Consumerism

Products of the food industry presented on the lines of a supermarket in Portland, Oregon, United States. Photograph by Andreas Gursky.

Consumerism is the purchase or accumulation of goods and services considered non-essential.

Large-scale consumerism in contemporary society compromises natural resources and a sustainable economy. Alternatives to some of the problems of consumerism are sustainable development, environmentalism, degrowth, and responsible consumption. Advertising idealizes the satisfaction and personal happiness produced by consumerism.

Origin and anthropology of consumption

Consumerism began its development and growth throughout the 20th century as a direct consequence of the internal logic of capitalism and the appearance of advertising, tools that encourage consumption and generate new consumer needs. Consumerism has developed mainly in the so-called Western world; It later spread to other areas, and the term consumer society, created by social anthropology, became popular, referring to the massive consumption of products and services.

For Jeremy Rifkin, in the 1920s there was overproduction in the United States -motivated by an increase in productivity and a drop in demand (economy) due to the existence of a high number of unemployed due to technological changes - who found in marketing (marketing and advertising) the tool to increase, direct and control consumption.

Regarding the evolution from primitive egalitarian societies to differentiated class societies and the transition from exchange and reciprocity to accumulation -which reaches its apogee in today's society-, anthropologist Marvin Harris points out:

After the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe, the competitive acquisition of wealth once again became the fundamental criterion for achieving the status of Great man. Only in this case you great men They tried to take wealth from one another, and greater prestige and power were given to the individual who managed to accumulate and sustain the greatest fortune. During the early years of capitalism the greatest prestige was conferred on those who were richer but lived more frugally. Later, when their fortunes became more secure, the upper capitalist class resorted to consumption and wasteful conspicuous on a large scale to impress their rivals. They built great mansions, dressed in exclusive elegance, adorned with huge jewels and spoke with contempt of the impoverished masses. Meanwhile, the middle and lower classes continued to assign the highest prestige to those who worked most, spent less and opposed any form of conspicuous consumption and waste. But since the growth of industrial capacity began to saturate the consumer market, it was necessary to uproot the middle and lower classes of their vulgar habits. Publicity and mass media joined forces to induce the middle and lower class to stop saving and to buy, consume, waste or spend more and more goods and services. Hence the middle class status seekers confer the highest prestige on the most important and most conspicuous consumer.

Postures towards consumerism

Critical stances

«The consumption consumes you», Easy. anticonsumer.

For many people, the use of this word necessarily has a political charge, since, almost always, the one who uses the words consumerism and excessive consumption does so to criticize what they consider unnecessary consumption in other people.

A different way of interpreting the word "consumerism" it is to consider it as the organization of the economy of a society that, although as it is now, works to the satisfaction of both consumers and producers, it can be said that as a whole it wastes certain resources. A non-trivial example could be the use of plastic containers and bags, which pollute rivers and freshwater reservoirs and litter cities and suburban regions. The modern method is more comfortable and hygienic for consumers and increases the income of merchants, but from the point of view of the functioning of the economy as a whole, it also wastes a series of resources that were better used before.

Defensive Stances

Some argue that expenses are never unnecessary for those who consume, for example, a person considers that buying a car for ten thousand dollars is unnecessary because there is another one for five thousand that already covers their expenses. needs, then he will buy the five thousand. If you buy the one for ten thousand, it is only because it covers more needs than the one for five thousand. It is defended to activate the economy, favoring the industry and thus provide work.

Eco-design

Ecological design or ecodesign is understood as the systematic incorporation of environmental aspects in the design of products in order to reduce their possible negative impact on the environment throughout their entire life cycle.. We are now entering a phase, fortunately, in which recycling is extremely important for everyone. Supermarkets are already getting to work with the use of ecological bags, since polyethylene bags take more than two hundred years to biodegrade, and when they do, they become small toxic particles that directly affect nature.

