goods are bought by people who are middle and lower class. All of us willingly spend our money, our capital, on an astonishing array of things that are, frankly, purely luxuries. It would be tedious to point to the upteen billions of dollars spent by people in developed nations on so many things that are completely unnecessary (just alcohol and cigarettes alone is astonishing and those are literal poisons!) And if you think that all that spending is just from the "upper class" then perhaps you should look into those stats a bit more. People could chose to spend their extra resources on helping their fellow men, and some do, but most would rather go shopping (or better yet shop on amazon!). The reason Musk and Bezos have billions while unicef struggles is not some conspiracy, its because we all vote with our dollars and turns out, we voted for them.
@Clementulus @jasonhickel I think he means that much of the desire/demand for unnecessary goods is created by the upper reaches of the capitalist class (by way of marketing). Think fashion alone and how it dictates what’s in and out at ever-increasing speed (fast-fashion). He’s asking us to change the relationship between producers and consumers not just by demanding different/fewer goods but, ideally, participating more on the production side. That’s what I took away.
@okmel @jasonhickel I find that a very paternalistic outlook. Something like "poor people can't think for themselves so we need to protect them from those cunning manipulators." Such b.s. I know lots of people from all backgrounds who aren't suckered into wasting their hard earned money on frivolities. Most of those people go on to use their money to create actual capital of their own and help their kids enjoy a better quality of life than they had. Its an ethic that can be learned by anyone and there aren't any gatekeepers to that knowledge. But it's hard work and it's much more pleasurable to spend every spare dollar on enjoyable things now so that's what a lot of people do. Telling them that their choices are the product of some wealthy class just infantilizes them. I won't do it.
@Clementulus @okmel @jasonhickel
Witness the desire following the pandemic to give up on material things, seek out more rural living & slower pace along with WFH.
It's these global shocks that can make a positive change if allowed by vested interests. Remove ability to influence from those vested interests then change could be rapid.
@paul_briley @okmel @jasonhickel I completely agree that wealthy persons/corporations can use their resources to get away with injustices and do on a regular basis. However, the original point and what I was responding to was that someone was stating that "capitalism" (as in those powerful actors just mentioned) was wasting resources making useless things (like luxury items) but my argument was that they are responding to demand from consumers who come from all social strata. That is why I stated that the use of resources in the western democracies are more or less democratic already since they follow market pressure (people voting with their dollars).
@Clementulus @okmel @jasonhickel
Chicken & egg. If there were no marketing, no perceived peer pressure push to emulate others, would there be the demand. Or there's an innate demand that marketing just fulfills. I'm with the former. Demand appears innate in Western democracies but in reality it's artificially created.
@paul_briley @okmel @jasonhickel Perhaps. However, from my travels in developing nations I have observed that even people who consume a small fraction of the media we do in the west, they are no less driven towards material things (though they often lack the resources to satisfy these desires as much as we can). Also, honest self reflection goes a long way. It is easy to recognize that there are constant desires in myself to waste resources on things I don't remotely need and I know that I consume basically no advertising, nor do have a vision for my life that is at all in line with the consumerist ideal. Yet I still recognize that it takes constant effort to make sure that I am not being wasteful. Plus, authors as far back as classical Greece often remark on the propensity of human beings to be driven to excess and they were not sitting around watching cable!
@Clementulus @okmel @jasonhickel
Very true about ancient Greece. I do see the propensity to accumulate is a human trait to some extent. But not innate.
Some Amazonian & African hunter gatherers do not show the same trait. And prior to European conquest in North America there too was considerably less tendency to accumulate.
Most developing nations have strong peer pressure in them, certainly in families I've interacted with.
@paul_briley @okmel @jasonhickel You bring up ann interesting point. While I have little knowledge of the South American indigenous peoples, I do have some familiarity with the indigenous peoples of my area. If you listen to their traditional stories (which they have been telling since before European settlers arrived) many of them have moral themes about guarding against excesses (like overconsumption) because it was also an issue for those people. I have also seen traditional African stories with the same message. It seems to me that most if not all peoples believe that that the drive to excess is inherent and that it takes effort to guard against it. RIP J.J Rousseau.
@Clementulus @okmel @jasonhickel
Democracies are currently flawed because politicians can be bought through donations and policy towards an industry or series of firms can be controlled by a small number of rich donors who also control the media narrative.
Change the narrative, the message, along with stopping firms hijacking political discourse then everyone else may start to view their consumption differently.