The ethics of shopping vs buying less stuff…

In case you have missed all the subtle hints, the government wants you to open your wallet and spend some cash.

I studied Economics at A-Level and as part of my degree at Queen’s, but through all my learning, no one has ever summed up our economic system as well as the geniuses over at Modern Toss.

Or as the quote goes:

We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.

Over the past few years, I have been buying less and less stuff. I take quite a militant stand on this going as far as not buying birthday or Christmas presents anymore. Our son still gets his Christmas and birthday presents, I am not a complete weirdo. It was a long process getting down to zero. Our family is quite big: at one time I was buying 21 Christmas presents for all the various brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews etc. We then downsized to a secret Santa which worked fine for a few years. Last year I suggested getting rid of the secret Santa and just going out for a meal or a show. I will buy people experiences like lunch or a massage, but I now refuse to buy people stuff.

The main problem is we all have too much stuff already – very few of us need anything. There is a trend for minimalism and de-cluttering at the moment, where a lot of us are actively trying to get rid of the existing junk we have accumulated.

There is just too much stuff in the modern world. More clothes than you could ever wear, more books than you could ever read, more TV shows than you could ever watch. My head is melted, trying to keep up with it all.

I did consider getting a new car, but we don’t drive that much. Our car is eight years old and still only has 40,000 miles on it, we hardly use it as it is. During the lockdown, it was interesting how many of us seemed to get out of the habit of buying things other than groceries. Anne Helen Petersen writes about this phenomenon over at Buzzfeed:

We’re trained to buy often, buy cheap, and buy a lot. And I’m not just talking about food, which everyone has to acquire in some capacity, or clothes. I mean all the other small purchases of daily life: a new face lotion, a houseplant holder, a wine glass name trinket, an office supply organizer, a vegetable spiralizer, a cute set of hand towels, a pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, a pair of throwaway sunglasses. The stuff, in other words, that you don’t even know that you want until it somehow finds its way to your cart at Target or T.J. Maxx.

In post–World War II America, the vast majority of things we buy are often not what we actually need. But they’re indisputably things we want: manifestations of personal and collective abundance. We buy because we’re bored, or because planned obsolescence forces us to replace items we can’t fix. We buy to accumulate objects meant to communicate our class and what sort of person we are. We buy because we want to feel something or change something, and purchasing something is the quickest way to do so. When that doesn’t work, we buy “an experience,” whether it’s a night at Color Me Mine or a weekend bachelorette trip to Nashville. We buy because, from the Great Depression onward, how we consume has become deeply intertwined with how we think of ourselves as citizens.

Apart from the desire to have less stuff in the house, my main objection to rampant consumerism is the terrible environmental toll of our throw-away society. The depressing realities of fast fashion where people wear stuff only once before discarding it is truly sad. All the plastic junk that gets used once, then ends up in the landfill. The poor sods who work for low pay in cramped factories to make all our stuff.

Of course the consumer economy is not just stuff; there are also restaurants, services etc. Before the plague, I did eat out 2 or 3 times a week. But even restaurants are a moral minefield now with every takeout generating a small mountain of plastic waste.

Over the lockdown many of us were still on full salaries, so some of us will be in better financial shape than we were before the lockdown. You could go out and spend money like a sailor on shore leave, but could I suggest an alternative course? Pay off your debts – it is boring but liberating.  Not buying stuff you don’t need is the ultimate form of resistance in our debt-fuelled consumer culture.

Given the massive queues this week outside places like Primark, I fully accept mine is a minority view.

Bristol is against slavery … Bristol queues outside Primark … “the duality of man”. pic.twitter.com/BJTfr6xDop

— Mandy (@Kleesho) June 15, 2020

But what about the shop workers? This is the moral dilemma in all this. A system that relies on more and more consumption to keep the economy on track is a system that is utterly unfeasible in the long term.  As more and more things go automated or digital we will need to move to Universal Basic Income to protect low paid workers.

Then there is the ever growing threat of Amazon. Why would you even bother risking a trip to the high street when someone can bring whatever you need directly to your door?

I am conscious that many people are short of cash and don’t have the luxury of a well-paid job. After climate change, inequality is the biggest issue facing society. I have no problem paying more  tax for a more equal society.

Feel free to hit the high street if you like. But before you put the item in your trolley just pause and ask yourself, do I really need this?

Try to shop local, eat out at your local restaurant when they reopen, holiday at home, discover the satisfaction of Effective altruism, donate to local charities and Foodbanks.

Photo by Pexels is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA