r/Anticonsumption • u/Good-Concentrate-260 • 1d ago
Question/Advice? Sincere Question for this Sub
This is a sub for people who oppose consumption. Is the nature of this opposition to consumption moral, that is to say, is consumption of goods inherently immoral, or is it opposition to the consequences of mass consumption such as pollution, lack of regulation, harm to consumers, and so on.
I think it really matters why people oppose consumption. For all of human history, humans have consumed goods by taking things from nature or animals for their own use. With the rise of industrialized capitalism and mass production, many goods were available to the great masses of people at low prices. Of course this same capitalism also produced terrible inequality, labor violence, environmental destruction, and many other consequences. However, one could argue that we could have a form of capitalism with regulations to protect workers, consumers, and the environment. If you oppose capitalism, what alternative models of economic and/or political systems do you propose? It seems to me that most people like having access to cheap goods, and furthermore, a decentralized system of production would probably be less efficient and more wasteful.
If you are morally opposed to consumption, why? Is it because you are opposed to the scale of production and consumption? Or because it disrupts 'traditional' values or ways of life?
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u/Flack_Bag 1d ago
If you read the community info, the point of the sub should be clearer than speculating based on the name of the sub. The sub is about consumerism more than just consumption as such.
The problem is not necessarily just the scale of production, but the concentration of power and wealth that creates an oligarchical system like the one we're seeing now. Waste, exploitation, inequality, enviromental damage etc. are all consequences of consumer culture.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 1d ago
Sure, this was part of my question though. For you, is centralization inherently bad? Is there anything that could be done to limit these negative consequences? For instance, the EPA in the U.S. was helpful for protecting the environment and limiting pollution in the 1970s. Consumer protection agencies regulate food and drugs to ensure safety.
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u/Flack_Bag 1d ago
Centralized production isn't terrible in itself, but the public relying on privately owned and operated control of entire industries is, whether they're monopolies, duopolies, or oligopolies.
Essential services and goods should be publicly accountable at the very least, if not publicly owned and operated. Regulations should be serious, well funded, and consistently enforced, and in the US, that'd be impossible without first overturning Citizens United.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 1d ago
Yeah, I’m with you there. I don’t really have a strong opinion on public or private ownership as long as mechanisms are in place to redistribute excessive wealth, protect laborers, prevent corruption and so on. I think Americans are too reflexively anticommunist due to Cold War propaganda, but I also think that nationalizing every industry might not necessarily prevent corruption. People generally like markets and like innovation that capitalism incentivizes, but there is clearly too much wealth inequality right now.
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u/bekarene1 23h ago
I see consumption in some form as inevitable and I'm fine with folks buying and selling and someone getting paid for craftsmanship. What I oppose is corporate control of the economy. Corporations don't exist to sell things people need, they exist to make wealthy investors more wealthy. I have zero issue with someone paying a small business for a service or product. I object to corporations finding new and novel ways to invent imaginary problems and position their products as the solution.
That said I believe we need to radically scale down our consumption in the wealthy countries. Almost everything I actually need, I can find local or used with very little trouble.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 22h ago
That makes sense, we should try to limit waste. Thanks for sharing your views. We definitely need more regulation. However, I’m curious if there are some things you’d still favor big corporations doing? For instance, they are efficient and have the resources to sell goods at lower prices than local businesses can, because of their supply chains and distribution networks and so on. They should definitely improve their labor practices at places like Walmart and Amazon though, they are clearly exploitative.
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u/bekarene1 22h ago
I hear your point. I guess I could be OK with certain corporations if they were regulated strictly and barred from political donations.
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u/mwmandorla 22h ago
You're not going to get one unified answer here - not just because different people will have different answers, but because it's blurry. Opposition to the consequences of consumption is moral, and it is very easy for that moral opprobrium to be transferred to the act itself. There are definitely some who really struggle with guilt over any act of consumption they have to engage in, and they will usually cite elements like waste, climate change, global inequality, but it's very clear from the way they talk that they ultimately feel guilty for the act itself. That can be related to their personal backgrounds along with the actual subject at hand, of course. You will find others who are feeling powerful and great about going to Starbucks less and not making any major lifestyle changes. And others in an in-between place where they're opposed to specific companies or power brokers, such that they might not feel bad about buying X or Y so long as it doesn't come from a corp like Amazon, and so on.
