Buy nothing today

pmills

pmills

Active member
There was a thread last night, why it's disappeared who knows, but while a lot of people have gone off to celebrate the day of consumption there's another movement to buy nothing today, really stick it to the man. It's really about sending a message about the perils of over consumption.

with the inevitable criticism about the economic crisis, and how much a bad idea it is to actually buy nothing, I challenge you to dig a little past the surface, you’ll see that this financial

meltdown is not about liquidity, toxic derivatives or unregulated

markets, it’s really about culture. It’s our culture of excess and

meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the

past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.

behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are

running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What

are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?

A simpler, pared-down lifestyle – one in which we’re not drowning in

debt – may well be the answer to this crisis we’re in. Living within our means will also make us happier and healthier than

we’ve been in years

You don't have to just buy nothing, get a bunch of friends, don a bed sheet and a crown of thorns and dothe jesus walk through the mall (take it nice and slow and ask that ever important question, "what would jesus buy?"). Or if you're in a more festive mood, create a conga line of empty shopping carts and conga around the store, without buying anything
 
That is actually a terrible idea. Buying nothing would hurt the economy even more. Forcing people to lose jobs, companies going out of business, and the trickle effect from that. Shut yo' mouth and go spend some money.
 
i quote from the OP

behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are

running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What

are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?

 
I think that we need to find a balance between out of control consumerism, and a super environmentally friendly lifestyle (not saying that you are suggesting this) We need to find the perfect balance where we keep our economy good, but we also keep our environment as our primary focus. Better yet, have the economy benefit from environmentally sound projects and lifestyles.

Just my 2 cents
 
These things aren't going to run out in the next century. The economy right now is going to destroy lives. You clearly have not been affected by the economy. I live near Detroit where people DEPEND on the auto industry. People I know have been directly affected by layoffs and can barely make ends meet. You really have no idea.
 
dude, what about the single mom working 2 jobs and just barely getting by? Black Friday is a chance for her to get her kids a bigger, better christmas present than otherwise possible.

here, i have a novel idea, what people buy on the day after thanksgiving is NON of your dam business.

o yeah, i was able (thanks to black friday sales) buy a kayak for my dad for christmas. so i wasn't even being a greedy bastard, i dropped bank getting a AWESOME present for him. honest to god i would rather give someone a gift than recieve one myself.
 
word, i agree with this kid. dope present to your dad. i just like making other people happy, probably you to, considering you bought your dad a kayak
 
glad you want to perpetuate more of the same now at the cost of tomorrow, sounds real smart.

I wonder how much you know about the ecological crisis, i mean sure the people of Detroit may be experiencing a rough spot, but what about the rest of the world? i know individually they might not count as much as an American in your mind, but i think the sheer quantity, (half the human population) is living off $1 a day, struggling to find potable water, dealing with record breaking environmental disasters that probably have something to do with our interaction with the natural process.

hell did you know about the toxic plastic island in the pacific? It's the size of Texas. But i bet we probably can go another century before we start dealing with that eh? Meanwhile intuits, and others whose diet primarily consists of fish from the pacific are warned not to breast feed their children because of the toxins that accumulate in their bodies.

but then again i have no idea.
 
thanks.... yeah he is not gonna believe it when he gets it.

its one of those father son "bonding activities", my brother and i each have our own kayaks, and now that dad has one we can go paddling around! (there are easily 4 boat launches within 10min of our house)
 
here's another novel idea, take a mental shift out of consumerism and realize that a. most consumption is unnecessary. Single mom get's her kids winter coats because they're cheep and the kids need to stay warm... Great! Single mom get's her kids the 52 " HDTV unnecessary.

it's all about moderation, and our culture has nothing to do with moderation, it's about consumption to the max.

and if your pattern consumption is resulting in the destruction of our world, it is my damn business.
 
you actually got your wish. (atleast around here) the lines were SUPER short this year, last year i slept in lawnchairs with 3 friends who were getting computers. this year the lines where short.

its kinda fucked up if you ask me, so last year the lines where crazy long people buying tons of stuff, while this year and our "shitty economy" (its all relative ) there were about half the number of people at the stores i went to....

if you cant afford to buy that TV in a shitty economy, then what the hell are you doing buying it in a so called "good" economy.
 
i have no idea what you're talking about.

do you actually have a comeback for the fact that we consume like there is no end, yet live in a world with a limited supply?

it's not a good way to live regardless of the immediate goods you have, ultimately it'll crash and burn and everyone will suffer.
 
