If you want material to which you can bring your own experiences and with which you can take further, more serious action, read on.

Overcoming Consumerism can be seen as not only a constructive philosophy but as a serious weapon for positive change and also, vengeance. Weapons belong in the hands of people who have a just cause and have to fight for their own survival. Vengeance is appropriate for those who have had their livelihood and standard of living stolen from them.

Most people find life far less secure, more disjointed and it's harder to make connections with those around them then it once was in the Before Time. The future, for both you and society, seems more of a threat than a promise. Your expectation of a career, the enthusiastic future vision you had of working life, the Sunny Golden Tomorrow, is now gone, like last nights furtive dream.

Do you, or your parents, who grew up and prospered in a totally different world and economy, blame these shortcomings on you? Perhaps you didn't make all the right decisions, (notice how the regret is usually expressed in financial terms) It is, however, the basic circumstances of our lives and livelihoods and the structure of society that have changed. Confronting and partially overcoming this in everyday activities is addressed here.

Whether the economy has turned against you and made your skills and knowledge redundant, or you are doing very well financially, but intuit that the things cannot go on without disaster, something needs to change. The best way to build an economy that values the individual while helping your community and the environment is to turn your back on consumerism. By doing this you are actively helping to destroy those forces that are ruining our world and in some cases, your livelihood.

If, for example, you have played by the rules, and have become redundant in the global economy, you have several choices; You can seek out a near minimum wage job, or two or three, as some must, and if you are lucky enough to find them, wear the corporate clown uniform and slowly go broke as you pay off debts and perhaps die for lack of affordable medical care. Or you could learn about economic self-sufficiency in your community, get out and become part of it, thus helping not only yourself and others through taking away money and power from those that have turned on you.

Consider this alternate vision. You belong to a growing circle of neighbors and friends that have the time and inclination to work together and create a better community. Your economic and personal choices have meaning and make things better for yourself and others.

You raise some of your own vegetables. They're fresh, delicious and cost you little and you can trade them with friends. You have the time to do what you want. The Gross National Product goes down because you're not spending as much money to buy food and more things. Your self sufficiency is not taxable. This is only a small example of the kind of change that overcoming consumerism can bring. Identifying who your real enemies are and changing your attitude from acceptance to rebellion is more so.

The Ponzi Scheme economy.

The key weakness of the really big players who profit from consumerism is the oversupply of goods produced and their need to constantly generate more demand paid for with new credit that pays off the old debts and interest on past purchases. They are locked in a death spiral of having to seek ever more markets, ever cheaper labor, ever more capital to facilitate ever more efficient production with fewer and fewer workers. Meanwhile there is less and less money in the hands of their potential customers because of Financialization.

This is why billions are spent on advertising that begs, or tricks you, to buy products, which were they so necessary, you would just purchase the same way you buy basic foodstuffs.

This is the kind of thing you are not supposed to learn about nor pay attention to.
Wall Street and the Financialization of the Economy.

That's a 2015 report. Things have gotten since then, far, far worse.

This is why credit is facilitated credit at every step along the way, no matter what the consequences to debt encumbered people. The debt bubble is bulging and will soon explode.

About those who have already gone bankrupt in the "Good Times" Personal bankruptcy statistics in the U.S.

If you have become one of the economically dispossessed, now redundant in society, fearful of the future, than you should help to destroy the very system that has created these conditions and replace it with something better. Let's help push the system over its ever-closer edge, out of self protection, revenge, or the hopes for a better and more sustainable future.

You control what you buy and how you spend your money. You control for whom and where you work. Computers may have replaced your job, but computers don't buy things. The system needs things to be made and bought and people to go into debt. Anything that interrupts that cycle can help bring it to an end.

The system's great Achilles Heel of oversupply is nicely illustrated by some quotes from William Greider's masterful One World, Ready or Not: the Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. Simon & Schuster. If you are going to take the trouble to read one book about the economy, make this it.




The necessity to maintain a constant increase in the supply of money lent into existance is one of the hidden motivators behind the promotion of Consumerism by those who profit most from our economy.

If there isn't a constant expansion of the money supply created in large part by consumer credit, there isn't enough money to pay back the previous debts and their interest payments. How can you borrow $1,000 at 29% annual interest from a credit card and pay it back a year latter if there isn't an extra $290 created in the economy by other people's, or your own, further borrowing? So you pay back the principle and interest and thus even more money is then available to be lent out at interest to purchase more products and services.

