The Day the World Stops Shopping
My sticky notes from The Day the World Stops Shopping, by J. B. Mackinnon:
On the problem:
The twenty-first century has brought a critical dilemma into sharp relief: we must stop shopping, and yet we can’t stop shopping. At the turn of this new millennium, according to the United Nations’ panel of experts on international resources, consumption quietly surpassed population as our greatest environmental challenge. When it comes to climate change, species extinction, water depletion, toxic pollution, deforestation and other crises, how much each one of us consumes now matters more than how many of us there are. The average person in a rich country consumes thirteen times as much as the average person in a poor one. In terms of environmental impact, that means that having a child in the United States or Canada, the United Kingdom or Western Europe, is equivalent to having thirteen children in a country like Bangladesh, Haiti or Zambia. Raising two children in a rich country is like having twenty-six kids in a poor one.
and:
In just the past twenty years, the number of garments purchased per person has increased by more than 60 percent, while the lifespan of those clothes has been cut nearly in half. Even if you harbour doubts about how accurately we can measure our voracious consumer appetites, it hardly matters. The numbers could be off the mark by a wide margin and we’d still face a planetary crisis.
and:
The technosphere—everything we build and make, our stuff—is now estimated to outweigh all living things on Earth.
On the ultimate aim of so much consumption:
“In effect, the richest countries have an efficiency problem: they are squandering consumption without transforming much of it into joy.”
On consumerism vs saving the world:
Carbon emissions [if we all stopped shopping, would] hit net zero in less than a quarter century, much sooner than by focussing on renewable energy and green technology
On the ends of materialism, psychologist Tim Kasser says:
Materialism is good for the thing things that it's good for. If what you care about is status and possessions and economic growth, materialism is great. If what you care about is personal, social and ecological wellbeing, materialism is not so great.
On the popularity of Escapology, Professor of Finance, Aswath Damodaran says:
The idea that a less consumerism society would be better stems from the fact that everyone today knows somebody who stepped off the money-in, money-out treadmill, simplified their life and ended up happier.
Is this true???
On the fall of the Soviet Empire:
What is most extraordinary about the collapse is that civilisation did not, in fact, come to an end. We find neither massive starvation nor strikes and food riots, neither the destruction of society not its explosion.
and:
92 per cent of the nation's potato harvest came from dachas and gardens ... By night, people would enjoy the fruits of the labour, playing cards, debating and drinking. In this extreme economic catastrophe, they were seized by the strange exhilaration of disaster. There were endless parties in the dachas.
and:
"There was hardship but also excitement, [said someone who was there], it was like they'd been let out of prison."
On planned obsolescence:
the journey from good long-lasting light bulbs like the one hanging in Livermore fire station to the disposable bulbs we know today began in 1924. That year, representatives from the world's largest lighting companies ... met in Switzerland to form Phoebus, arguably the first corporate cartel with global reach. ... At the time, inventors were steadily increasing bulb lifespans, which was creating what one senior member of Phoebus described as a 'mire' in sales turnover. The member companies of Phoebus agreed to depress lamp life to a thousand-hour standard.
On quality, designer Tim Cooper says:
A world without shopping is still a consumer economy, but one grounded in quality rather than quantity, meaning products will be well made and designed for longer life spans. Since better goods typically require more work and better materials to produce, prices will be considerably higher, making up for at least some of the lost earnings caused by the drop in overall number of products sold.
On innovation and the profit motive:
Traditional economists have long claimed that innovation is driven by the profit motive, but that, too, does not appear to be the way that it actually works. [The research of Eric von Hippel] found that many innovations don't even originate in businesses, but rather among everyday people, who often share their ideas freely. ... The inventor [or hobbyist] takes satisfaction not from making money but from creating something useful and gaining standing in the community. Similarly, scientists themselves tend to invent the scientific instruments that are most important to the advancement of science, often profiting little or not at all from their inventions.
On the free will that comes with minimalism:
Classical economic theory holds that consumers know what is best for themselves and act rationally in their self interest, a perspective that remains influential today. Paradoxically, it is anti-consumers, not mainstream ones, who come closest to this ideal: they are more likely to make active, informed choices ... are less swayed by advertising and fads, and are less likely to feel trapped in consumption or to [try to] use it as a means of escape.
and:
Many people perceive living simply as limiting; [downshifter Syd Fredrickson] said it has always made her feel unusually free to make uncommon choices, question conformity, act spontaneously and express herself through her words and appearance. All her adult life she has watched people around her pursue careers they didn't like or stay in jobs they hated because they would not risk ending up with a lower income. "They would say their lives were all hollow and crazy. "They just thought it was too scary to do something else," she said.
On how non-consumers might spend their time:
[even though we need collective action at the policy level to actually save the planet] It is still reasonable to reduce your consumption for personal reasons alone. But there are many more roles that individuals can play. A world that stops shopping needs new products and services, new theories of how an economy can function, new ways of making meaning in our lives, new models for doing business, new habits, new policies, new protest movements, new infrastructure. As Kris De Decker said, "We need to rethink everything."