Affluenza Video by John De Graaf
(and material from P. Wenz, "Personal Choices, Consumerism and Human Nature," Env. Ethics Today)

What is affluenza?

Disease of consumerism/affluence
Greed and materialism: "The good life is the goods life"

Present Carter: Too many of us worship self indulgence and consumption

Throwaway society: Throw away rather than repair (e.g., swivel chairs, bike light)

Convenience/disposable

Planned obsolescence; out of style even if perfectly functional
Represented by the huge amounts of trash we generate: Our trash would fill a convey of garbage trucks ½ way to the moon.

7 million cars a year thrown away

Can the earth take this level of consumption?

Massive increase in consumption since 1950: Since 1950, we Americans have used more resources than all the people that ever lived before 1950

Size of homes (Today's garages are as big as homes in 1950s)
Fly 25 times as much as in 1950 (fly to shop!)

Pollution, resource degradation, species extinction, all tied to overconsumption
Earth can't absorb our waste or replenish resources at this rate.
Consumption x Technology x # of people = affect on env.

Not all people on the earth could consume at the level of Americans

If every Chinese family had two cars.....
Our ecological footprint would require several planets

Harmful and impossibility to bring high consumption economy to 3^rd world

Assumption is that progress is higher consumption

True in some dimensions (medical), not in others

Attempt to bring entire world into consumer society
Destroys culture, impoverishes them, and destroys environment
But they seem to want the high consumption economy!
This is a key objection to "globalization"

Are we happier at this level of consumption? Are we better off? Is this progress?

Percentage of Americans who say they are happy peaked in 1957
Spending more and enjoying less
Materialistic life is not a meaningful life
Live stressful lives keeping up with all our things: possession overload; "Everything I own owns me"
Rushing, rushing, rushing
"Work and spend treadmill"

Work more and save less to consume more

People going bankrupt

1996 (86?) more than 1 million declared bankruptcy (more than graduated from college)
Credit card dept in 80s tripled
We save 4%, Japanese 60%

Strong dimension of relative comparison in judgments of well being

In so far as judgments of well-being are relative (we judge how well off we are by comparison with what others have) that we have more doesn't make us better off (because others have more too): Our relative position is the same.
"Keeping up with the Jones"

Consumption as a way of life is impoverished; value of a life of simplicity

We'd be better off with less
With fewer goods, we'd have more time as don't have to work to buy things or take care of them

But isn't some consumption is good?

What about consumer goods that simplify and enrich our lives?
Examples? Dishwashers?

Economic growth is assumed to be good;

Deep faith in this
No politician can challenge this
But is growth necessarily good? Is bigger better?

GNP growth is a lousy indicator of increases in well-being

GNP has been growing, but it's a lousy measure of increases in well being
Bad things increase GNP: Increases in cancer, oil spills, forests cutting, divorce (2 households instead of one) all increase GNP
Alternative indicator--GPI (=genuine progress indicator) falling since 1973

Includes 24 aspects of our economic lives (that GNP ignores): Housework, volunteerism are added; cost of accidents, crimes, family breakdowns subtracted

Is economic growth necessary for jobs and for the poor?

Rich/poor gap in U.S. widest of any industrial country and been growing with economic growth
Lots of examples of countries with smaller economies where poor are better off than in countries with huge economies
Equality is more important than growth in helping the poor

Job sharing as a response to technological unemployment and productivity gains

Objection: But if we cut consumption, we will loose jobs.
Reply: Share the work. We would be better off with more free time.
Taken all our gains in productivity as income to buy more stuff
Economy of U.S. doubled in 50 years; we could be working 20 weeks if hadn't increased our consumption
Productive technology should give us more free time, not more goods (humans wants insatiable)

Rich/Poor Gap: Consumerism by the rich is wrong given the incredible disparity between rich and poor

1/5 the world lives in abject poverty (dying of hunger/disease)
We consume 5 times as much as person in Mexico, 10 times as much as Chinese person, and 30 times as much as a citizen of India
Gap rich/poor in U.S. greatest of any industrialized nation
Look at how people live in poor countries and how poor live in our country
Sense of deprivation in the poor communities

An issue of inequity/unfairness; why should some have so much when we have so little?
Don't feel like their lives worth anything unless have latest consumer item
A reason for crime? For hatred of U.S.?