Where does the bank or credit card company get the money to lend you? It's basically created out of thin air, with a small percentage, (10%), that used to be required to be on deposit with the banks in the form of real assets such as "your" savings or checking deposits. By the way, that money is not "yours, you are merely an unsecured creditor of the banks.

Banks no longer are required to keep the 10% reserves on hand. Where does the real money to pay back your credit card plus the compounding interest come from? Your hard work, and time taken away from your life. Would you sell an hour of your life for $12? That's what people do after payroll taxes and the current minimum wage. Is a lot of money being made off this debt and interest scheme? Enough, for example, to influence congress? Is there anything wrong with this?

If you want to explore this issue we recommend
Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People. This is an excellent money creation and debt site although we do not endorse all their views.

If you want the most scholarly, in-depth and readable book on the subject, William Greider is the author most recommended. His Secrets of the Temple; The Federal Reserve and How It Runs America, is a bible on the creation of money, past and present and how banking works.

Another Author is economist Michael Hudson who masterfully summarizes what is happening with debt and the economy. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/08/michael-hudson-debt-inflation-ukraine-petrodollar/ **************************

The place where Americans truly experience financial corruption in action is so called "healthcare," which turns doctors and medical personnel into "gate keepers" and second-guesses medical judgment whenever it leads to a higher degree of medicine which means lower bottom-line profits. It is not possible to pay annual compensation packages of $500,000,000 to CEOs, dividends to ever more demanding investors, mostly large financial institutions, and to close local hospitals without someone suffering. That someone is whomever belongs to the HMO, either through increased premiums or decreased services.

Universal Access to Healthcare, free at the point of service is the only solution to the "healthcare" morass into which most Americans have fallen, and which will kill many of them or shorten their life.

Do YOU know the difference between the current medical insurance system, Universal Access to Healthcare, the Public Option and Medicare For All? Is it important to you? 3 of the 4 institutions pump either your money or your taxes into profits from your sickness.

How about putting a number on it?

Add up all the money you spend for your family on health "insurance," memberships, the copays, out of network charges, prescriptions, eyeglasses, dentistry, hearing aids, as well as the credit card interest to pay for these essential things; that's how much it costs you. Don't forget the time spent on the phone, or online, arguing over billing, pleading with insurance companies etc.

Imagine how much more profitable small businesses could be, how much higher their wages could be, if they didn't have to buy health insurance for employees, or pay workman's compensation premiums that insure workers for injury? Think how much lower the cost of car insurance would be without the medical payments that you must cover on your insurance?

Medicare For All Would Save The U.S. Trillions.

Here's the definitive study from the world's most reputable medical journal, The Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/ PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext#%20"

"The Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 173 million life- years every year compared with the status quo."

Here's an outrageous example of Healthcare corruption in the current for profit system. https://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2015/01/none-dare- call-it-health-care-corruption.html

"UnitedHealth on Wednesday reported 2021 profits of $24 billion on revenue of $287.6 billion. Executives told Wall Street they expect United will be the first insurer to take in more than $300 billion from its customers this year. Instead of giving its health plan customers relief from ever-increasing out-of- pocket requirements, United spent $5 billion last year buying back its own shares of stock, a gimmick that boosts the value of shares and makes shareholders richer. United also paid shareholders $5.3 billion in dividends in 2021. No insurer has ever made that kind of money in U.S. history. It’s even more notable when you consider that United is not growing by attracting substantially more new customers." While UnitedHealth reports $24 Billion in profits, Americans faced 200% increases in out-of-pockets over last decade

In the Greatest Country on Earth, which can afford to waste tens of Trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East, but cannot afford to provide health care to its citizens, because of "budget constraints"-- Couple who couldn't afford medical bills dies in apparent murder-suicide

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By fighting consumerism you not only help the environment, society and yourself but you help to destroy one of the mechanisms that makes this supply of speculative debt possible: the ever-expanding money supply created through consumer credit.

The Mechanics of what you can do:

Some ways to go beyond consuming as few resources as possible, to go beyond paying cash and supporting only sustainable small businesses, are elaborated in our previous pages:

Resistance,
Two Comparative Families,
Hands-On,


A reduction of demand that actually takes away from the manufacture and sales of new items used by not just you, but by others as well, can be done through selling or giving away things rescued from discard, repairing items yourself and destining unneeded items to a recipient who can use them.

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/high-end-dumpster-diving-matt-malone/ Dumpster Diving Bonanza This site talks about the incredible finds that people have made and the most successful ways to get perfectly good things that are discarded.

Just as most people can't stand to see animals abused, there are some people who can't stand to see things wasted. They go out of their way to salvage, divert and rescue things so that they can be used by others. They do it not for profit, praise or personal gain, but just because they think it's important.

