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Just like romantic marriage, consumption as the basis of economic activity is a concept that we take for granted but in fact didn’t really get going until the 19th century. Frank Trentmann in the Atlantic explains how trade, mass production, world war and other innovations created our modern, buying-obsessed society. FULL STORY

Hey, Frank, We have been adapting to "Climate Change" for millions of years, and we come out of the womb ready to "consume" something. Let's legislate that the sun comes up in the west, same deal.
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Quote from article:

"How—indeed whether—consumers can adapt to a world of climate change remains the big question for the 21st century. In 1900, many reformers looked for answers to questions about social reform, social responsibility, and consumer representation. Climate change is its own monumental challenge, but there may be lessons that can be learned from that earlier history of the consumer. Consumers were identified as important players in tackling social blight and economic injustice. As buyers, they had some influence over what was produced, its quality as well as quantity. Organizing their interests added an important voice to the arena of public politics. These remain valuable insights: Consumers may not hold the answers for everything, but that does not mean they should be treated as merely individual shoppers in the market."

I think that mass consumerism/ materialism will be the death of our society. We're running out of resources as well as places to put all the trash we generate.

Ah come on Kbot, are you going to be the 1st to stop eating and wearing clothes? When Al Gore starts living in a "Tiny House" and driving a Prius, I will worry.

Contrary to popular belief , Consumerism , may just be the thing that saves us, time to get up off our pitiful little butts and go to work, we live a world of Plenty. We have renewable resources and technology that has been shut down to us by A Government that wants to be in charge of our Welfare, or lack of. So....convince me jobs and production are bad.

I more worried about at the trash generated by the consumerism. Landfills are closing. No "respectable" town wants a landfill or incinerator - but other communities are more than welcome to take their trash, please....... In my hometown we had a landfill and incinerator that served most of the communities between Boston and RI and Worcester to Massachusetts Bay and the Cape. Both had to close because the incinerator was shown to affect the health of people living around here, an the landfill was recently capped despite being overfull for years now.

Once this happened, the richer cities and towns freaked out because, "Heaven forbid, no landfill or incinerator was going to THEIR community and ruin their property values.........". Like it or not, it is a truism that is spreading across the country as people and communities fight each other over ways to dispose of all the crap they generate, whether it is the wasteful packaging or just plain old crap that they buy and quickly falls apart.

Eventually this stuff all has to go somewhere.........

Lot's of places out there turning garbage into something useful, but not really cost effective, yet. There are certainly weapons out there to pulverize people, that could be used to do the same with our garbage, just a thought.

I like the trash to energy concept first........

kbot wrote:I like the trash to energy concept first........

Agreed. But one must be aware of the fact that every piece of technology big or little that is dribbled down to us, has been weaponized first, then 30 to 40 years later it gets to us, the people for practical, useful, stuff. Seems like it has been slow pickens for quite some time, maybe we are due a bunch of new "stuff", that would be fun!

Doka wrote:Seems like it has been slow pickens for quite some time, maybe we are due a bunch of new "stuff", that would be fun!

Well, it may be new stuff, and it may be just as good or better as the old stuff yet as great as it all may be, the real 'fun' is in answering the question - as always - where're we gonna keep it??

Here's George Carlin's classic take on the Meaning of Life... Trying to find a place for our stuff.