We (wealthy) need to give more

Advertising and TV fuels consumption by encouraging discontent

Average American spend a full year of his/her life watching TV commercials
Sees a million ads by age of 20
1 billion a year on billboards
Ads try to get us to fulfil nonmaterial needs with material means
Message is discontent; we are not good enough unless buy that product
Try to meet nonmaterial needs via material means

Wrongness of aggressive advertising to kids

60% say their kids are very materialistic
Ads target kids to "brand them" and "own them"
1 Billion spend on ads directed at kids

"Anti-social behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing"

"Children a cash crop to be harvested"
Ads in schools (one of the few relatively ad free places)

Ads on channel one; on busses, for unhealthy snack foods

Research into kids marketing

Are these consumption choices free?
- Competitive consumption

"Forced" to keep up with the Jones?
Consuming because others consume

Consumerism undermines family and community

On average we shop 6 hours a week and play with our children 40 minutes
70% attend the mall each weak, more than go to churches/synagogues
Shopping malls the new community
There are now more malls than high schools
Participation/volunteering in civic/community activities way down (declining past 20 years)

Rat race means we have not time to participate in community

Citizens been replaced by consumers

Conservative Christians worried about consumerism's negative affect on family and community

Focus on family; free enterprise conservatives who worry about markets' affect on your family
People--like things--are viewed as disposable

Materialism carries over into our relations with people

Market hostile to family values

Market needs to bring in new consumers, expand itself
Go for a sale pitting child against parent

"Everyone is connected to something outside home"
"Give me neither poverty nor riches" (Proverb)
"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content"

Message of our society is discontent

Easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven
For another 1000 square feet, one loses relation with wife, not participate in child growing up

Responses
Simple living; voluntary simplicity

Cut spending
Is what you buy worth the extra hours you will have to work to pay for it?
Co-housing
5-15% of baby boomers practicing voluntary simplicity

Buy nothing day
Adbusters: Magazine, filled with anti-ads

Television un-commercials
Kale Lans?

Related books and websites:

Websites

https://www.swt.org/

https://www.timesizing.com/

www.freetimeday.org

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, Redefining Progress 2001 Berrett-Koehler ; ISBN: 1576751511

Turbocapitalism

Robert Franks, Winner Take All Society

Mark Sagoff, "Do we consume too much?" Atlantic Monthly and reply by Paul Ehrlich et al.n I have the Sagoff in Westra/Werhand, The business of consumption. He argues that it is a fallacy to think we are running out of resources-lots of stats and facts supporting, but too much not much analysis; same old economics doesn't address env. issue here, but moral reasons support claim consume too much. https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jun/consume.htm

Ehrilich's reply is at (and I have) http https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97dec/enviro.htm

Laura Westra and Patricia Werhane, The Business of Consumption: Environmental Ethics and the Global Economy Rowman and Littlefield Sept 1998.

A.L. Hammond, "Limits to Consumption and Economic Growth: The Middle Ground," Philosophy and Public Policy, 15,4 (1995): 9-12.

"The Ethics of Consumption," Report from the Institute of Philosophy and Public Policy (QQ) 15, 4. I have.

David Crocker and Toby Linden, The Ethics of Consumption Rowman and Littlefield, 1997 (564 pages).

David Shy (Furman president) The Simple Life

Juliet Schor, The Simple Life

Our money our life

Your money or your life

Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity

Marketing madness

Richard Swenson, Margin

Giving Kids the Business Alex Molar

David Shi

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Theodore Roosevelt advocate of simple living