If you rescue 20 pairs of shoes from dumpsters and give them away, you are preventing the manufacture and sale of 20 pairs and are saving people money and are preserving natural resources.

Create a Reuse Shelf or Box in some heavily trafficked area around the dumpster or trash cans of your house, apartments, trailer-court, boat dock, or school. Place things there you don't need anymore, or that need repairs you're unwilling to perform, or which you have salvaged. (label it if it doesn't work).

Another example: Year after year you rescue small amounts of building materials from others discards. Decades go by. You build yourself a simple house. You may end up using less than you have salvaged and thus can provide material to others.

The activities mentioned in the paragraphs above are seemingly simple but in reality are highly subversive in the aggregate. They can do wonders for community spirit and actually do hurt the power structure of those that profit from consumerism.

It is theoretically possible to thus make up for all the material that one has used up in their life and perhaps to even go beyond that amount--it will take a lot of work and time however.

You will never make up for the approximately 22 pounds of Carbon Dioxide that you create for every gallon of gas that you burn in a car unless you plant a huge number of trees. The following shows you just
How you can easily raise and plant trees.


Sooner or later you may want, or have to, raise your own food.
You can grow much of what you eat, even in a city.
How to produce your own organic food

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Billboard liberation Some examples of radical anticonsumerism:




Why should one go through 80 pairs or more of shoes by the time they are an adult? Consider obtaining a pair of super-durable, car-tire sole Huarache sandals. These are hand -made by people living in rugged rural areas of Mexico that would quickly wear out the manufactured shoes that they can't afford anyway. You will be wearing footwear made of scrap leather and tires ordinarily dumped in a ravine or burned. This will obviate the manufacture and disposal of at least 25 to 30 pairs of athletic type shoes or many pairs of even good quality resoleable shoes. Consider using pieces of car tire instead of factory replacement soles or heels on shoes that need resoling. If you want to work with this material yourself, find a tire that has been dumped in some green area or obtain one from a tire store's scrap pile and carefully use a sharp knife to cut the tread away from the sidewalls. (Tires must be cord, or "bias ply", NOT steel belted). Shoe repair shops with skilled workers and good equipment can use this material to resole or re-heel shoes.

A few of our group's personal examples.

*In the Mid 1960's, Lucy H. would on garbage nights go "mousing" through the back alleys of Beverly Hills and Westwood. In these very affluent communities she would find many items of furniture, etc that she would place in her car. Her friends thought her most peculiar. Every few months she had a large garage sale. After a few years of this she had enough for the downpayment on a small house in Laurel Canyon, a very nice section of town. It is worth millions today. Many of her friends are still renting decades later.

*In a forty-unit apartment building where one of us lives, people throw away many items of clothing and household items. These items are usually left in bags too large to fit into the garbage chute, and so are easily accessable. The items are boxed up and given every few months to the Salvation Army . (Their original mission was soul salvation, we use them to salvage things).

*We post lists of household items that we don't want around our neighborhood. We give them to anyone that wants them in exchange for some item that they no longer need. We usually end up with fabulous things more numerous than what we give away. The triumph of obtaining some wonderful tool or piece of furniture, given gladly by a former stranger, now made a friend by the transaction, makes the use of the item doubly sweet. After all, any fool can go out and spend money to buy things.

*We pass by a bakery that throws out plastic five-gallon buckets at night. We regularly stop and grab them before the garbage trucks arrive. We give them away to anybody who stops by our garage when we're working in it. In the last few years we've rescued over a thousand buckets and have probably prevented the sale and manufacture of as many store bought pails and buckets. Insects? There is so little food value in the factory food ingredients that are shipped in the buckets that we've never seen an insect that would go near the buckets. (Nor by the way have we ever found a dog that will eat "food" sweetened with Aspartame or Equal)

*In our community, debris box contents are recyled when possible. When we encounter metal items that are about to be landfilled, or are found along roads etc, we pick them up and add them to the junkyard at the back of the garage. When a debris box is spotted nearby we place the metal in it knowing that the metal will be recycled.

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Overcoming Consumerism Index      Consumerism's bad effects

O. C. Accomplishes?     Active Resistance      Hands on methods

2 Families compared       our personal consumer choices

consumption chart      resources to overcome consumerism

radical anti-consumerism      cars     

 How to raise food     How to raise trees

eliminate polystyrene products

Corporate officers and their interlocking interests

We welcome suggestions for additions, comments or further resources. Use the e-mail pictured below.

e-mail:

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