The work that you do improves our future, benefits your community and means something to you and those with whom you interact. You look forward to Monday. The longer that you are employed the more you learn and the more valuable you become to your employer with an increasing level of pay.

Your work schedule leaves you sufficient time to enjoy your friends, family and outside interests. Money isn't a controlling influence in your life because your needs are easily met. Your possessions are few, yet of high quality, thus allowing your home to be smaller and less expensive to own or rent

You're connected to your surroundings, rather than just dwelling in them, your backyard, for example, provides most of the produce you might need plus a surplus that you can trade with neighbors. You have a stake in your community and participate in local decision making. You buy what is necessary in nearby establishments whose owners are known to you. If you have children, they walk to a nearby neighborhood school in safety and learn authentic social skills as they interact with a community of honorably employed adults.

Occasionally you need to travel to a large store on the edge of town. You do this on a free shuttle bus or perhaps in a simple, older vehicle, the use and costs of which you might share with others or a car that you rent only when you need it, thus preserving for yourself the weeks or months that it takes to earn the thousands of after-tax Dollars that owning a new car would take away from you each year. Your interests, the things that you really like to do with your mind and your hands, all the possibilities of your life, are there to be explored because you have the time.

 

"But this is America, you say, all this is possible."

Not anymore it's not.

There are growing forces making this way of life almost impossible to attain or maintain, even for the wealthy. If you are among the lucky few who still have the kind of life outlined above, these same forces threaten you. Whether you live in an isolated small town or a big city and prefer your anonymity as well as the multiplicity of things available to you, these same forces will erode your security and ability to make choices for yourself.

Do you think what's outlined above can only occur in some mythic long-past small town? Before the hegemony of consumerism and bottom-line economics, you could do all of these things anywhere, including our cities. There is no reason that we cannot live like this again if sufficient people work to identify and disempower the forces that promote and profit from limiting our social and economic horizons.

These forces are manifested as consumerism: At first a growing number of pleasant conveniences for housewives in the 1950s, then a car for everyone with the gradual erosion of transit, then the ubiquitousness of things and chemical products technologically unimaginable a few decades earlier, then growing availability of consumer credit and debt, the over-dependence on labor-saving devices, total dependence on the car and absolute necessity of full time work, the two income household to pay for more and more, then the importation of cheaper and cheaper goods and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and now the decline of service work with professionals next to be downsized...where will it end? When America looks like some faded Third World fragment of the old British Empire? An overpopulated wasteland of pollution, eroded landscapes and hungry people digging into landfills for salvageables?

We shouldn't let this or anything like this happen. Things may be starting to turn around in our favor. But it takes work and time and attention to details and a willingness to try new things for our own and our children's benefit. There are serious changes ahead. We can control some of these for our benefit or we can just react to them after they have happened.

Simply stated, there's a lot of money being made and a lot of power being gathered by the people that promote consumerism. You pay for it in gradually limited economic mobility, pollution, threats to your health and a declining standard of living, as measured by the things that really matter.

This is what this site is about, identifying these forces and giving you opportunities to lessen or eliminate their control over your life through the completion of everyday things, that in the aggregate, fight the big battles. We're not suggesting that you pick up guns and start blasting away. What we advocate does far more damage than bullets to these forces and the people behind them and makes life much more enjoyable for you while it returns to you the possibility of living the way that you choose. It's up to all of us to do this. We cannot rely on politicians because if they have any true power they have been bought and paid for and if they haven't been bought and paid for they probably don't have any real power. (with a few notable local exceptions).
 

In addition to the everyday things that you can do, there are concepts that need to be discussed and not just in a trite way. The mantra "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" is pregnant with meaning, and reflects worthwhile goals, but it hardly contains solutions to the real integral problems of the world. For example, why doesn't America have decent mass transit? We provide links further along in the site to allow you to see what we once had, what happened to it and what can be done to bring it back.

We have created sections of resources that allow you to actually DO things to improve society and your own well being, rather than merely talk or think about it, which is of course an essential first step. We all know what is lacking and worth keeping in our own communities, therefore we shouldn't rely on outside experts and consultants and "qualified people" to make the decisions for us.

Sometimes, however, we do need outside sources of information and tools to facilitate positive changes. There are many organizations dedicated to change that are having a growing effect on society. These organizations are usually not mentioned in the mainstream media and we enjoy providing a forum for you to use them.

Much of what we provide here has been suggested by others. If you have contributions of ideas or resources please e-mail them to us.

