What does
Overcoming consumerism accomplish?

It is a means by which one can live a good yet more environmentally benign life, while improving their community, gaining time for family and friends, saving money, shrinking the number of and raising the value of their possessions.

Overcoming consumerism can also mean survival for your sanity, economic health and, long-term, the survival of you and those that you influence when the systems based on the use of unsustainable resources begin their imminent decline as they have with collapsing supply chains and unavailability of even simple items like masks.

Consumerism has been imposed on our lives, society, economy and our environment layer by layer. It can be removed one layer at a time. Small everyday changes are easier to implement than a broad philosophical revolution, but lead inexorably to that same outcome.

You vote for the kind of economy, society and environment that you want every time you spend the ballots called money. Vote for yourself and for your future by spending carefully and wisely, or when appropriate, not spending at all.

WHY OVERCOMING CONSUMERISM MAY EQUAL SURVIVAL

People who fill their intellectual horizons with nothing beyond sports statistics and exquisite attention to their personal appearance, who know nothing of real matters such as growing food, repairing things and asserting their independence from mass culture are in for a rough future. A quiet disaster of seemingly unconnected changes will overwhelm their expectations, hopes and transient security. Their children will live in poverty and the world of their parents and grandparents will be unobtainable to them.

People concerned with the subjects of this site and others like it are in a much better position to survive the timeless changes that are occuring:

Here's a great primer if you're unfamiliar with the subject of Peak Oil:

How to practice Anti-Consumerism

Buying merchandise from sustainable industries and businesses is important but merely substituting an exorbitant lifestyle of unsustainable goods for an exorbitant one of Green merchandise may make the purchaser feel good but it is not going to seriously reduce the scope of the problem.
It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment

Corporations and marketers are getting smart. They are tacking "green" labels and "fair trade" stickers on all manner of their products the do not deserve the label. "WE'RE GREEN!" Has about as much significance as "FOUR OUT OF FIVE DOCTORS SMOKE CAMEL CIGARETTES."
Our programmed fascination for new shiny goods to replace old standardized commodities has long been a social pathology in a system that breeds mental divisions among individuals to deny the existence of social structure. The Seven Deadly Sins are now used by advertisers to sell goods. i.e. "Drive an S Class Mercedes and you will be envied."

The best method to overcome consumerism is to question one's true need for all items purchased new. Ask yourself, can an old item be repaired, or a substitute borrowed, rented or bought used? If you must buy new, can you wait for the item to become "last years model", thus saving money and turning planned obsolescence against itself?

If purchasing new items, the lowest cost to both the purse and the environment is a quality product that lasts, yet can be eventually repaired if need be. Before buying a new item that you personally may not use up or wear out over the life of the product, determine whether there is a secondary market for the used product and whether the material it contains can be recycled when it ultimately does wear out.

When there is a choice between products, buy those made as close as possible to home to help keep our communities working and preserve wealth here. Determine if the item is manufactured in the U.S, Scandinavia or Western Europe, countries that usually offer a high degree of protection for their workers and the natural environment when compared to other sources, especially China.

Buying goods made in your state or local area prevents the squandering of fossil fuels used to transport goods long distances or, in the case of out-of-season fruit, airfreight it from South America, where pesticides, finally banned in the U.S., are indiscriminately applied in the quest for perfect appearances and "marketability." Impulse buying is a handmaiden of consumerism. People are forced to acknowledge the worthlessness of gift shop junk when they attempt to raise cash by selling at garage sales the little novelties, gift items, impulse buys and "collectibles" of yesterday.

Worse, is the compressed sawdust "furniture" that people buy and then when finished with it, attempt to sell, usually proclaiming the invented name for it. Even more pathetic, people that try to sell used items at a high price and bleat out "We paid $4,000 for this!" basically proclaiming that they are suckers.

Now You didn't try clicking that link did you?

Research purchases and reflect on the true need of an item before buying it. Do take advantage of large corporate owned advertising-driven stores to shop for and examine items but then buy or order them from a locally owned independent store if possible. Big price difference? Ask the smaller store if they can partially lower their price to get the sale. Always pay cash to small businesses to save them the credit card company skim that may cost them most or all of their profits. Example: Buy a $100 dollar item with a credit card and the merchant gets back $95 from the card issuer.

