Work buy consume die

We are organized in such a way that we consume much more than we need. All this because if we would not, then we would not have a place to work to produce all the useless stuff.
In the meantime we destroy our environment and ourselves. We are no longer "humans" we are "consumer beings".

Watch this documentary :
www.storyofstuff.com...

Do you really think there is not enough for everybody ? In one week if one nation would want it, everyone in that nation would have a cell phone, a house, clothes and stuff.
We no longer produce stuff because we need it, we produce it because we have to "Work" to do something. With today's production capabilities this should better stop. let the machines produce our stuff, and not more than we need.

The Gospel of consumption
www.orionmagazine.org...

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take.

[edit on 27-5-2008 by pai mei]

Well we have dug our own holes, and none of us have a ladder long enough to get back out

It'll take complete destruction of our current society to change the way things are going now, and with the way things are going now, the children of today are the ones who will live in that world.

We all work hard for money.

Money is useless. It is exchanged for goods and services.

Therefore, we all work for goods and services.

How many goods and services do YOU require?

Here's a tip:
These questions will be a lot easier to contemplate when one gets rid of their TV (or turns it off for at least a month). Try it!


This isn't about charity, but the other day I gave someone $50. Just like that, no reason needed. They had a hard time accepting the fact that I can just hand out $50. I am not rich.

What I explained is that this $50 won't make much of a dent in my financial ladder, but my friend will find much better use for it, as to him, it's probably more like $100. The paper itself is just paper. It's what kind of 'thing' or service you can get for it that is valuable.

I advised my friend to use it well.

BTW, don't ask me for money

But it's with everything... everything is mass-produced, just like the OP mentioned. More condos, more cars, more people, more retail stores, more coffee shops, of course all because YOU need it.

Things are only built to last a few years today. As an ex-machinist, I was taught how to machine steel parts to tolerance, and depending how close to the measurement one is, that will affect the lifetime of the part.

For parts suppliers, the life span of an automobile is very important. The longer a car stays operational, the greater the need for replacement parts. On the other hand, new parts are lasting longer, which is great for consumers, but is not such good news for parts makers. When, for example, most car makers moved from using rolled steel to stainless steel, the change extended the life of parts by several years.

Link

No I do not need it. If everybody would buy as much as I buy, this whole "economy" game would be over very soon

I do not watch TV. I use the computer. No I am not against the technology, I am against this wasteful system, it does not only destroy the planet, it destroys the human mind, did you see the documentary from the first post ?