I agree with you 100%.

Its so hard to explain this to people though, especially when we are brought up in a culture that makes us think we need lots of stuff. I've only just started to realized how little I need to be happy.

 
Okay, heres a "novel idea" for you too. Why don't you just not buy anything and let the rest of us live our own lies. There's always an ecological crisis at our hands 20 years ago Time magazine had a huge article proving that there was a "global cooling" going on. Now there's all this talk about global warming effecting us. If you haven't realized the goal of it is to get more "eco-friendly" consumers. The Prius for example is the biggest fake ever. To make the nickel needed to make the battery in the Prius, honda has to use the equivalent of 100,000 miles worth of gas. I agree with you in some ways, that we should moderate a little, but jumping to the conclusion that our "pattern of consumption is resulting in the destruction of our world" is extremely drastic. Get off your high horse, I'm sure you consume just as much as anyone else in this thread.
 
Intuits? I guess you do have no idea.
Thanks for trying to make an argument (debate), but it's just not going to happen right now.
 
He's not talking about global warming, he's saying that all the stuff we buy doesn't get conjured out of thin air, it is made from the limited supply of natural resources that are on the planet. At some point it will be gone because we buy lots of stuff and then throw it out when its no longer the latest thing.
 
here's my comeback. i hope you live the type of life you prop up. before you bitch and moan about people buying that new TV...... i hope you practice what you preach, i hope you get next to nothing for christmas, i hope you drive a Geo Metro, i hope you NEVER take a vacation, (thats awful for the earth) and i hope you consume nothing.

if you live like that, thats great and dandy for you, myself on the other hand, am fucking stoked that i was able to buy my dad a sick christmas present....

point is, i cant fucking stand it that you get in NS and crucify people who go out and buy presents trying to be considerate of other people.

o and if you couldnt decipher what i was saying in my last post, i was paratlly agreeing with you, people have no business buying some of the stuff they buy, they are just digging a deeper whole for themselfs financially. the lady i was standing behind in staples was saying she didnt know if she had enough credit on her card for all the stuff she wanted. i almost told her off right there, if you cant afford to pay cash, then IMO most of the time it can wait.
 
1. Nice alias2. I understand that what i was trying to get across was that the global ecological problems are always there, and if you take them into account to much then your life will suck. Kinda like how there's always germs around us but we don't worry about it. That was a terrible analogy but you get what I mean.3. because there has to be a 3
 
i'm an American of course i consume more than my fair share, but it's not possible to opt out of the system if you have any desire to play a role in fixing it.

I could remove my self from society, live sustainably, but if everyone else continues to live as they do, what good does that do? Just as the corporations have to spend money advertising to get you to buy the crap they sell, those opposed to this system are going to have to have an equally strong advertisement against consumption.
 
sure, do as i say, not as i do............

really. lets you and I compare what we have "consumed" in the last year, day, month, whatever the hell you want.....

be a leader.....
 
1. no alias, just a new name because I didn't realize you could change your name at the time I made this.

2. true, but we have taken it beyond that. we will always have some effect on the environment, everything does, but we do way more harm that we need to.
 
You don't have to practice to preach. It's the same thing as if we critique a skier's style or something...if we think it's a shitty double flip and we can't do a double flip, it's perfectly within our rights to critique it.

I agree with the thread poster that American society is heavy into consumerism, but that is the foundation of capitalism and a free market economy. The REASON that the market isn't balancing itself out and why the world isn't self-regulating itself in many other ways is because we are now taking a lot more than we need.