Create a Local Merchant Resource list. Think of the small locally owned stores in your area where you have received excellent service and bought great products. (We're sorry if you have none). Many of those that survived the pandemic lockdowns are probably struggling to survive and may be gone soon. They can't afford advertising and may be located in out-of-the-way corners of town. Here's how we help them. We list them with a brief description, phone number and hours, print copies and carry them with us. We give one to people that have just moved into the area or are visiting from out of town. This helps the local businesses, gives newcomers the benefit of our experience and helps to keep the chain stores away. What would you rather have? Such a list offered to you by your new neighbors or a piece of slick junk-advertising addressed to "occupant" in your mail box?

BUYING, TRADING OR GIVING AWAY USED GOODS.
Destine your possessions that are no longer actively being utilized to those who can actually use them. There is an enormous amount of unwanted, unused and under utilized goods stored in closets, basements and garages. Take inventory of your household possessions and get these things to those who can actively use them. This creates wealth for the giver sometimes in the form of money, but always in storage space, less clutter, plus the goodwill of the recipient who obtains useful items at little cost. Determine what's underutilized in your home. For example: Consistently return clothing that you have just worn or laundered to the far right side of the closet bar. This gradually pushes the clothes that you never wear to the far left hand side of the closet. After a year or so you will have lots of clothes covered with dust on the left. Give them away to someone who can use them.

Each item that you give away can take the place of one yet to be purchased and thus you have prevented the shrinking of inventories and the squandering of the embodied energy and material that would be used in the manufacture of the new item. Just about every thing that you need except for food and fuel is probably sitting unused and unwanted somewhere. How to determine where it is and obtain it is always more difficult than destining your unwanted items to others. Here are some solutions to this.

If you and your neighbors pool your resources and material goods, a tremendous amount of energy, money and time can be saved. For example, a neighborhood, or community wide lending library of tools is easy to set up and eliminates the duplication and expense of everyone having their own rarely-used tools.

Setting up a community wide exchange service based on category and (clothing) size is now practical with widespread use of home pages, community bulletin boards and servers. Search Yahoo for their list of Freecycle groups. Craigslist has free, barter, trade and specialized category listings for almost every urban area in America.

Spending money in a way that keeps people working instead of consuming more resources is another means of fighting consumerism. Consider practical repair before replacement. When there is an alternative, refuse to use ATM's, automatic ticket/boarding pass issuing machines and other automated job-destroying technology.

Our local Safeway has more and more "self check out" lanes with fewer and fewer checkers. Notice also the charitable giving scams in corporate markets these days. "Do you want to donate to XYZ charity?" The reason they do it is free publicity and most importantly, the corporation gets the charitable donation tax write off using your money, which you might pay with a credit card that charges you 29% interest. We patronize a local market with workers who we know and who are delightful, well paid and have a job for life if they want it.

Contrast that with the victims of these policies: "Over 40 million Americans have lost their jobs since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, corporate CEOs are doing just fine. The average compensation of CEOs at companies in the United States is over $12.3 million. CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978."

When calling a company say "OPERATOR, OPERATOR" as a way to often get out of voice jail. All that is stopping companies from completely automating or exporting telephone service jobs is customer resistance to this practice.

How to get through to a real live human for many companies.

Ask the next order-taker or service representitive that you deal with on the phone: "Where are you actually located?" Odds are that they are across the country or perhaps overseas. Ask the people whom you are dealing with if they're being treated fairly by their employer and getting benefits, that you are on their side etc. They'll appreciate it and management will sometimes hear about it on recorded lines. Refuse to buy from companies that export or destroy service jobs. Here's an example:

America's biggest job and livelihood destroyer, after Congress. How many of the 23,328 employees that AT&T will layoff, as well as their friends and family are still using AT&T as their service provider? None we hope.

And "In addition to the 1,800 job cuts, a CWA analysis from May showed that AT&T has cut 23,328 jobs since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed near the end of 2017. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was a proponent of the tax cut, and said it would lead to the creation of at least 7,000 jobs.,, The company's own numbers show that they employ 23,000 fewer people today than they did at the start of 2018. There's plenty of work to be done if AT&T would invest in maintaining its existing network and making sure that next-generation networks reach every community that they serve."

Learn about the corporate hero who laid them off. AT&T CEO receives massive $274k salary a month FOR LIFE.

Ask yourself, has AT&T gotten less expensive than it was before the job cuts? ***********************************************