This is a non-commercial site We do not solicit nor will we accept money from anyone.

Consumerism is economically manifested in the chronic purchasing of new goods and services, with little attention to their true need, durability, product origin or the environmental consequences of manufacture and disposal. Consumerism is driven by huge sums spent on advertising designed to create both a desire to follow trends, and the resultant personal self-reward system based on acquisition. Materialism is one of the end results of consumerism.

Consumerism interferes with the workings of society by replacing the normal common sense desire for an adequate supply of life's necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. An intended consequence of this, promoted by those who profit from consumerism, is to accelerate the discarding of the old, either because of lack of durability or a change in fashion. Landfills fill with cheap discarded products that fail early and cannot be repaired. Products are made psychologically obsolete long before they actually wear out. A generation is growing up without knowing what quality goods are. Friendship, family ties and personal autonomy are only promoted as a vehicle for gift giving and the rationale for the selection of communication services and personal acquisition. Everything becomes mediated through the spending of money on goods and services.

It is an often stated catechism that the economy would improve if people just bought more things, bought more cars and spent more money. Financial resources better spent on Social Capital such as education, nutrition, housing etc. are spent on products of dubious value and little social return. In addition, the purchaser is robbed by the high price of new things, the cost of the credit to buy them, and the less obvious expenses such as, in the case of automobiles, increased registration, insurance, repair and maintenance costs.

Many consumers run out of room in their homes to store the things that they buy. A rapidly growing industry in America is that of self-storage. Thousands of acres of land are paved over every year to build these cities of orphaned and unwanted things so as to give people more room to house the new things that they are persuaded to buy. If these stored products were so essential in the first place, why do they need to be warehoused? An overabundance of things lessens the value of what people possess.

Malls have replaced parks, churches and community gatherings for many who no longer even take the trouble to meet their neighbors or care to know their names. People move frequently as though neighborhoods and cities were products to be tried out like brands of deodorant.


Consumerism sets each person against them self in an endless quest for the attainment of material things or the imaginary world conjured up and made possible by things yet to be purchased. Weight training, diet centers, breast reduction, breast enhancement, cosmetic surgery, permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen injections, these are are some examples of people turning themselves into human consumer goods more suited for the "marketplace" than living in a healthy balanced society.
 

It is impossible to win a war against yourself or your uncontrolled desires. A good example of this is the simplistic materialist psychosis of the bumper sticker

"He who dies with the most toys wins"

Is psychosis too strong a word to use here? Appreciate the following line of reasoning:

"I can imagine it, therefore I want it. I want it, therefore I should have it. Because I should have it, I need it. Because I need it, I deserve it. Because I deserve it, I will do anything necessary to get it."

This is the artificial internal drive that the advertisers tap into. You "can imagine it" because they will bombard your consciousness with its image until you move to step two, "I want it...etc. " This is one of the things that allows people to surrender to consumerism. As a society we have gone from self-sufficiency based on our internal common sense of reasonable limits to the ridiculous goal of Keeping up with the Jones then to stampeding for the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or at least as far as our credit limit allows us to go.

The New Road Map Foundation illustrates with cogent statistics the dichotomy between things, happiness and the health of the environment.

Happiness can't be purchased in the marketplace, no matter how much advertising tries to convince you of it. Market driven forces have ursurped the role once assumed by family, home and community. We have been programmed to believe that we should pursue more money to spend on more things offered in the marketplace, to be living mannequins for the material adornments of the hour, our worth determined by what we have or don't have, rather than what we are, what we do or what we know.

Consumerism, already having captured death as a consumer obligation whereby sadness and regret are quenched by spending lots of money, now turns major life events like weddings and births into consumer events with their own hierarchy of demands for the things which assume a life of their own. For example, the bride's dress and accessories assumes far more significance in the telling than the bride's state of mind. Baby shower gifts take precedence over helping with the baby.

Recreation has become commercialized. Special leisure clothing, sporting equipment and attendance at expensive sporting events rife with advertising and corporate sponsorship are the manifestation of consumerism in recreation. Oakland, California, a community with high levels of unemployment and poverty has banks that are now creating special loan categories so that people can get personal lines of credit to buy season tickets to the taxpayer-financed stadium.

Take all the mental and sometimes physical energy, the money and the time that the average American spends on professional and college sports and divert it to the care and maintenance of local public schools; we could be the best educated people in the world! Notice how recent talk about revitalizing our schools revolves around the purchase of computer equipment and wiring rather than raising teacher's salaries and spending more money per pupil?

