Has anyone really considered why are the implications of growth
fueled by consumption? In a world with finite resources, our
so-called economic growth through consumption is merely short-term
gratification with production of goods solely for profit with no
thought for the environmental (See Story of Stuff), not to mention
psychological impact on society.
To quote from an article from
The New Scientist:
...
But there's another, more recent factor that's making things
even worse, and it's an
invention of human culture rather than an evolved
trait. According to Rees, the change took place
after the second world war in the US, when factories previously
producing weapons lay idle, and soldiers were returning with no
jobs to go to.
American economists and the government of the day decided to
revive economic activity by
creating a culture in which people were encouraged to accumulate
and show off material wealth, to the point where it defined their
status in society and their self-image.
Rees quotes economist Victor Lebow as saying in 1955: "Our
enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our
way of life, that we convert
the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our
spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We
need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded
at an ever-increasing rate".
In today's world, such rhetoric seems beyond belief. Yet the
consumer spree carries on regardless, and few of us are aware that
we're still willing slaves to a completely artificial injunction to
consume, and to define ourselves by what we consume.
"Lebow and his cronies got together to 'create' the modern
advertising industry, which plays to primitive beliefs," says Rees.
"It makes you feel insecure,
because the advertising industry turned our sense of self-worth
into a symbolic presentation of the possessions we have," he told
me. "We've turned consumption into a necessity, and how we define
ourselves."
The result is a world in which rampant consumption in rich
countries is rapidly outstripping the resources in the world needed
to satisfy demand.
...
"Advertising is an instrument for construction of people's
everyday reality, so we could use the same media to construct a
cultural paradigm in which conspicuous consumption is despised," he
says. "We've got to make people ashamed to be seen as a 'future
eater'."
It all depends on how you look at 'consumption' - which from the
perspective you are looking at is from an environmentalist point of
view towards wasteful consumption that strips the earth's
resources, contributing to environmental polution in terms of
global warming and garbage.
From the economic point of view, one has to look at the
consumption driven economy that is geared towards specific goals
that can stimulate the economy at the same time as removing or
reducing the contributing effects of wasteful consumption that
affects our environment.
In the present context of this thread, it was started from the
points raised by the remarkable "swei-siao hog" in the other thread
‘Democrats
establish 14-member CEC to lead growing party’ - which
were referred to in this thread.
As matters stand, the PAP Government has moved to open the doors
to an increase to our population size so as to boost
economic activities, which can only have positve effects to the
GDP.
At the end of it all, in the face of a sinking industrial
output, the increase in new migrants to boost the GDP can only
strain the existing resources available to Singaporeans.
While the PAP Government pats its own back for a
seeming miraculous upturn in statistics, this is done at the
expense of the existing 3.5 Million Singaporeans already burden
with 1 million over foreigners living as Permanent Residents and on
Work Permit or Social Visit Passes.
