Essay

In Defense of Consumerism

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Vocabulary

epithet: characterization; insult

inundated: flooded

superfluous: unnecessary

reviled: verbally attacked

I’m beginning to think that the epithet “consumerism” is jut another

word for freedom in the marketplace.

It’s true that the market is delivering goods, services, and

technological advances by leaps, day after day. People claim that they are

so inundated with techno advances that they don’t want any more. Say no

to the latest gizmo!

But we really don’t mean it. No one wants to be denied Web access,

and we want it faster and better with more variety. We want to download

songs, movies, and treatises on every subject. No amount of information is

too much when it is something specific we seek.

And that’s not all.

We want better heating and cooling in our homes and businesses. We

want more varieties of food, wine, cleaning products, toothpaste, and razors.

We want access to a full range of styles in our home furnishing. If

something is broken we want the materials made available to repair it. We

want fresh flowers, fresh fish, fresh bread, and new cars with more features.

We want overnight delivery, good tech support, and the newest fashions

from all over the world.

The libraries are going online, as is the world’s art. Commerce has

made the shift. New worlds are opening to us by the day. We find that

phone calls are free. We can link with anyone in the world through instant

messaging, and email has become the medium that makes all

communication possible. We are abandoning our tube-television and

landline telephones – staples of 20th century life – for far superior modes of

information technology.

We want speed. We want wireless. We want access. And

improvements. Clean and filtered water must flow from our refrigerators.

We want energy drinks, sports drinks, bubbly drinks, juicy drinks, and

underground spring water from Fiji. We want homes. We want safety and

security. We want service. We want choice.

We are getting all things. And how? Through that incredible

production and distribution machine called the market economy, which his

really nothing but billions of people cooperating and innovating to make

better lives for themselves. There’s no dog-eat-dog. Competition is really

nothing but entrepreneurs and capitalists falling over themselves in a quest

to win the hearts and minds of the consuming public.

Sure, it’s easy to look at all this and shout ghastly consumerism! But

if by “consume” we mean to purchase products and services with our own

money in order to improve the human condition, who can’t help but plead

guilty?

The whole history of ideas about society has been spent trying to come

up with some system that serves the common man rather than just the

elites, the rulers, the powerful. When the market economy, and its

capitalistic structure, came into being, that institution was finally discovered.

With the advent of economic science, we came to understand how this could

be. We began to see how it is that billions of unplanned economic choices

could conspire to create a beautiful global system of production and

distribution that served everyone. And how do the intellectuals respond to

this? By denouncing it as providing too much to too many.

But are people buying superfluous things that they can do without?

Certainly. But who is to say for sure what is a need as versus a mere want?

A dictator who knows all? How can we know that his desires will accord with

my needs and yours? In any case, in a market economy, wants and needs

are linked, so that one person’s necessities are met precisely because other

people’s wants are met.

Here is an example.

If my grandchild is desperately sick, I want to get her to a doctor. The

urgent-care clinic is open late, as is the drug store next door, and thank

goodness. I’m in and out, and I have the medicine and materials necessary

to restore her to health. No one would say that this is a superficial demand.

But it can only stay open because its offices are nestled in a strip mall

where the rents are low and the access is high. The real estate is shared by

candy stores, sports shops selling scuba gear, a billiard hall, and a store that

specializes in party favors – all stores selling “superficial” things. All pay

rent. The developer who made the mall wouldn’t have built the place were it

not for those less urgent needs.

The same is true for the furniture and equipment and labor used in the

urgent-care clinic. They are less expensive and more accessible than they

otherwise would be due to the persistence of non-essential consumer

demands. The computers they use are up-to-date and fast precisely

because technicians and entrepreneurs have innovated to meet the demands

of gamers, gamblers, and people who use the Web to do things they

shouldn’t.

The same point can be made about “luxury goods” and bleeding-edge

technologies. The rich acquire them and use them until the bugs are gone,

the imitators become interested, capitalists seek out cheaper suppliers, and

eventually prices tumble and the same technology hits the mass market.

Moreover, it is the rich who donate to charity, the arts, and to religion. They

provide the capital necessary for investment. If you think through any

service or good that is widely considered to be a need, you will find that it

employs products, technologies, and services that were first created to meet

superficial demands.

Maybe you think quality of life is no big deal. Does it really matter

whether people have access to vast grocery stores, drug stores,

subdivisions, and technology? Part of the answer has to do with natural

rights: people should be free to choose and buy as they see fit. But another

argument is buried in data we don’t often think about.

Consider life expectancy in the age of consumerism. Women in 1900

typically died at 48 years old, and men at 46. Today? Women live to 80,

and men to 77 on average. This is due to better diet, less dangerous jobs,

improved sanitation and hygiene, improved access to health care, and the

entire range of factors that contribute to what we call our standard of living.

Just since 1950, the infant mortality rate has falled by 77 percent.

Population is rising exponentially as a result.

It’s easy to look at these figures that suggest that we could have

achieved the same thing with a central plan for health, while avoiding all this

disgusting consumerism that goes along with it. But a such a central plan

was tried in socialist countries, and their results showed precisely the

opposite in mortality statistics. While the Soviets decried our persistent

poverty amidst rampant consumerism, our poverty was being beaten back

and our longevity was increasing, in large part because of the consumerism

for which were being reviled.

Nowadays we are being told that consumption is aesthetically

displeasing, and that we should strive to get back to nature, stop driving

here and there, make a compost pile, raise our own vegetables, unplug our

computers, and eat nuts off trees. This longing for the primitive is nothing

but an attempt to cast a pleasing gloss on the inevitable effects of socialist

policies. They are telling us to love poverty and hate plenty.

But the beauty of the market economy is that it gives everyone a

choice. For those people who prefer outhouses to indoor plumbing, pulling

their teeth to dentistry, and eating nuts from trees rather than buying a can

of nuts at Wal-Mart, they too have the right to choose that way of life. But

don’t let them say that they are against “consumerism.” To live at all

requires that we buy and sell. To be against commerce is to attack life

itself.

Source:

Rockwell, Jr., Llewellyn H. “In Defense of Consumerism.” The Bedford

Guide for College Writers, edited by X. J.Kennedy et al., 10th ed.,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014, pp. 615-620.