Local sports teams and activities are healthy and wonderful. There is however, a tendency of the ongoing commercialization of these if people allow it.

 The constant cycle of work and consumption is destructive enough of values, but when extra hours must be worked to maintain the same level of consumption, or when insufficient work, or no work at all is available, and a family goes into debt to accumulate more things, or feels worthless because of a lack of the "right" possessions, consumerism is slow societal suicide.

Time, the precious shrinking commodity of our lives, is exchanged for money to buy things that there usually is little time to enjoy. What time is left after work is often devoured by television, basically a series of ever-more mediocre filler programs inserted between ever-more-spectacular commercials whose purpose is to stoke further desire for more things. When these insatiable material desires fail to be satisfied, people grow unhappy with their lives and in extreme cases riot and loot to get that they have been "programmed" to want.

People become used to the intrusion of advertising into their consciousness in the form of television or the massive bundle of advertising pulp that masquerades as a Sunday newspaper and and so they fail to protect themself, or worse, their children from being seduced by it. Convinced that their self worth is based on $200 athletic shoes or designer clothing, children are already on the road to spiritual dissatisfaction and resentment as well as a perception of diminished self-worth. When they become adolescents they are probably not going to be happy or productive even were they provided with an endless supply of things that few parents could afford. An extreme example of this is when some, usually poor adults, who could often better use the money for education, nutrition and improved housing, demonstrate their self worth and strength of character by turning themselves into human billboards in plastic clothing advertising millionaire's sports franchises. Their children may, to the detriment of education, pin all hopes on an athletic "career", i.e. lots of money for endorsing consumer items. This is nation building?

Where once parents shared the home with their adult children, acting as baby-sitters and providers of wisdom and tradition, we now have corporate owned day care and rest homes. This preservation of nuclear family ties is one reason that some immigrant groups are still able to excel economically until the second generation (usually) becomes affected by consumerism, abandons its parents' values and then often goes overboard using material objects as a means of self-identification with American society.

"Quality Time" has become a commodity unto itself. Unfortunately, there is no marketplace for quality time, you have to preserve it for yourself. Why not use the time in your life, skip the money and the taxation and go straight for the happiness that usually comes from the non-material? This process is part of overcoming consumerism.

Can brands survive ecosystem collapse or the fall of our government?

Making do with less allows one to distance themself from the tendency of the victims of advertising to self-define according to the material objects possessed or not possessed, driven, drunk, worn, used, seen with or abused.

You usually see people thus affected in public places, lurking around a piece of machinery, such as a car or a boat. They bask in its radiance, act respectful and imply knowledge about its quality and providence. They act as they feel that they should act, making sure that others see them acting this way in the presence of the thing. They can only communicate with each other through the medium of the object, the cold piece of metal, in the presence of which they feel that they can speak to each other and actually show some emotion and interact.

The thing, the product, becomes a longed for goal, a means of justifying their existence, a way of envisioning themself in a different world with possession of the thing being the key tenet. Particular speech patterns often develop around things to the exclusion of the personal qualities of the speaker, as in

"I used to have a....."/"Yeah, friend of mine, he's got a "57.....", "last night I drank two....and a six pack of....","she was wearing..."," we did two....then a ....have you seen the new...""...how about those Forty-Niners?..." "Look what I got..."

Empty, hollow words, bespeaking a personal void filled by the pursuit of things. Getting away from need for things is at least a start in allowing people to communicate and then once communicating, beginning to solve real problems in their home, community, nation and the world.

The more consumerism spreads, the weaker is the incentive to manufacture long-lasting, quality products, and the greater the likelihood that cheaply made products will instead be imported from the lowest-wage, environmentally unregulated overseas manufacturer that mobile capital, ever seeking the highest return, can find.

The nationwide loss of manufacturing jobs leads to a corresponding growth in unemployment and the number of welfare recipients, less personal wealth, a shrinking tax base, fewer public services, and greater public and private debt, hopelessness for job seekers and a growing negative balance of trade. Americans can't afford to buy the house next door but guess who has lots of dollars to spend here because of the money that we're exporting to buy their cheap junk.? By facilitating the sale of whatever is advertised and sold, without examination by the purchaser of quality, origin, environmental degradation or traditions of manufacture, Consumerism fuels the destruction of the productive economy.