I personally think this ambiguity is valuable because it makes room for people to be exposed to a lot of viewpoints and lifestyles and actually think through how they want to live. I do not think the type of kind or restrained capitalism you're speaking of is compatible with, say, an environmental or labor motivation, but I also think that a lot of people have very vague ideas of what capitalism means. Capitalism is not trade, or exchanging goods and services for money, or people having personal possessions. It is a specific system for accumulating and circulating value at a larger scale. Humans have always consumed and will always need to because we are biological organisms, but not just the volume but also the structure and means of our consumption in a capitalist system - and maybe especially a financialized one - is not the same. Classical, state-led communism is another (in certain ways more centralized, in other ways less) system that doesn't prioritize consumption in the same way and does at least in theory prioritize labor relations, but it can also have terrible environmental consequences. (The orientation to nature you find in Marx is not radically different from the kind we have in capitalist systems.) So what systems people prefer and their motivations for opposing consumption are not always going to line up exactly the way you might expect.
I don't expect everyone to be interested in such a debate, and I'm ok with that. I think what most of the people here have in common is a sense of a lack of agency (being controlled, pressured, or deprived of options in one way or another) and disconnection from both the economies in which they participate and the locales in which they live. I think these dissatisfactions tend to go against the prevailing dynamics of capitalism, and that there are multiple potential remedies. I think where we can all help each other is with those things on a practical level. What comes of that ideologically is going to be almost as varied as the reasons people came here in the first place. Let a thousand flowers bloom, etc.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 22h ago
Good answer. I’m not really trying to start debate just wanted to hear some different perspectives. I agree with a lot of what you have to say, I’d describe myself as leftist and anticapitalist but I agree that centralized state planning won’t necessarily protect the environment. China and the Soviet Union have bad records on pollution. I’m not opposed to trying state ownership, at least in some sectors of the economy. Americans are much too opposed to socialism in my opinion.
I think in some ways, capitalism is immoral because it forces people to make choices that are unethical without thinking about them, and because it makes individuals feel guilty when they aren’t exactly capable of changing society on an institutional level through just voting. I would prefer a much more participatory democracy in which people would be able to have a greater degree of decision making power over what kind of economic system they want.
I think where I would disagree is I’m not sure how a decentralized global economy would allow for enough food to be created to feed 8 billion people in the world. Unfortunately, for now at least, this means either either accepting the business practices of U.S. multinational agribusiness corporations or letting millions of people die of famine. Everyone loves to hate on agribusiness but I’m really not sure how else to provide food security to the most populous countries. Of course I hope that over time, every African and Asian and Latin American nation will be able to provide enough food to its people, but I’m not sure logistically how it’s possible without modern agriculture practices. This is where a lot of leftists might disagree with me. I also think that American medicine such as vaccines and antibiotics have been largely successful in increasing lifespans globally.
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u/Greygal_Eve 20h ago edited 20h ago
I first became "anticonsumption" back in the early 1980s out of absolute unadulterated survival mode. Unemployment was well over 10% and nobody was hiring, interest rates were sky high, inflation was still coming down from the highs of the late 1970s. I simply could not afford to buy anything.
I was literally living on spaghetti and butter, rice, toast and cheese, sometimes eggs, way too many crappy raisins - food I got by volunteering at food bank since I was not eligible to actually receive food from them (back then, no food for a single childless woman when there were families to feed but if there was some food left over after distribution, they'd let us volunteers take some).
I would hit up yard sales late in the day to see if I could score some clothes for free, 'cause some people would just leave things out in a free pile after a yard sale, hoping maybe, just maybe, a slightly better shirt and skirt and shoes would help me get a better job ... and I was already working three jobs but none would give me more than 5-8 hours a week.
But at least I wasn't homeless. I had a small apartment, $200 a month. Those three jobs paid $3.85-$4.05 an hour, and gave me just barely enough money to pay my rent each month. I went without electricity for seven months at one point - a neighbor let me run an extension cord to my apartment so I could at least keep the refrigerator going ... and she let me use her oven to bake bread so long as I gave her a loaf instead of asking me for money for power. At least I had a bicycle because I sure as heck could not afford to take the bus.
Some people when they get through privation and poverty to the other side overcompensate by buying everything they can, whenever they can, because they can.
Some people, like me, do loosen some of those desperate economic poverty-driven habits but never completely let go of them.
Over the years, my reasons have expanded and grown more nuanced for why I continue buying only what I absolutely need, buying "for life", for still baking my own bread, for paying cash for a used car and driving it for 10-15 years (I've NEVER had a car loan), for buying and living in a ridiculously cheap and very small house in an rural area I love (paid for in cash), but ultimately, the primary reason I spend as little as possible on "stuff" is so I can engage in my two life-long passions: Volunteering and traveling, and I have done both widely, usually at the same time. If the choice is between buying the latest fad or setting aside money to bike across Colorado or spend a year hitchhiking in Europe or teaching English in Haiti or clearing a nature trail in Germany or teaching disabled children in Australia or helping set up a library in Mexico, my choice is always to travel and combine it with volunteering at every opportunity.
