To think consumerism has ruined this country? Long, sorry.

[CatthiefKeith]

There is virtually no manufacturing left in this country.

Years ago, the academically bright went to Uni, and those that were less so still got jobs without higher education. Whether it was in management, the canteen, on the production line or doing the packaging, factories provided massive employment. Now we buy cheap stuff from amazon without a thought for the working conditions of the people abroad that make them.

People with learning difficulties were still able to go to work, I can't remember the name of the scheme but there were government subsidies for factories that gave equal employment opportunities back in the 70's, one of my uncles was employed through it. He used to repair things like toasters and kettles. I think he changed the elements in them. Now we just throw them away and buy a new one.

Clothes. Made here, and made to last. Handily that provided a side line for anyone that could sew. My gran was a seamstress, and opened a little business doing alterations, changing zips etc.

Now we just buy a new pair of jeans from Primark (made by kids in sweat shops) instead of getting a new zip put in when the old one goes.

My mum used to work for a high end jewellers. As a child I knew two watch repairers, both polio victims, trained by Rolex, who earned a really good wage. Now people buy cheap watches. Some people just get a new one when the battery goes, let alone pay for a repair!

The steel works have gone, most of the pottery firms have gone bust, as have the companies that produced long lasting crystal. Crystal goes cloudy in a dishwasher and who wants to pay for expensive and hard wearing bone china when Asda living do entire dinner sets for £20? If it chips, just buy a new one!

I can remember television engineers, washing machine engineers, even people that made a living selling pop from a van in glass bottles that you paid a deposit on. And milkmen. That must have been better for the environment and it kept people in jobs.

I'm not having a go at anyone, I do exactly the same. I would love to be able afford to do it differently, but I fear it is too late to turn the tide.

Aibu?

i agree and its eroded living conditions in the countries exploited for the consumer habits of the west. Its eroded life for everyone but a rich few

i agree and its eroded living conditions in the countries exploited for the consumer habits of the west.

That's right, because prior to industrialisation rural India, Bangladesh and China were famously paradises of plenty, in which people were able to get by on a few hours' gentle tilling of the fields in between charming folk dancing and songs around the fire. Similarly Vietnam: during the fifties, sixties and particularly the seventies it was an earthly nirvana, spoilt now only by the arrival of paid employment, anti-biotics and electricity the white devil.

In each of those countries, people are still perfectly able to scratch out a living in the fields. But they instead flock to towns. Why do they do that, other than because the standard of living is better? Life in pre-industrial rural subsistence economies is nasty, brutish and short, and for urban westerners to romanticise it as some sort of prelapsarian bucolic idyll is just silly.

I have become an anti consumerist.

Aside from the computer or smart phone you're using to say so, attached to a zillion pounds worth of communications infrastructure paid for by, presumably, magic fairies.

To me a 'consumerist' is someone who is continuously buying things. So to be anti consumerist is simply to buy fewer things, not nothing at all.

Perfectly possible to have a computer or smartphone and keep those going for years rather than upgrade every year. That's anti-consumerism in my book.

Perhaps the terminology should be gratuitous consumerism to be more specific.

So to be anti consumerist is simply to buy fewer things

Fewer things than whom? It's easy to make yourself look good by pointing to straw men extreme examples.

Spot on OTheHugeManatee ( great name!) .... The unions were allowed to rule post war Britain... I can remember British Leyland being brought to its knees owing to the "one man , one job" policy when Europe and the Far East capitalised and introduced robotics to car manufacturing and produced far superior and far cheaper cars. The unions just wouldn't accept change and when people stopped buying BL cars they wouldn't accept reduced hours and pay.. They even went on strike demanding that they kept full pay plus the overtime that they were used to!... Kipping in sleeping bags on night duty and still expecting to be paid!!!.... Guess what happened to British Leyland???? It always made my dad's day to point out all the "foreign" cars in the staff car park when we used to drive past!!!

But I do agree that we are far too quick to chuck out and cheaply replace... As a society we demand too much yet we either can't or won't pay for it.

On a slightly separate note , I don't entirely hold with the "buy British" or "buy local" brigade... For a start we couldn't afford it and so much would be unavailable to us as well as putting struggling farmers etc... From developing nations out of some means of making a living but that is probably a separate debate...

Yes Mistress, you get it. Although it's not sustainable in our society, if we all bought what we need rather than want, our economy would be screwed because they want us to spend our earnings.

Most of these items (plastic), their manufacture and transport from the other side of the work is highly dependent on oil; goodness knows what all this will look like in 100-150 years' time. Costs of transporting it will presumably go up again before that.

Fewer things than whom? It's easy to make yourself look good by pointing to straw men extreme examples

Your position seems very black and white. Lots of people, not just extremes buy things gratuitously. Taking the example of computers and phones, everybody in my family (and virtually all friends and people I work with), bar me, upgrades these annually or at latest 2 yearly. I don't, not to look good - but simply because I think the marginal difference is not worth it and because I'm concerned about the waste aspect.

There's already umpteen old phones, computers and various other obsolete gadgets lying around which will end up in some landfill somewhere.

I never need to buy any clothes ever again. I can simply wear the never worn outfits that my sister buys weekly and which get bagged for charity regularly, complete with shop labels still attached.

But they instead flock to towns. Why do they do that, other than because the standard of living is better? Life in pre-industrial rural subsistence economies is nasty, brutish and short, and for urban westerners to romanticise it as some sort of prelapsarian bucolic idyll is just silly.

They go because there are jobs, rather than none at all as per the villages.

The standard of living may be 'better' than starving in the field but it is often pretty shit. Life in post-industrial urban economies is still brutish and short and to justify it by saying it's ok because it is very marginally better than the shit hole they came from is immoral when we could change it by buying fewer things but at a higher price to compensate for the true cost of production.