The question of “enough” couldn’t be more important. The most recent US election showed us that while some really are struggling, there are others who feel deeply aggrieved because they can’t get “enough”. Of course, without having some sort of sense of what “enough” might look like, people just get more frustrated …
The question of “enough” couldn’t be more important. The most recent US election showed us that while some really are struggling, there are others who feel deeply aggrieved because they can’t get “enough”. Of course, without having some sort of sense of what “enough” might look like, people just get more frustrated they haven’t reached some mythical finish point. Indeed, I wonder if the desires of modern capitalism are both so immense and so impossible to meet that government is doomed to create profoundly angry voters.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting some sort of dictatorial statement of what is ‘enough.’ The bigger issue is that what we consider ‘enough’ has been heavily influenced – manipulated, really – by the type of capitalism practiced in much of the world. Since the 1950s, businesses and the government have essentially defined people as consumers, whose point in life is to support the economy by consuming – and that economy, in turn, is defined by metrics that do not take into account environmental or social benefit. That needs to change through such means as ditching GDP as a measure (it was never intended to be a measure of the state of national economies and is in many ways a perverse indicator) and internalizing environmental and social costs (externalities). Polluter pays, etc.
That’s going to take a lot of effort fighting a huge amount of inertia. So in the meantime, we need to get ourselves to change our mindset in terms of consumption and, well, happiness – to not let that be defined by the corporate world, i.e., others, but by what instead improves our and others lives.
Vindaloo – you object to being told by others what is ‘enough,’ and I totally get that. But you are already being told that through manipulation by overwhelming advertising and other conscious and subconscious means. It has been ingrained in us from birth to the point where we’re not even aware of it. Our values need to be our own, not those that serve others’ purposes, especially when those purposes have no inherent interest in the public good or our own quality of life.
>>"Our values need to be our own, not those that serve others’ purposes, especially when those purposes have no inherent interest in the public good or our own quality of life."
... but we don't live in a vacuum separate from other humans, do we? We're part of the ecosystem that is capitalism. If you have a leaking faucet, you don't fix it yourself by forging a whole new unit, you call a plumber—who in turn got a faucet manufactured by a company like Kohler, who sourced mined metals from an entity like Freeport-McMoRan, who bought the diesel to power its dump trucks from a company like BP, who built their pumps and pipelines from another manufacturer ... so forth and so on. It's what has allowed human society to so quickly evolve into the current modern world we enjoy today, where people had enough resources and time to specialize in creating new and useful products that expedited the tasks we do every day (among many others.) So if you CHOOSE to exit from the "manipulation" of capitalism to live an austere off-grid lifestyle, more power to you—but virtually everyone on the planet would choose otherwise if given the opportunity. It's why 40+ million people petition the U.S. federal government every year to come here, because it's so vastly superior to where they're coming from.
Everyone is trying to sell you something, whether it's a product, good, service, or way of thinking. I'm not denying that we're constantly bombarded by corporate interests to consume, but to each their own as to what they want to consume and how much. I particularly like mixology and have over 90+ bottles of booze and over 150 bottles of wine at home. It will take me years to drink it all up, and in the meantime I'll continue to buy more. Is what I have 'sufficient'? Probably, but I like varying my drinks throughout the year, and some things are drank faster than others. Should I be prevented from buying any more scotch or cognac until the ones I have in storage are used up? I don't believe so. Total Wine & More appreciated my business, as do the liquor companies whose wares they sell. And thus goes the argument about what 'sufficient' means for every one of us.
Do I spend wildly and own a lot of junk? No. I enjoy eating out, and currently have no car either. But what I do is not what others do, and I would never tell them that they need to do with less, so long as they're not defaulting on their bills. It's just the nature of human nature, so to speak.
“Enough” has always been a social construct - never determined in a vacuum. So, while “enforcement” is clearly dangerous, it’s pretty narrow to pretend this is simply a game of personal preferences, like fav ice cream. Moreover, if we simply accept a boundless enough then we sort of end up where we are - massive concentration of wealth and an enormous, angry class of people who perceive they don’t have enough. Libertarianism alone is unlikely to sort any of this out.
And as it stands we have a multi billion dollar industry dedicated to convincing you that you most certainly don’t have enough.
Nice article - thanks!