It will take a while to revert to a more simpler time. Only when the bailouts have failed and people continue to realize they don't have the cash to spend on anything more than the quintessential will the nation (and echoing across the world) have the full rebound effect. Yes, there will be low times and yes, there will be a resounding cheer years afterwards.

Without evil, there can be no good. Without buying, there can be no economy. The economy is prosperous, but it won't continue to be unless we can bring it back under our control, which it is NOT right now.
 
how staunchly conservative are you?

I'm down for people not telling us what to buy and what not to buy, but man, you HAVE to realize that we are taking way too much and not spending enough. I'm surprised inflation isn't a lot higher than it is now...if it were I doubt you'd be able to get that TV. You sound selfish when you say this...if you are at all concerned about the economy, environment, or the future generation then you would realize that what the OP is saying is true, although he is putting it out there from an environmentalist point of view rather than economics, which I am attempting to do)
 
its not my fault my family owns a business and works so hard to get what we have. it was a treat for my mom because the tv in my parents bedroom shit the bed. and the other is for downstairs for entertainment puposes. your family might have different views and might not agree with what we do. but my parents work hard for what they have. and so do i.
 
.............

also think about the positive effect you had on whomever built your Tv's. you were creating wealth for them, in the form of a paycheck. think about the employees who work for best buy. freedom if the very basis of what our freemarket economy is based on, and dammit, if i want to buy someone a cool present, then thats what i am going to do. provided i have been blessed with enough money to do so.
 
and I do also. In my lifetime I went from living in low-income housing in what some people might call a "ghetto" to a predominately white suburban neighborhood. I've seen it all. I've seen hard-working families lose EVERYTHING and I've seen teens who do nothing inherit millions.

Because of this, my parents are very interested in my well being and have taught me how to be financially responsible, which means having not only interest in your own needs but for the needs of the market and the society around you. If everyone only has self-interest then greed would take over (like it is) and we would already have a failed economy if not for the laws that have been passed to hold back certain spending and production trends.

I'm basically self-sufficient now with the exception of housing and food. I got into a boarding school with full scholarship because of MY HARD WORK. I'm paying for half my college ($15,000+), I pay for clothes now, and I still find ways to save enough money for skiing. This may be a massive claim here, but it's also just a statement of how a kid just like you can work his ass off and work with the minimum. I splurge once in a while, too. I'm not saying that buying the TV was bad but say everyone had that exact same mentality. Hell, people buy much more than that on a daily basis just for shits n' giggles - THAT is the reason we are going under.
 
Jesus Christ I sometimes think that you have little to no thought process. He was talking about fucking moderating what we buy not stopping it all together. Our society is a pig, we buy what we cannot afford and most of that stuff is exceedingly unnecessary. I buy useless shit too, why? I have no idea but I am at least trying to cut back in small ways. It's all about buying what we need first and foremost, need is different than want; something most people cannot differentiate.
 
were going under because people are making stupid investments and people that make millions are blowing their money away on stupid worthless shit like houses for their fucking dogs. buying a TV is nowhere near that level of stupidity. think about it, basically everyone has a TV whats the big deal about buying a newer better one where yours broke and can't be fixed ? what are you gonna do downgrade ? no most people will buy one that will last. and also yeah the other TV is for my downstairs because the other one is breaking. so sorry it was a very stupid descion for my dad to buy new TVs do you want him to go return them ?
 
"buy nothing today"

solution to people buying what they want?

have the government regulate it?

o sirfranilator. my apologies, i lost my thought pattern, right you are, we no longer live in a free market, we have socialized losses, while privatizing profits. this bailout is PROOF of that.

o i bet you and i think somewhat similar on this, i laugh inside a bit when i see people get out of their new 3 series beemer, i wonder did that person pay cash for it? probably leased, i agree moderation is a good thing, but i dont know a good way to regulate us into moderation, and for that matter, if they are to where they do not need to be as moderate as others, then good for them, hopefully ill join them someday.
 
I could go on forever restating what the others have said before, it's so simple, but it's clear you couldn't get the main point, so why bother.

Go buy tv's if it makes you happy...whatever makes YOU happy right?
 
do you have trouble reading ? yes.