Wanderlust is incurable ... and eyeopening.
I am not specifically anticonsumption. I am pro-frugal. I am anti-waste. I am pro-quality over quantity. I am pro not making rich people richer. I am pro-environment. I am anti-worker exploitation. I am pro-union. I am pro-community first. I am pro-equity. I am pro-social capitalism in that I believe and have personally experienced and witnessed first hand the simple fact that when we lift the least of us, we lift all of us.
So yeah ... for me ... I do not define myself as anticonsumption. I define myself as frugal because by being frugal I can not only achieve my own dreams, I can direct my resources and time to help others in any way I can because I know what it is like to be the least of us.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 20h ago
Wow. The consequences of Reagan. I think his trickle down economics were a disaster for a lot of people, and the democrats basically just continued his policies of punishing people because they happen to be poor. Tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing any programs that benefit the poor.
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u/Greygal_Eve 20h ago edited 20h ago
One of the worst rewriting of histories perpetuated on the American public is the lionization of Ronald Reagan. Everyone completely forgot - and it's never mentioned - that he was exceedingly unpopular by his second year and very likely would have lost reelection. Between Fed Chair Paul Volcker raising interest rates even higher, unfortunately necessary to combat inflation, and the Democrats winning the midterms, they were able to turn things around. Congress pushed through a lot of necessary bills regarding the economy and, yes, tax cuts for the rich, but those tax cuts were, without doubt, a necessary part of the multi-prong approach needed to turn the economy around.
In other words, the Democrats saved the Republican-damaged economy, yet again. And the Republicans - Reagan - took the credit for it, leading to his resounding win in reelection.
The real crime of Reaganomics was the simple fact that Republicans took what was a one-time, absolutely necessary tax cut on the highest earners and made it their siren song, their central identifying policy, their "selling point" in fundraising. They took the singular economic success of those necessary tax cuts and, ignoring all the many other external factors why that worked at that time in history in that economy, and made tax cuts for the rich, "trickle down" bs, their primary argument why they were "better" at the economy than Democrats. And they've been selling that "trickle down" bs for votes and donations ever since.
I disagree with your contention that the Democrats "just continued his policies of punishing people because they happen to be poor." The Democrats do fight for the poor and are the reason we have as many social programs as we do have. Democrats more often than not push for tax cuts for the middle and lower classes, not for the rich. Of course, to be fair, they do so because they want donations and votes, but they also do so because time and time again, Democratic policies that lift people out of poverty lead to lifting the economy, and they know that. Over and over again, Democrats fix the economic mess that Republicans cause, and they usually do so by people-first policies.
Do not misunderstand me, I am not an apologist for Democrats - I believe they could and should do SO much more, especially right now, but I also recognize the realities of how "politics as usual" changed after Citizens United. But that's a topic for other subreddits ;)
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 20h ago
Yeah, I mean some democrats fight for working people, others do nothing and are basically the same as republicans. It really depends. I also think Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America was horrific and in the case of Guatemala, enabled a genocide. He supported right wing dictators around the world.
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u/Greygal_Eve 19h ago
Yes he did. That time in history was a major influence on the current president, so I expect the current administration to repeat a lot of the 1980s economic, political and social history and policies over the next year or so ... but I also have lived long enough to know Progress Always Prevails ... eventually. ;)
I know you know there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the halls of Congress that we never see or hear, all kinds of complex compromises and deals and agreements that we really can barely imagine at times. Just because some - or even many - are not visible and loud does not necessarily mean they are not fighting for the people, for democracy, for what is right and good. I do wish they were louder though!
In other words ... keep fighting, keep pushing for The Good, keep protesting and boycotting, keep questioning and debating, but also have faith that there are more of us than we know in places higher than we can imagine.
They only win when we despair and give up.
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u/Fairhairedman 11h ago
Waste. Waste. We are currently a society of “my button is loose, must buy a new shirt. My jeans are 6 months old, need a new pair. My watch and phone are perfect, but ads say there’s a new model. I must get one.” It became too easy to point, click, have delivered right to your door. There is no stopping to review your “need” we just hit buy.😔
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u/Thick-Sundae-6547 23h ago
I don’t follow the sub with the idea of not consuming.
Maybe just being conscious of my spending and think it a few time befroe I purchase something. Do I really need it? Am I buying stuff because im NOt happy? Do I need to portray being successful by the stuff I owe? Or should I spend on experiences and going on trips, education.