Advantage 74 – No pressure to consume

Excerpt from the book »Gradido – Natural Economy of Life« 

»We are constantly being told that we have to buy, buy and buy again.

That is naturally a disaster for sustainability.«

– Hannes Jaenicke

German actor

Our present economic system needs constant growth to be able to continue to exist. In order to maintain this growth there are entire branches of industry which are exclusively concerned with marketing products, no matter if these are needed or not. Advertising agencies, marketing departments, sales and distribution departments, sales representatives, salespeople and, in principle, all the private media have the aim of fuelling consumption. New needs have to be created. They talk about solutions to problems which people previously did not know they might have.

»Planned obsolescence« is a specially developed method to make products age faster than necessary in relation to their technical development. Maybe you are familiar with this situation: your computer printer suddenly does not work anymore. You take it to be repaired and are told it is only a small thing, but the repair would cost more than the price of a new printer. Or your computer, which up to now has worked perfectly, suddenly slows down after a new operating system has been installed. The operating system can do a lot of new things that you did not know you needed. Because of this, it needs more resources and slows down your computer. This is not noticeable with new computers as they have now become faster. So sooner or later you have to make the decision to buy a new computer.

These and similar methods are absolutely necessary to maintain consumption in our present economic system, otherwise it would collapse like a house of cards. 

The Natural Economy of Life is based on sustainability. It can cope with the economy shrinking and a certain amount of healthy downsizing is desirable alone for reasons of environmental protection. As long as all products needed are available what does it matter if production has to be reduced? Even if jobs are lost, everybody is optimally provided for by the active basic income. Pressure to consume, which is the vital artery of the old economic system, has become superfluous in the gradido system. Instead of designing advertising with the aim of constantly increase consumption, the above-mentioned media experts can now use their skills to inform people about sustainability and eco-friendly behaviour.