• Society where leisure time is spent spending money on goods, thinking about spending money on goods, showing off goods purchased

• Goods serve purpose beyond basic needs, such as giving prestige or identity to owner. Examples?

Paul Ekins writes "A consumer society is one in which the possession and use of an increasing number and variety of goods and services is the principal cultural aspiration and the surest perceived route to personal happiness, social status and national success."

In a society where success can bring wealth and the ability to purchase status goods, status goods themselves bring status. Soon people are oriented towards just having the goods, regardless of the satisfaction associated with the successful work.

Status goods not new – ex. medieval shoes.  Peasants would try to make shoes that they saw the ruling class wearing.

• Environmental Consequences - resource depletion or environmental degradation.
• Equity – what we consume, others can't. For some, it is a matter of life or death. 'The pursuit of luxury or positional goods while others go hungry is unjust' – Karl Marx.   Also intergenerational equity.  What we consume now can't be consumed in future.
• Social values – how does consumption affect our society and culture? Are we happier with more stuff? Evidence suggets that we are not.

Affluence can be measured with GDP per capita. Ask - Why might GDP per capita not be a good measure of affluence as it relates to environmental impact?

Depends on how people spend their money – do they buy lots of goods or do they buy more leisure and good with low environmental impact such as back massages. And of the goods they buy, do they buy locally made, more natural goods or more environmentally harmful goods.

Some goods are more commodifiable than others and these goods are stressed and receive support in our society. This is detrimental to the environment (and probably to our spirits as well.)

• Alienable – the ease with which ownership can be asserted, assigned, and transferred.
• Standardizable – independence from the particularity of geography or culture.
• Autonomous- the ability to use a good independently, outside of the constraint of social relationships.
• Convenient – the ease of use.
• Mobile – the ease of packaging and transport.

Some goods have high commodity potential (HCP goods) or low commodity potential (LCP) – it is all a matter of degree.

Public goods are less commodifiable than private.

• advertisement – very sophisticated. Attacks from multiple levels – ex. Disney tie-ins.
• government subsidies – ex. energy, agriculture
• direct private investment
• indirect public investment through tax breaks and regulations
• R&D funding

High commodity potential (HCP) goods are therefore emphasized and the infrastructure supporting them is invested in.

LCP goods seem relatively backwards making them less desirable.

LCP goods are cheapened through their use to sell HCP goods. Examples? (Friendship used to sell beer.  Love used to sell flowers or jewelry).

LCP goods also are made to be more commodifiable.

• Appliances that were once repairable are made such that they must be replaced.
• Materials are under-priced through subsidies and not including full price. For example, full price accounting for gasoline would make it something like $6.50 / gallon.
• Labor is taxed. So labor becomes more expensive relative to energy and materials. Other consequences?
• Public goods less available so private goods needed to fill the gap – ex. bottled water.

John Kenneth Galbraith: All of the money used to focus on the wondrous aspects of private consumer goods makes these goods appear more important than the good the government provides such as environmental protection, public education, fire and police services, etc. You end up with groups clamoring for lower taxes.  Free-marketers argue for reduced taxes since they believe that  people can spend their own money because they know better what to do with their money that the government does. However, there are many desirable goods that need to be publicly provided.  They can not be efficiently provided on the market.  e.g. clean air.

1. As long as people focus on using their income to buy stuff, capital will continue to accumulate in the hands of the capitalist class (the producers.)
2. As long as people are focusing on attaining goods to meet their spiritual/social needs, they won't focus on inequity, social justice, self-actualization, etc. Senate and Cobb argue in the book "On Democracy" that consumer goods are a type of opiate for the masses, keeping them working in dull jobs, keeping them from leading revolution, because they are saving up for a new car.

3. Need to consume to create jobs!

For our capitalist society to continue on its current track, it is important that people stay focused on consumption.  Consumer confidence is an important indicator of future economic growth.  GDP depends on consumption.

• Turning raw resources into good people will buy is a way to turn a profit.
• Allows for positive returns on capital investment.
• Allows for wealth building.

Modern economic theory evolved in a time of scarcity where stimulating efficient production was a central need. There was not an excess of goods but a shortage. This influenced the evolution of economic thought. There is no concept of enough or more than enough in neoclassical economic.

In modern industrialized countries, now there is not a shortage of goods but, for some, a shortage of income to purchase goods. You don't hear politicians promising to make more goods available but promising to create jobs. The stuff is there, just not everyone can afford it.

