Sometimes, the critique of “consumerism” is about criticizing the unpriced negative externalities of consumption (factory farms, climate change). It can be about inefficiencies (unused panini presses). It can also be the idea that consumption is a lazy/passive alternative to some more intrinsically valuable activity (watching Netflix instead of connecting with your spouse).
All of these can be bad, but in some sense, they’re all fixable. Inefficient consumption isn’t even necessarily bad as a rule—each purchase is a bet on utility, and sometimes, the bet just doesn’t pan out.
The type of consumerism that bothers me the most is that which stems from collective action problems. Here are some examples. For each, it’s key that most or all participants brlieve that there’s a better available alternative, and what holds them back is a collective action problem/bad equilibrium.
Stress-shopping and overpaying for Christmas presents for family members who could have bought better, cheaper “gifts” for themselves when everybody would have preferred a small simple gift and a donation to charity in their name
Alcoholics who’d like to quit drinking, but keeps going to the bar every night because her friends are patrons and it would look weird/irritate the bartender if she started ordering cheap nonalcoholic drinks. Similarly, smokers who’d like to quit smoking, but who enjoy the social contact on smoke breaks (or who are given extra breaks if it’s to smoke, as in the military), and would feel awkward participating without a cigarette in their hand
People forced into getting an overpriced education because of credentialism
A person who’d like to become vegetarian but keeps eating factory-farmed meat because of social pressure from their family
A person comfortable in jeans and a T shirt who feels pressure to upgrade their wardrobe to fit in with their colleagues at work, when the standard of dress is ultimately driven by an accretion of covert attempts at status one-upsmanship
A person who continues to take piano lessons they don’t enjoy because of the awkwardness of ending their relationship with their teacher, even though their teacher would prefer to switch to teaching a more enthusiastic and committed student and feels like it would be awkward to fire this underperforming student
Jonathan Haidt’s explanation that teen girls keep using social media even though it wrecks their mental health because all their friends are on it, so they’d be even more isolated if they stopped
People paying for crappy dating apps because it would be awkward to launch an app where you paid your friends to find good dates for you
People feeling like they have to pretend they are enjoying a collective activity, like a sushi dinner, just as much as everybody else because otherwise it would ruin the mood, leading to overconsumption of underappreciated sushi dinners
It’s a recognition that our consumption choices are frequently influenced by undesirable social pressures and prisoners’ game dilemmas, or where the only way to coordinate valuable forms of social contact is to attach them to a business-friendly format that is notably worse than the obvious best solution.
Your argument about the benefits of 1% efficiencies also applies in reverse. An accumulation of small social pressures to consume unnecessarily or harmfully making you 1% worse at a time can collectively create enormous inefficiencies. Some of the inefficiencies above can, on their own, destroy enormous amounts of value.
This problem is in addition to inefficient but individually-driven consumption choices, such as the unused gym membership or panini press. It’s hard to distinguish these from “positive EV bets that didn’t work out.” But the social pressure and bad equilibrium examples above are examples of prisoner’s game dilemmas, and I’m more comfortable giving them a negative label like “consumerism” and saying they’re just straightforwaredly bad.
Of course, just because some important consumption patterns are PDGs doesn’t mean all of them are, and that’s the motte and bailey of a soldier-mindset attack on consumerism.
Sometimes, the critique of “consumerism” is about criticizing the unpriced negative externalities of consumption (factory farms, climate change). It can be about inefficiencies (unused panini presses). It can also be the idea that consumption is a lazy/passive alternative to some more intrinsically valuable activity (watching Netflix instead of connecting with your spouse).
All of these can be bad, but in some sense, they’re all fixable. Inefficient consumption isn’t even necessarily bad as a rule—each purchase is a bet on utility, and sometimes, the bet just doesn’t pan out.
The type of consumerism that bothers me the most is that which stems from collective action problems. Here are some examples. For each, it’s key that most or all participants brlieve that there’s a better available alternative, and what holds them back is a collective action problem/bad equilibrium.
Stress-shopping and overpaying for Christmas presents for family members who could have bought better, cheaper “gifts” for themselves when everybody would have preferred a small simple gift and a donation to charity in their name
Alcoholics who’d like to quit drinking, but keeps going to the bar every night because her friends are patrons and it would look weird/irritate the bartender if she started ordering cheap nonalcoholic drinks. Similarly, smokers who’d like to quit smoking, but who enjoy the social contact on smoke breaks (or who are given extra breaks if it’s to smoke, as in the military), and would feel awkward participating without a cigarette in their hand
People forced into getting an overpriced education because of credentialism
A person who’d like to become vegetarian but keeps eating factory-farmed meat because of social pressure from their family
A person comfortable in jeans and a T shirt who feels pressure to upgrade their wardrobe to fit in with their colleagues at work, when the standard of dress is ultimately driven by an accretion of covert attempts at status one-upsmanship
A person who continues to take piano lessons they don’t enjoy because of the awkwardness of ending their relationship with their teacher, even though their teacher would prefer to switch to teaching a more enthusiastic and committed student and feels like it would be awkward to fire this underperforming student
Jonathan Haidt’s explanation that teen girls keep using social media even though it wrecks their mental health because all their friends are on it, so they’d be even more isolated if they stopped
People paying for crappy dating apps because it would be awkward to launch an app where you paid your friends to find good dates for you
People feeling like they have to pretend they are enjoying a collective activity, like a sushi dinner, just as much as everybody else because otherwise it would ruin the mood, leading to overconsumption of underappreciated sushi dinners
It’s a recognition that our consumption choices are frequently influenced by undesirable social pressures and prisoners’ game dilemmas, or where the only way to coordinate valuable forms of social contact is to attach them to a business-friendly format that is notably worse than the obvious best solution.
Your argument about the benefits of 1% efficiencies also applies in reverse. An accumulation of small social pressures to consume unnecessarily or harmfully making you 1% worse at a time can collectively create enormous inefficiencies. Some of the inefficiencies above can, on their own, destroy enormous amounts of value.
This problem is in addition to inefficient but individually-driven consumption choices, such as the unused gym membership or panini press. It’s hard to distinguish these from “positive EV bets that didn’t work out.” But the social pressure and bad equilibrium examples above are examples of prisoner’s game dilemmas, and I’m more comfortable giving them a negative label like “consumerism” and saying they’re just straightforwaredly bad.
Of course, just because some important consumption patterns are PDGs doesn’t mean all of them are, and that’s the motte and bailey of a soldier-mindset attack on consumerism.