> that we can grow our own food, make and trade and share everything we need<p>Grow our own food? I don't want to be a farmer. It's hard. Division of labor is awesome.<p>As for sharing, how do you rationally decide who to give something to? The idea of "whoever needs X should have it" <i>sounds</i> nice, but the tricky part is figuring out who needs X. Prices have information about that, and we need information to make a rational decision. Also prices have information about when you shouldn't use X (because it's too hard to make) and should substitute Y instead.<p>And as for trade, it's basically the same thing as buying except if you take away money you have to find someone who wants your stuff, and has stuff you want, instead of only one or the other, so it's harder to trade.
If you value your time, then it really pays to investigate the ways in which you spend money, and the system that is in place to encourage that spending and even make it seem normal.<p>There are questions you can ask, for instance, if you are an employee of someone else:<p>How much do I get paid per hour?<p>How much money do I need to sustain my lifestyle?<p>How many hours per week do I need to work to sustain my lifestyle?<p>What if it's only 25 hours?<p>Are there full-time professional jobs out there which only require 25 hours of work per week?<p>Why not?<p>Is it because we're supposed to spend the money earned in the other 15 hours on stuff we don't need?<p>When did I make the decision to work 15 more hours to buy stuff I don't really need, and could I be enjoying my life more by having those 15 hours instead of the stuff?
"Consumer" is a role. Roles are not exclusive. A role makes sense in a particular context, e.g. where there is a producer of a particular thing and a consumer.<p>I am absolutely a Consumer. And I am a Producer, or a Creator, which provides my income for my consumer lifestyle.
What's so wrong with buying? What was so great about the tribal lifestyle? Trading and bartering are just raw forms of buying: You work, grow potatoes, then trade those potatoes for something you need. Why is that better than working, earning money, and trading that money for something you need?<p>I'd be more inclined to indulge the author's suggestion that we stop being consumers if he actually provided some supporting arguments.
A good point and a valid concern. I didnt read this as a return to barter nor tribalism but instead a comment of the reduced subject.<p>Late Modernist and Postmodernist debates on subjectivity tend to see the Enlightenment idea of a coherent subject as being completely fragmented to the point of collapse.<p>It is a double-edged issue. The 'death' of the subject means on the one hand we are free to imagine and invent new relationships. But on the other hand because our notions of freedom derive from notions of subjectivity there is danger of losing freedom.<p>Consumerist culture exploits this exact split - as consumers, we are told how free and unique we are as an advertising ploy and then end up all wearing the same thing... We are also easily manipulated by mass media distracted by nonissues while serious threats to freedom remain relatively ignored.<p>If we 'buy' too much into this identity, what is left are relationships in which subjectivity is inverted. Subjectivity in this case lies more in the corporation than in the human subject. (As reflected in that bizarre Supreme Court decision of the last year.)<p>We do need to fight this. And it is not a right nor a left issue. Both sides decry the erosion of freedom but see different causes.<p>What is generally lacking in us today is what Kant referred to as 'Speculative Reason' or more colloquially the ability to think - creatively, imaginatively,actively and constructively.<p>Consumers dont do that - nor do constituents nor employees, etc.<p>"Hackers and Painters" do. Makers do.<p>That is a key - we (as consumers) forget that we can make, create. And if we as humans have any purpose, that is it. In fact we are only knowable in what we create (Vico "verum factum")<p>I had a long rambling talk in the dogrun last night with an intelligent and non-technical lawyer who reads Popular Mechanics for fun.<p>So I babbled on for awhile about makezine, OReilly press, Linux, Arduino stuff he did not know about. And it made me think of how exciting this field can be at times - not because of the technical advance but of the remarkable creativity.<p>So I dont think the point is for 'tiedyes' and subsistence farming but to become very conscious of the breakdown of subjectivity and the potential danger in the greatly reduces roles that are left in its fragmentation.
Use of "consumer" as the default for a human being in our society is emblematic of everything that is wrong with it. Consumption is a natural part of normal life; it is not who we are. Every time I hear that word -- which is whenever I listen to media, approximately -- I think of pigs at the trough.
Lacks depth: in order to be innovative we need focus, in order to have focus we need to be specialized, in order to be specialized we need to not focus on growing food when we program (or do brain surgery or rocket science). These support structures are necessary for competitive innovation (though I completely feel your pain).<p>So if you want to make this argument, you need to figure out a way that it doesn't matter if the US competes globally anymore. That's the only way this works. Otherwise you just make us non competitive in the global market. When everyone else stops growing we can too, but unfortunately until then it's going to be pretty hard to convince people to stop consuming.
I'm poor so I don't buy a lot of things, books from charity shops, refurbished computers, so I feel like big corporations are after me because I'm a bad consumer.
Am I a bad person?
This is naive. Creation is just the new form of consumerism!<p>Think about how much money changes hands today based on work of millions of creators all trying to be the latest YouTube star. To cope with the meaningless and alienation of modern life, they're buying attention instead of commodities, using what they create as currency. In that sense, it is a barter economy, except the middle man takes his cut by selling ads on top of the content. And, oh yeah, don't forget about all the actual consumption you have to do in order to be a creator: a nice computer, a video camera, some video editing software, fast internet connection, etc. I guess that doesn't count as consumption if you're a "creator".<p>It's weird how profitable all this "anti-consumption" is! Is this really liberation? It's certainly marketed that way by the people who profit most from it. What if it's really just exploitation marketed as liberation?