In affluent societies, the whole economic theory is really on its head. The true imperative of our society is no longer to make more stuff, but to provide jobs. If our society made less stuff, the deprivation would not be from less stuff to purchase, but from the jobs lost. The consumer economy is tied to the need for steadily expanding production, so that interest can be paid on investments, so consumption now is what supports employment. We no longer have a world of scarcity of goods (we have countries with scarcity of course) but shortages of income.

Industrialization occurred through technological and institutional innovations (the loom and the factory) and increased material and energy throughput allowing for -> increased output per worker -> higher purchasing power.

It was thought that as income increased, people would chose more leisure since they could satisfy their needs with fewer hours worked. Marx, others believed that then people would use free time for self-betterment – LCP goods. However, excess is traditionally been kept by the capitalists so people needed to work more to stay at the same level.

When wages did indeed increase with productivity, people tended to work more and consume more.

Consumer mentality, reinforced through advertising etc. assuring that goods being produced are bought. Better for capitalists.

What if, as output per worker increased, people just worked fewer hours? Less movement of goods means less opportunities for wealth accumulation.

Also, the economy needs to keep growing to provide interest on capital and dividends on stocks. Growth is necessary to just stay in place.

A goal of economics is maximizing efficiency. But efficiency is a means, not an end. The end most often associated with it is maximizing utility. However, in practice ,this is vaguely defined so as a proxy maximizing consumption is usually used. This is associated with maximizing production, given feasibility constraints (production possibility frontier).

So you have:

Competitiveness and profit maximization are valued because they lead to efficiency.

However, competitiveness and profit maximization can led to unemployment and degradation of the work experience.

This is considered OK because it is important for efficiency for production – so the means justify this uncertain end.

So, in the name of efficiency, profit maximization is justified, leading to consumption maximization, yet the real world effects of this system may not be maximizing the well-being of humans, neither in terms of their happiness nor in terms of the sustainability of the ecosystem.

Modern economic theory also supports consumerism with the theory that market price properly allocates resources in a society.(Which we know isn't true.)

Herman Daly: the focus on marginal utility allows us to escape the issue of total utility.

A true utility function would include many complex factors of what makes people happy – good health, friends, etc. It has been acknowledges that it is too complex to include all of these features in a utility function so a stylized simplification has been largely adopted and is generally taught.

Economic theory reinforces consumer mentality:

• Sees people as insatiably acquisitive, atomistic, self focused.
• Utility derives from more stuff.
• Market price of goods shows what we value and directs how resources should be devoted in the economy.

The concern with materialism is not new.

Idea of materialistic man is found in Hobbes (Leviathan – 1651). He focused on the competitive individualistic nature of man.

Critiqued by Rousseau who thought that man was not relentlessly competitive and acquisitive by nature, but that this is a result of a particular social system and they would be different under different systems.

Karl Marx – around 1844 - focused on the process of production- not just the outcome. Factory workers are alienated from the product of their labor. He presented idea of consumer fetishism.

Humanist Economists:

Simonde de Sismondi (1773 – 1842) questioned whether economic growth is an end in of itself. Also, whether economic growth is synonymous with increases in the public good. In the early 1800s he was already concerned about the excess of consumer goods and how this excess led to human suffering for production.

John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) – commodities have value only in as much as they satisfy human needs. Things we need are part of wealth – things we don't are illth. Economic theory assumes away the social aspects of life and treats avarice as a central human characteristic. HE was very anti unnecessary consumption and was much admired and hated.

John Hobson (1858 – 1940) focused his theory on the need for meaningful work, participation in decision making, economic security. Thought mainstream econ focuses too much on the isolated human desires.

Thornstein Veblen – circa 1900. He argued that the neoclassical view of the utilitarian consumer, as a simple calculator of pleasure and pain who behaved in the market place simply to maximize pleasure- was out dated in 1898. "Rational Economic Man" was seen as insatiably acquisitive. Veblen disagreed with this characterization.

He wrote the Theory of the Leisure Class. Famous for idea of conspicuous consumption.

John Kenneth Galbraith – The Affluent Society (1958) – very popular book. Argues that advertising has created false desires that are leading society away from true benefits and over production is having dire consequences. Also, focus on private consumption takes president over public goods provision, which tend to be lass material – good education, clean air, parks and playgrounds , orchestras, museums, services. Focus on producing consumer goods leaves too little money for public goods and services, and too little leisure and economic security.

Whole movement towards private goods, away from public, leads to more consumption because private goods have characteristics associated with material goods (separable, rival) while public goods are many goods that can not be privatized because they aren't material objects.