I SAID MY DAD BOUGHT ONE FOR THEIR FUCKING ROOM BECAUSE ONE BROKE AND ONE DOWNSTAIRS FOR ENTERTAINING. HOW THE FUCK DOES IT MAKE ME HAPPY ? WOW A NEW FUCKING TV OMG LET ME FUCKING ORGASM OVER IT. I DON'T EVEN WATCH TV UNLESS FOOTBALLS ON SO ITS NOT BENEFITING ME MUCH. SO SHUT THE FUCK UP
 
well you should have simply said that! replacing is fine, but I'm talking about people with 3 or 4 TVs. My dad bought a 3rd TV last year, I'm still trying to get him to sell it to someone. I have a TV monitor in my room for an xbox, which I will bring to uni.

Sorry for the misunderstanding but it doesn't mean that my post doesn't mean anything. No, you shouldn't return what you worked for. As I said, though, many people buy a lot more than you or me, that is the mentality that is killing us. It may help the economy now but, ultimately, the more spending, the more crashing at the end. I'm not saying that we should go communist or anything, but we cannot maintain a "free-er market economy." We have to let the self-regulation take place or go socialist which I DO NOT WANT TO DO, nor do most Americans.

thread:

I suppose you could apply the same concept to the environment and how much we're producing BECAUSE of all the spending. We didn't used to have as much of a problem which is why we could spend so much and produce so much. The Clean Air Act killed off the solid particles in the air which created a global dimming effect, thus creating a ton more global warming. But now that people are buying even more than before and we don't have the dimming effect, the temps are rising, and demand is growing still. We need to either find more efficient ways of producing all this immediately, or cut down ASAP. I say cut down. Take funding to different places such as alt. fuels and nuclear energy and create different low-end jobs. but we'll see what Obama does, I guess.
 
It's a protest towards our consumerist society. It's message isn't that we should stop buying altogether...
 
our "bad" economy is partially a result of over consuming products, on credit, that people couldn't afford to pay back. So in essence we brought the moderation on ourselves.

I have still failed to see you making any valid points.
 
That's half of the problem, our entire economic model doesn't work properly. There are better ways to format an economic system to support our population without being so consumer waste driven.
I just don't know what it is yet.
 
It's Sir Fry-a-na-tor by the way.

no, I don't think we should regulate in this case. you're agreeing with me...we need people to really feel the loss in this day and age; we've had far too long of a prosperous nation to realize that we're vulnerable. obama's bailouts aren't going to help in the long run, you're right, but hopefully it will get jobs and boost consumer confidence which will pump some actual money back into the economy to keep it going. That's what we need to kick it back up

(consumer confidence). If we could get people jobs and money in a less spendy way, I think the government would jump on it, or at least economists would advertise it heavily. For now, we're somewhat fucked, and the market won't budge until companies and the banks have money. Without a bailout, this means waiting until we hit rock bottom. With a bailout, it's something like this:

You're falling into quicksand with a bottom in which you have to work your ass off to get back up. There is a branch there. A man standing up top is the bailout. Without the man, you sink and hit the bottom and are suffocated for a few seconds before sweating and pushing back up (the notion that one HAS to buy something eventually). With the man standing there and breaking off the branch to reach down to you, you have something to hold onto and pull up until you can reach it by yourself. Problem is, the branch isn't there the if you fall again, and you will most likely have less strength. I hope this isn't too simplified, but it's the basic concept.

Not trying to sound pretentious here, but the US economy does happen to be a major force around the world, and for this reason we have a responsibility to be picking up and moving the money so we can kickstart the global marketplace again. I don't necessarily agree with the bailout, I actually am against it, but so far it has helped stall out the recession and hopefully get some more money flowing.

I'm probably posting too much and ranting too long but I'm in my econ class now and we're researching for an independent research paper and I'm doing consumer confidence, how the decriminalization of substances will effect the economy, or this debate pretty much (consumerism - good or bad?). I know my shit, and I hope you can understand simple economics or else you really shouldn't be trying to debate that the amount of consumerism is good.
 
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