You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.
We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.
If doctors are paid the same salary as bus drivers, community would not be crazy about making their children doctors
An ever growing part of our major institutions’ functions is the cultivation and maintenance of three sets of illusions which turn the citizen into a client to be saved by experts...The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.
Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.
We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really.
Unfortunately, there are some ecological phenomenological chemicals within consumerism.
Ecological thought rejects consumerism at its peril.
The pharma pricing system was not built on the idea of consumer engagement. It was built... on market efficiencies. It was not built on the premise of consumerism.
