It Strikes Me Funny: My stomach can’t handle conventional wisdom Part 2

Some leaders suggest we must buy our way out of the recession. Mortgage the future so that today is rosier.

Conventional wisdom makes me reach for the TUMs.


As I quoted in the last post, leaders want us to “borrow and buy with abandon.” [T. Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down]

They suggest a dead end.

Homer-Dixon continues:

“Despite the fact that our lives are saturated with stuff, that we’ve already reached a level of material abundance unimaginable to previous generations, and that more money and possessions add little to our happiness, we must be made to feel chronically discontented with our lot.”

“In essence, then, the logic underpinning our economies works like this: if we’re discontented with what we have, we buy stuff; if we buy enough stuff, the economy grows; if the economy grows enough, displaced workers can find new jobs; and if they find new jobs, there will be enough economic demand to keep the economy humming and to prevent wrenching political conflict.”

“Modern capitalism’s stability - and increasingly the global economy’s stability - requires the cultivation of material discontent, endlessly rising personal consumption, and the steady economic growth this consumption generates.”

I think only my consumption of TUMs will go up if our leaders keep driving the economy toward a dead end.

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I think there are more benefits to radically reduced consumption than constant economic growth.

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