What about the argument that "we are in a global marketplace and exports (and therefore imports) create jobs?"

The flood of spending on imports creates a need for compensating export earnings. This quest for export earnings turns the U.S. into a traitor to principles that this nation supposedly fought for in several recent wars, and generates an eagerness to embrace potential export markets, no matter what the human rights or environmental records of these countries may be, or how much damage this does to American workers. Another part of this attempted juggling act of trade balances is to justify the further strip-mining of our own natural heritage in order to gain further export earnings, i.e. Redwood logs from our ancient cathedral forests are sent to Mexico to be milled on machinery that once was tended by well paid Americans in the U.S. or Alaskan oil drilled in wildlife refuges is sent to Japan.

Imports may create a few loudly touted jobs , but their main product is quiet but spectacular profits for transnational corporations that export our employment while importing low quality products and selling them here for a slight or no reduction in price.

"Free trade" laws are promoted so that American corporations can export pollution finally regulated here and import tariff-free goods back into the US from their foreign subsidiaries in whatever Sweatshop Republic they can find the cheapest workers. NAFTA is a codified example of this policy carried out at a national leve

Some of the corporations behind nafta Here's a little tidbit from the link:

"Both GE workers and the community of Fort Wayne got swindled. In 1988, the employees had agreed to a $1.20 per hour wage cut to prevent their jobs from being moved to Mexico. Then in 1992, GE managed to squeeze a $485,290 tax cut out of the local government, claiming it was necessary to defray the cost of new machinery needed to preserve jobs. Once NAFTA passed, the wage cuts and the tax breaks were not enough to keep those jobs in Fort Wayne.[they went to Mexico] As one longtime GE employee put it, "You give them all your life, and this is what they give you. "

The actual manufacture of products becomes almost a nuisance for conglomerates anxious to grow their capital and maximize profits through buying and closing factories, raiding pension plans, firing workers and using the paper losses to offset profits made elsewhere. That's what slaves in foreign countries are for. BUT, how will Americans buy thier products if they no longer have jobs and if they do have jobs why shouldn't we go out of our way to boycott these job destroying companies? After reading the above story we will do everything we can to encourage everyone we know to boycott all Maytag products. According to Consumer Reports Magazine they were never that good to begin with.

How NAFTA affects Canadians.

Even service jobs are now also vulnerable to export. Some companies are now using low wage workers in Ireland or India to staff their technical-support and order-taking phone lines or do insurance underwriting. There is no technical reason why any person answering a telephone or sitting at a keyboard has to be physically located in the U.S. What we're talking about is you calling a softwear or warranty line and talking to someone making $1.10 a day in India or China. Nor are professionals immune from this. The same blind, unquestioning acceptance of consumerism will allow the export of even these service jobs if the companies that attempt this are not challenged by consumers.
 

How to Explain Enron to Your Children: Feudalism - You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk. Fascism - You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk. Communism - You have two cows. Your neighbors help take care of them and you share the milk. Totalitarianism - You have two cows. The government takes them both and denies they ever existed and drafts you into the army. Milk is banned. Capitalism - You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income. Enron Venture Capitalism - You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

 

Environmental
COSTS OF CONSUMERISM

Consumerism causes the wasteful use of energy and material far above and beyond that needed for everyday living at a comfortable level. Money is not the only way to measure the cost of an item. When one adds up all the raw materials and energy that go into the goods and services consumed over an individual's lifetime, the toll on the environment is staggering. When this cost is multiplied out over the lifespan of families, cities and countries, the proportions are incredible.

An example: 200 Billion cans, bottles, plastic cartons and paper cups, are thrown away each year in the "developed" world.

"Disposable" items exemplify this. Rather than compete on quality or reliability, products are made for a one time use. "Fun" is a catchword discarding notions of inherent value, longevity, and the environmental consequences of manufacture and disposal of the product. Buying quality products that are warranteed against failure or wearing out, learning about the materials that things are made of, their national origin and the conditions of the workers that make them, are some ways of resisting consumerism and waste.

While there may be some new appliances and cars that are more productive and energy efficient, discarding the old often leads to an almost total waste of the energy and material already invested in these products. This alone may more than nullify the energy savings of the new.

There are a growing number of people who are aware that these aspects of consumerism are some of the main obstacles to them living in a pleasant safe community, seeing their children well educated and living long healthy productive lives, without squander and waste. The following pages offer many different tools to help facilitate this: