Thou Shalt Consume

In his blog on consumerism, Santosh Desai compared today’s scenario where:

“The next big thing is awaited with anticipation, and gets absorbed into our lives virtually instantly, without creating a sense of satisfaction.”

With the consumerism of our childhood, an era when:

“Things lived twice over, once as yawning absences and then as presences that were made to linger, till every last drop of juice was extracted from it.”

That sentiment isn’t all that uncommon. But what if consumerism is a good thing? A must have for the prosperity of all? Yuval Noah Harari’s awesome book Sapiens certainly seems to say so:

Part 1: Origin of Capitalism:

-         Long ago, money, that astounding thing that can “convert anything into almost anything else”, had a severe constraint: it could “convert only things that actually existed in the present”.

-         And so “people agreed to represent imaginary goods—goods that do not exist in the present—with a special kind of money they called “credit.”

-         But why would anyone be willing to lend money for a venture that may or may not succeed in the future? The answer: with the Scientific Revolution and the “idea of progress”, came the belief that “things can improve”. Or to put it an economist’s terms: “The entire global pie can grow”.

-         This belief, this optimism about the future started a cycle:

“This trust created credit; credit brought real economic growth; and growth strengthened the trust in the future and opened the way for even more credit.”

-         The age of capitalism had begun.

Part 2: Consumerism, the Yang to Capitalism’s Yin:

-         Once goods were being produced, you needed somebody to buy them:

“If I am poor, you too will be poor since I cannot buy your products or services. If I am rich, you too will be enriched since you can now sell me something.”

-         If everyone gets richer with this model, is it surprising that:

“Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing.”

-         Of course, this mindset change wasn’t easy to achieve:

“Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it!’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.”

-         And boy, has it succeeded!

“We are all good consumers. We buy countless products that we don’t really need, and that until yesterday we didn’t know existed... Religious holidays such as Christmas have become shopping festivals.”  (Just replace Christmas with Diwali for the Indian context).

This then is the (half tongue in cheek) ruling “ethic” of the day:

“The new (capitalist-consumerist) ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money, and that the masses give free rein to their cravings and passions – and buy more and more.”

Like the “shark that must swim or suffocate”, the capitalist system must consume or die. Given how much wealth has been generated by the capitalist system, it’s unlikely most people would want that engine to die. So consume we shall…