2. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism The Question is : How Can We Live Happily Still showing off our personal traits, while avoiding unnecessary consumption. Remember: Runaway consumerism leaves us feeling superficial and empty, because we project ourselves outward to observers too promiscuously and desperately.
3. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism First lets recap our current situation: -In most developed societies our standard self display strategy is to seek highest paying full time employment permitted by ones intelligence and personality and use resulting income to buy branded goods and services at full retail price.
4. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism This state of society results in “a polarization of roles- at work we embrace division of labor, specialize, and work hard; while at home we portray emotional warmth, openness, spontaneity, and virtue” Commuting thus = transition zone between a false persona and its opposite.
5. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism So lets reframe this mindset into something more productive & accurate. “It is very inefficient to buy new, branded, mass produced products from stores at full manufacturers suggested retail price” (inefficient here suggesting a suboptimal path towards displaying attractive genetic qualities/traits) Why? Because nothing about the purchase says anything about ones traits besides our purchasing power.
6. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism So here’s the advice (instead of buying something outright): Think for a few days whether you really need any product/service at all. Find the one you already own Borrow product from a friend, relative, neighbor Rent it (The sense of ownership is a cognitive illusion…founded on the denial of habituation, consumer fashion cycles, technical progress, and our own mortality)
7. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism So here’s the advice continued 5. Buy It in Generic, Replica, or Trickle Down Form 6. Make it Yourself 7. Commission It From A Local Artisan 8. Wait 3 Years Before Buying New Technologies 9. Ask to get it as a gift 10. Acknowledge the display premium built into most retail products.
8. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism “People indoctrinated in hedonistic individualism, religious fundamentalism, or patriarchal nationalism, that is 99 percent of humanity are not accustomed to thinking imaginatively about how to change society through changing its behavioral norms and institutional habits.”
9. How To Curb Unnecessary Consumerism The Key to changing consumerism socially is to work at changing “informal social norms” Why? Because research in game theory and experimental economics has show that informal social norms can powerfully influence human behavior and sustain human cooperation.
10. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism Biggest problem with most current governments is that they prioritize economic growth over citizens happiness, quality of life, efficiency of trait display, and breadth and depth of social networks.
11. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism If you want to understand how political power biases trait display systems of our society, you have to track the money on which politics depends (Thus) Taxation Campaign Finance
12. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism Tax Policy is where much of society and the economy gets shaped. If citizens don’t understand taxes, they don’t understand how, when, and where their government expropriates money, time, and freedom from their lives. *This also explains a bias for consumption over savings.
13. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism So what can the government do? ---Shift from income taxes to consumption taxes Why? Because consumption taxes encourage less consuming, more earning, saving, investing, and charitable giving. (Thus promoting longer term retirement security, family wealth, social welfare, technical progress, and economic growth)
14. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism Income taxes penalize people for what they contribute to society (labor and capital) Consumption taxes penalize people for what they take out of society (new retail purchases)
15. How The Government Can Legalize Freedom From Unnecessary Consumerism What Can A Consumption Tax Accomplish People reduce, reuse, and recycle more. Incentivize people to buy longer lasting goods with higher resale value. Encourage people to buy products that consume less energy and matter to operate Promote social capital and neighborly camaraderie Increase savings, Investments, and charity
