LadyEllen
Posts: 10931
Joined: 6/30/2006
From: Stourport-England
Status: offline
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Consumerism is a good thing - it means that more product is sold, building up businesses and growing employment and generating wealth, some of which is then spent on consumer goods; a virtuous circle whereby we all benefit.
Except that the product which is being sold is not made here and whilst the importer businesses grow, they have little or no requirement to grow employment here and at the same time facilitate the export of wealth to the places where the product is made. We then find ourselves in a situation where we lack the wealth to buy the consumer products - but luckily we have banks ready and willing to provide credit with which to buy.
Except that the credit extended by the banks is now being found to be based on a house of cards which they engineered - a house whose foundations are shaking violently as we speak and which is due to fall at any moment. The only saving grace is that the money the banks lent us was funded to great extent from the wealth we transferred to other countries through importing and marketing their product here. Thus our ultimate creditors are those who have a vested interest in not foreclosing but in trying to maintain the situation - keep us buying or at the least to allow us some stay of execution so that we might be able to buy again in future.
And this I would guess is a source of at least one aspect of the problem. Whilst most people are pretty stupid, theyre not so stupid as to not be able to understand that our governments have little power or influence over things - because we are all so interdependent as countries that nothing radical can be done which would threaten the situation. We are caught in a trap whereby we must play the game set globally with little regard for the comparatively tiny domestic issues which government can affect. Thus, there is (in the UK at least) little difference between the political parties in the mainstream because they have all had to adjust their ideologies to meet the requirements of a global economy, and this has not only become apparent to the electorate who are in this way turned off participation for it makes little difference who wins, but also the electorate are aware of what really determines things.
The irony is that it is our model of capitalism - which tempered with socialist interventions has brought us to be wealthy, that has been turned around against us, by our own capitalists operating the capitalist system with little foresight as to how it will end - with the money they think they have made being rendered worthless.
But, its about more than that - its about aspirations and the general dumbing down we have experienced in education and public life. Its about the foolish notion that everyone can work in service industries in front a phone and a PC if only they are trained to do so, based on the original foolish notion that everyone is equal, when its plain we are all different with special attributes and interests which have been marginalised in the rush towards realising the next capitalist bubble. If we cannot achieve in the path which the whole universe urges us to follow then we must achieve in the one way accessible, by having the plasma screen TV, the BMW and the mock Tudor house and the other trinkets of success which our the currency thereof in our economies and societies - and yet we remain unhappy because we know these things are displacements for our real fulfilment.
E
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In a test against the leading brand, 9 out of 10 participants couldnt tell the difference. Dumbasses.
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RE: Capitalism and Consumerism...... - 
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