Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 6, 2006
'Consumerism' is Not a Four-Letter Word
By LEW ROCKWELL
I'm beginning to think that the epithet "consumerism" is just another word for freedom in the marketplace.
It's true that the market is delivering goods, services and technological advances
by leaps, day after day. People claim that they are so inundated with techno
advances that they don't want any more. Say no to the latest gizmo!
But we really don't mean it. No one wants to be denied Web access, and we want it faster and better, with more variety. We want to download songs, movies and treatises on every subject. And that's not all.
We want better heating and cooling in our homes and businesses. We want more varieties of food, wine, cleaning products, toothpaste and razors. We want access to a full range of styles in our home furnishings. We want fresh flowers, fresh fish, fresh bread and new cars with more features. We want overnight delivery, good tech support and the newest fashions from all over the world.
We want choice.
Sure, it's easy to look at all this and shout: ghastly consumerism! But if by "consume" we meant to purchase products and services with our own money in order to improve the human condition, who can't help but plead guilty?
Are people buying superfluous things that they can do without? Certainly. But who is to say for sure what is a need vs. a mere want? A dictator who knows all? In a market economy, wants and needs are linked, so that one person's necessities are met precisely because other people's wants are met.
Here is an example.
If my grandchild is desperately sick, I want to get her to a doctor. The urgent care clinic is open late, as is the drugstore next door, and thank goodness. I'm in and out, and I have the medicine and materials necessary to restore her to health. No one would say that this is a superficial demand.
But it can only stay open late because its offices are nestled in a strip mall where the rents are low and the access is high. The real estate is shared by candy stores, sports shops selling scuba gear, a billiard hall and a store that specializes in party favors – all stores selling "superficial" things. All pay rent. The developer who made the mall wouldn't have built the place were it not for these less urgent needs.
Does it really matter whether people have access to vast grocery stores, drugstores, subdivisions and technology? Consider life expectancy in the age of consumerism. Women in 1900 typically died at 48 years old, and men at 46. Today? Women live to 80, and men to 77. This is due to better diet, less dangerous jobs, improved sanitation and hygiene, improved access to health care and the entire range of factors that contribute to what we call our standard of living.
Nowadays we are being told that consumption is aesthetically displeasing, and that we should strive to get back to nature, stop driving here and there, make a compost pile, raise our own vegetables, unplug our computers and eat nuts off trees.
For those people who prefer outhouses to indoor plumbing, pulling their own teeth to dentistry and eating nuts from trees rather than buying a can of Planters at Wal-Mart, they too have the right to choose that way of life. But don't let them say that they are against "consumerism." To live at all requires that we buy and sell. To be against commerce is to attack life itself.