Capitalism an Underlying Cause of Consumerism
At every passing seconds, there is this urge to buy things either online or offline. There is one thing to buy on Instagram, or that shoe you saw on Amazon and so on. It now looks like everyday, we live our lives to work tirelessly and then spend it shopping for one thing or the other to fill a void that remains unfilled.
Buying things have become a way to kill time, boost mood, make political statements, show status and so on. I want to blame the brands but it looks like Consumerism is something that has eating deep into the flesh of everyone living in a suburb area, or mega city. Actually, consumerism doesn't look like the problem, it is just a trap by capitalist forces to keep people buying.
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When you spend enough time on the internet, there is a high chance you are going to buy something because you got that notification that Amazon or any of those online retail stores are giving free shipping to your region, or they are giving discounts within a short period of time?
If you look at what people buy and how they spend, you understand that there is more to it than just buying needs. People buy a lot of things that a lot of people now look to keep their properties that cannot be kept in the house in self-storage facilities pushing that industry to almost 30 billion dollars yearly.
It is no doubt that our excessive consumption has had its effect on the environment and while this buying and shopping spree continues survey shows that people are becoming less happy compared to decades ago. Before you say but they are buying a lot, well more income or luxury doesn't necessarily mean happiness. Don't bother your head too much on that but according to Gibson, higher economic growth and higher aspirations will negate the expected positive impact on welfare leading to less happiness.
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Behind everything you buy, there is a company or a corporation that wants to dump their product in your hands in exchange for money. Capital accumulation in the goal to expand productive capacity means more product leaving the corporation, and they have to do this at the lowest possible cost, else they get eaten up by competing corporation who are able to do what they fail at. The goal is to create product for money so as to expand and create more product for money.
While they make it look like it is consumption that has led to increase production, it is the other way round coupled to multiple marketing bullets fired at you. At the end, they whisper in our ears to consume. It's not like we cannot ignore but then we have access to credit which we cannot touch instead we can use to purchase and this leads to false needs.
Advertising help them accomplish this as companies then add emotional feelings to product making people buy them as a result of the emotional attachment with the product. They preach the good life in adverts and everyone want the good life and so we keep buying. Also, they can also attribute the product to happiness which means that we are falsely told what to believe just for us to keep buying, making capitalist richer.
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