Explaining, Assessing, and Changing High Consumption

Harry van der Linden, Butler University

Abstract

This essay discusses some recent work on the ethics of consumption, including writings by Juliet Schor and Jerome Segal. Several explanations are examined concerning what motivates increased consumption in affluent societies notwithstanding its growing costs, such as greater material dissatisfaction, overworked families, increased debts, and environmental degradation. It is concluded that recent critics of escalating consumption who argue for “simplicity” underestimate how difficult it is to make consumption sustainable and compatible with universal human flourishing as long as corporate capitalism prevails with its agenda of neoliberal economic globalization and the commodification of every aspect of human life.