Late-Nightthought:
-
Late-Nightthought:
anti-consumerism/buy-nothing people are a special type of "and yet you participate in society. curious. I am very smart" guy who've fooled themselves into thinking they're actually the "we should improve society somewhat" guy
-
@patchuun I'm curious, why not?
-
@MediumWasTedium in my experience these people tend to be libs who heavily overlap with "carbon footprint" types - basically people whose personalities are heavily intertwined with the act of individualizing blame for capitalist rot and then shaming people for using plastic straws or whatever
-
@jake2 @patchuun that's actually one of the points I was going to make
️ anti-consumerism rests on a couple of demonstrably false premises: that even organized consumerist boycotts work (they don't - generally speaking, the only thing they're good at is giving companies bad PR, and we're not going to bad-PR capitalism out of existence), and that every purchase we don't make is resources that are saved (that's not the way it works in practice - it generally leads to wasted resources, not saved resources.)
speaking at a higher level, though, late capitalism doesn't work like we're taught in econ classes, where businesses respond to supply and demand. late capitalism isn't a resource distribution method. it's a great big, increasingly thinly veiled, shell game designed to allow rich people to move capital around in order to hoard as much as they can while avoiding taxes and regulations. the fact that useful goods and services are sometimes produced in the process is merely a by-product of that game.
the above is the reason why I feel like "anti-consumerism" or "buy-nothing days" are an organized psyop. in spreading misunderstandings about what's actually going on under the hood of late capitalism, the ruling class has us laboring at something that has zero measurable effect on the real motivations behind the rot.
-
@jake2 @patchuun that's true - the specific circumstances around BDS in particular (specifically, being based around a nation-state with a government and military rather than a stateless corporation), combined with the length of the campaign, have made it particularly effective at its goals.
but yep, lumping BDS in the same category as "don't buy from walmart for a day" flattens things a great deal.
-
-
-
@YKantRachelRead@social.treehouse.systems @jake2@kolektiva.social @patchuun@social.xenofem.me I feel like there's a difference between specific boycotts (eg. BDS) and anti-consumerist calls, and the more generic anti-consumerism signaled among many leftists and reactionaries. Specific anti-consumerist actions are generally designed to increase pressure or economic harm with specific goals (eg. eliminating child labor, creating pressure for Israel to change policies, etc) but they do not reject capitalism as a whole - they assume purchases can be made elsewhere or are optional. General anti-consumerism takes a near hyperbolic approach, where we're told any participation in capitalist economics is always "feeding the dragon." While this is ultimately true, it's also a bit of pointless rhetoric as one cannot escape capitalism and more then a fish may escape water.
-
System shared this topic