Reason for government is to organize for the provision of public goods such as military, fire control, environmental regulation, education. Fire control in early America example.

Also, private goods are more unevenly distributed than public goods, which everyone can share. If increasing wealth was put towards public rather than private goods, all of society would be wealthier and more equal – arguably a better situation.

Galbraith was first economist to really focus on environmental consequences of consumption – 1958 "How much should a country consume".

Institutional Economics is the branch of econ that follows most closely from these thinkers. Mainstream economics is so stylized and simplified, that it is not useful for considering the problem of over-consumption.

One more key thinker on goods -

Marcuse One Dimensional Man: Working class acceptance of the prescribed modes of relaxation and consumption prove the levels of capitalism's pervasive control. Rather than products on one's labor being the extension on oneself (lending identity and self-esteem), people identify themselves through their commodities, tying individuals to the capitalist system through the needs it produces.

1. Economic Solutions
2. Engineering Solutions
3. Social/Ethical solutions

1. Economic solutions (Getting the price right) –

• Depends on government intervention.
• Some solutions to environmental degradation call for privatizing natural resources – include resources in the market system and this will protect them. Definitely debatable.
• Problematic because the market is too influenced by interest rates and does not include valuation by future generations. 

2. Engineering solutions (Making more with less )

What promise does technology have for limiting the impact of consumption? Can't we just engineer our way out of ecological limitations?

Michael Huesemann argues that technology can never eliminate all degradation associated with production. What are his arguments?

1) Limitations to scientific understanding: The inability of science to provide all of the information about the environment and environmental problems needed to address these problems;

2) Thermodynamic limitations: The principle of the conservation of mass as well as the second law of thermodynamics which suggest that, while remediation technologies may solve environmental problems in one place and time, they will shift environmental impacts to other places or into the future; and

3) Entropy and Energy: It is impossible to design any type of production process that does not have some undesired environmental impacts due to the entropy law as well as the negative environmental consequences of energy generation. These second two issues are integral to the work of the economists Georgescu-Roegen (1971) and Daly (1979).

Biological organisms are able to break these laws. Can we develop technologies taht mimic natural systems?

Huesemann notes that in many cases, environmental science and technology appear to be successful only because attention is focused narrowly (in space and time) on specific objectives while wider, long-term impacts are ignored.

Technological change can have hidden consequences. There are many examples of wealthier nations adopting technologies that allow for more efficient resource use, substitution of resources, and better containment of wastes. However, some of these new technologies lead to secondary environmental impacts, such as the use of nuclear power. This reduces CO₂ emissions but increased other problems.

3. Ethical/social solutions (Think of less as more)

Examples of this?

Voluntary simplicity movement, simple living, local/organics movement.

Richard Norgaard argues that all these solutions will do is slow down environmental degradation. We really need to move away from materialism altogether. This involves a new perspective that is integral and relational. He is suggesting something of a transformation of consciousness. To get out of the current environmental crisis we need to begin by acknowledging that we are social, communicative beings and the importance of love.

Modern societies have coevolved without including nature and ecosystem limitations because of hydrocarbons enabling us to temporarily vault those limitations.

Economic theory sees people as consumers and/or producers, since this is their economic role in society. Yet they are also citizens and parents and thinkers etc. As economics has played a more central role in our society, so have certain human identities.

Even more profoundly, the economic system is no longer part of the world in which we live, but the world has become part of the economic system. The "economy" has in many way subsumed us. This has profound effects on the environment and also undermines community and family and replaces spiritual values with commercial ones.

Many of these specific solutions depend on government action. What if the government isn't interested in reducing consumerism? What are prospects for social movements achieving something? What are barriers?

Advertising. Media depends on advertising money and therefore we will keep having commercials and substance of media won't promote buying less stuff since they are dependent on advertisers.

Thought Experiment: what would happen to the U.S. if advertising were banned?

• Macroeconomic effects - advertising in a $150 billion per year industry.
• Social effects - more leisure time?

Consumerism was made viable by productivity revolution. Maybe as environmental constraints set in, a new austere mentality will too. Materials and energy will become more expensive so economic growth could shift focus.

Increased awareness of environmental and social impacts of consumerism. Already signs of disgust with materialism.

• Loss of traditional activities and values (which evolved in concert with ecological boundaries.)
• Purchase of imported goods uses scarce capital – rather than being invested at home. (talk about input output analysis?)
• Makes people feel poor – relative view.
• Increased development dependence

More goods are needed in developing countries but are advertised goods the most important ones?