Causes and consequences

Causes

The lack of identity of each one of the people by not knowing their essential needs, and by not being clear in relation to the needs of those closest to each one; influential factors such as: the imitation of television characters or other archetypes, which generate an idol to follow. These idols induce people with a lack of personal identity to consume certain unnecessary products, as a consequence: generation of infinite needs that cannot be met, non-happiness. Consumerism is mainly encouraged by:

• Advertising, which sometimes manages to convince the public that an expense is necessary when it was previously considered a luxury.
• The predisposition of using and pulling many products, without taking into account the damage this can do ecologically and economically.
• The low quality of many products, which lead to a relatively low life period (programmed obsolescence), which are attractive for their low cost, but in the long term they become more expensive and are more harmful to the environment.
• Some pathologies such as obesity or depression that make us believe more easily in misleading advertising, believing with this that we can solve our problem by indiscriminately consuming food, beverages, miraculous articles or other products.
• Inadequate disposal of objects that can be reused or recycled, either by us or by others.
• Culture and social pressure.
• Ignorance.

Effects of consumerism

Ecological balance

• Global: it is harmful to the ecological balance in its entirety, as there are currently many problems related to the excessive consumption of natural resources that is done globally as well as the one that the production processes mostly generate pollution. [1]
• Regional: the preference for unnecessary or easily replaceable products of a population produced in another region helps to unbalance the trade balance between regions.
• Social: The poor distribution of wealth is often helped, as consumers are generally of a lower socio-economic level than the owners of the companies generating consumer goods.
• Familiar: as we fall into consumerism we increase our expenses in an unnecessary way by buying things that we could avoid or reduce as products whose advertising promises miracles, low life products or substitute products of other natural ones.
• Personal: various consumer options are less healthy than those that are not. For example, making an orange juice at home instead of buying a package that besides containing preservative comes with containers that end up in the inorganic trash.

Attitudes towards consumerism

What increases it

• Consume single-use products or a small number of uses instead of more durable products. Examples: non-recyclable packaging instead of recyclable, disposable racks instead of one of interchangeable knifes, plastic bags of supermarket instead of resistant bags and disposable photographic cameras instead of a conventional one. The consumption of low-quality products that last less than others of higher quality can also be included here.
• Consuming products that generate large amounts of waste, in particular plastics and other non-biodegradable wastes. For example, consume small bottles of mineral water instead of larger bottles or tap water.
• The amount of inorganic trash we generate is significantly higher than the amount of organic trash.

Another characteristic of today's people is consumerism, when money dominates them, the city becomes a great market and its inhabitant a producer and consumer.

What reduces it

At the domestic level.

• Buy second-hand objects.
• Consider various consequences of a product before its acquisition, such as its impact on health, ecosystem and local and personal economy. Also the reason that makes it necessary, if it is a concrete need or artificially created through advertising or fashion.
• Buy only what is really necessary and indispensable.

Homo oeconomicus

The economic person has two faces, that of an entrepreneur and that of a consumer. The businessman is concerned about the prosperity of his business, the tendencies of business people are:

1. Have more and be bigger than others.
2. Celerity to carry out their own economic plans is as important as their massive character.
3. He attracts the new.
4. He has a longing for power.

The characteristic of economic values consists in being exchanged and consumed; that of spiritual values to be expressed and communicated.

The consumer person is not interested in philosophical, ethical, religious or moral ideals that involve genuinely helping the environment or other people disinterestedly as in other cultures, their role models are those of people who have economically successful, people full of material things, but in the open metaphysical, in general, material well-being increases while spiritual development decreases.

This peculiarity of modern people is tied to the above that allows us to describe it as homo oeconomicus. This economic person of which we have spoken has two faces: entrepreneur/consumer. Modern civilization does not know what it is who is ignorant of meaning.

It is one or the one that integrates a "consumer society". Economic values are exchanged and used. Consumer people do not make distinctions. Both economic and spiritual. Material wealth played an important role in human societies, but it was never by itself an object of admiration as it is today.

Types of consumption

Three types of consumption can be established according to the needs of the subject and the frequency in which the good or service is spent:

• Pilot consumption: the consumption of the product or service is produced by novelty or curiosity or by having. It happens when a new product is launched on the market or is an improved version of an existing one.
• Occasional consumption: consumption is intermittent, based on the availability of good or service or on the satisfaction of desires or non-permanent needs.
• Regular consumption: consumption is already part of the daily activities of the subject. In this line the so-called articles of first needwhich are also known as core, essential or priority.

When an item of occasional consumption becomes habitual consumption without it being something really essential (such as alcoholic beverages, tobacco, etc.) there could be an underlying addiction problem.