The question of “enough” couldn’t be more important. The most recent US election showed us that while some really are struggling, there are others who feel deeply aggrieved because they can’t get “enough”. Of course, without having some sort of sense of what “enough” might look like, people just get more frustrated they haven’t reached some mythical finish point. Indeed, I wonder if the desires of modern capitalism are both so immense and so impossible to meet that government is doomed to create profoundly angry voters.
Core issue: what is “enough” for you may not be “enough” for someone else, while someone else may consider YOUR “enough” to be too much.
No one but yourself gets to choose for anyone else but yourself.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting some sort of dictatorial statement of what is ‘enough.’ The bigger issue is that what we consider ‘enough’ has been heavily influenced – manipulated, really – by the type of capitalism practiced in much of the world. Since the 1950s, businesses and the government have essentially defined people as consumers, whose point in life is to support the economy by consuming – and that economy, in turn, is defined by metrics that do not take into account environmental or social benefit. That needs to change through such means as ditching GDP as a measure (it was never intended to be a measure of the state of national economies and is in many ways a perverse indicator) and internalizing environmental and social costs (externalities). Polluter pays, etc.
That’s going to take a lot of effort fighting a huge amount of inertia. So in the meantime, we need to get ourselves to change our mindset in terms of consumption and, well, happiness – to not let that be defined by the corporate world, i.e., others, but by what instead improves our and others lives.
Vindaloo – you object to being told by others what is ‘enough,’ and I totally get that. But you are already being told that through manipulation by overwhelming advertising and other conscious and subconscious means. It has been ingrained in us from birth to the point where we’re not even aware of it. Our values need to be our own, not those that serve others’ purposes, especially when those purposes have no inherent interest in the public good or our own quality of life.
Nicely said!
>>"Our values need to be our own, not those that serve others’ purposes, especially when those purposes have no inherent interest in the public good or our own quality of life."
... but we don't live in a vacuum separate from other humans, do we? We're part of the ecosystem that is capitalism. If you have a leaking faucet, you don't fix it yourself by forging a whole new unit, you call a plumber—who in turn got a faucet manufactured by a company like Kohler, who sourced mined metals from an entity like Freeport-McMoRan, who bought the diesel to power its dump trucks from a company like BP, who built their pumps and pipelines from another manufacturer ... so forth and so on. It's what has allowed human society to so quickly evolve into the current modern world we enjoy today, where people had enough resources and time to specialize in creating new and useful products that expedited the tasks we do every day (among many others.) So if you CHOOSE to exit from the "manipulation" of capitalism to live an austere off-grid lifestyle, more power to you—but virtually everyone on the planet would choose otherwise if given the opportunity. It's why 40+ million people petition the U.S. federal government every year to come here, because it's so vastly superior to where they're coming from.
Everyone is trying to sell you something, whether it's a product, good, service, or way of thinking. I'm not denying that we're constantly bombarded by corporate interests to consume, but to each their own as to what they want to consume and how much. I particularly like mixology and have over 90+ bottles of booze and over 150 bottles of wine at home. It will take me years to drink it all up, and in the meantime I'll continue to buy more. Is what I have 'sufficient'? Probably, but I like varying my drinks throughout the year, and some things are drank faster than others. Should I be prevented from buying any more scotch or cognac until the ones I have in storage are used up? I don't believe so. Total Wine & More appreciated my business, as do the liquor companies whose wares they sell. And thus goes the argument about what 'sufficient' means for every one of us.
Do I spend wildly and own a lot of junk? No. I enjoy eating out, and currently have no car either. But what I do is not what others do, and I would never tell them that they need to do with less, so long as they're not defaulting on their bills. It's just the nature of human nature, so to speak.
“Enough” has always been a social construct - never determined in a vacuum. So, while “enforcement” is clearly dangerous, it’s pretty narrow to pretend this is simply a game of personal preferences, like fav ice cream. Moreover, if we simply accept a boundless enough then we sort of end up where we are - massive concentration of wealth and an enormous, angry class of people who perceive they don’t have enough. Libertarianism alone is unlikely to sort any of this out.
And as it stands we have a multi billion dollar industry dedicated to convincing you that you most certainly don’t have enough.
Stepping back another step, how would you even measure such a thing.