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Supply and consumption are two major engines that drive world economy. The balance between them is as important as the size of these two. Once the balance is lost and people started to consume more than necessary, they have entered the era of consumerism. The era in which consumption is no longer the process of meeting certain physical needs, but type of behavior that encourages excessive expenditure. Consumerism is when people do not pay attention to the nature of the things they buy, but do it in order to belong to the high-class society and follow popular trends. Along with changing the interpersonal attitude within the society, consumerism is resulting in severe deterioration of environment in most countries. Considering the consumerism to be an improper economic engine, its effects on population and environment are to be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Having focused only on enhancing state budget, the economists caused the country to enter the era of consumerism. Previously, GDP (gross domestic production) was considered as an accurate measure of standard of living. In other words, the higher the GDP of a country, the more goods and services the population in the country will buy. Therefore, allowing them to enjoy more possessions and products, economy of a country generates larger revenue and extracts more taxes from the revenue, thus will inject budget into an economic cycle so that the next year there are even more goods and services will be available. However, according to XXX, GDP is an imperfect measure of happiness. As a proof he compares GDP rates per capita in the UK in 1710 ($35) with 2000 ($19000). It is clear that even though people had earned marginal amounts of money in the beginning of the 18th century, they still lived more or less happily, in large families and on wide areas. In case current economic concepts, the country will have enough resources to build factories, new industrial areas and etc., even there is inflation and devaluation of country currency. Logically, there is a point when the authorities must stop boosting production and start investing more on social capital: medicine and education, which was skipped in many developed countries. The period of expanding state budget took so long that people became addicted to spending their entire earnings. To make things even worse, increased business competition and advanced marketing tools made people squander their wealth on the goods they barely in need. Consequently, the consumerism causes changes in the society and environment.
It is the society that suffers most from consumerism. To be specific, the relationship between people and ways to be happy within population are negatively affected by it. Since consumerism involves numerous attributes of materialism, people tend to use materialistic approaches to influence others. Such notions as willingness to help others, open-mindedness and kindness are no longer more powerful when compared with paying people for their loyalty, attention and favor. For example, a boy in from the neighborhood will take walk with your dog only if you pay him a tip, because too many things are connected with money and his kindness is more likely will not be returned by others in the consumer society. Moreover, people start to value each other in accordance with their wealth. The worst effects probably are in the families, where parents are pouring the wealth to meet the children's needs. The reason lies in the seduction trend caused by consumerism that young people are vulnerable to. However, not every single parent is able to keep up with this trend, which results in the gain of disrespect from the children and close relatives. Next exemplifying fact is about creating families. The attributes of personality such as mental maturity and self-awareness are not as reliable as personal wealth in the consumer society. Based on this notion, people tend to choose their spouses according their annual earnings.
Along with the society, environment is also heavily affected by consumerism. Since consumerism means increased consumption of goods and services, the businesses are supposed to meet the growing need of the population. So, more and more factories and plants are involved in production process. Car production itself, for instance, produces almost toxic gases into the air, while its cars emit enormous amounts of fume. If looked from other perspective, both production and consumption processes pollute air. Even though there are a bunch of regulations concerning eco-friendly production and utilization, numerous companies dump their industrial waste into the water in order to avoid extra expenditure. According to (16.03.2012), 220 Billion cans, bottles, plastic cartons and paper cups, are thrown away each year in the "developed" world. Furthermore, tobacco production results in the severe degradation of the soil, which means the land will soon become useless for harvesting. This is, again, done so as to supply enough tobacco. Lastly, the space is becoming scarce. However, ruthless businesses are cutting trees in need for space. To "conquer" vast areas from the wildlife brings to forest degradation in a long run. Consequently, less fresh air in the globe and global warming are waiting to concern us. The core cause is that consumerism made us lose balance between environment and rational human beings.
In conclusion, it is obvious that every decision must be made with proper forecasting and evaluation. Single mistake can lead to enormous losses, which was observed in previous paragraphs. It is true that in order to have betterments in the society the economy must be developed. However, the pace of enhancement is to be controlled. Otherwise, it can result in deterioration of the environment around and changes in the infrastructure of society. In my opinion, the root of many conflicts between nature and humans is consumer society and its appearance in many ways. Yet consumer society reached its peak; it is on an upward trend, which means there is still time and opportunity for people to take responsibility not only for themselves, but for the nature that surrounds them. It other words, a complete understanding of consumerism will help the world population to properly shoulder responsibility towards safety of the globe. To be specific, less supply of goods should be considered to control the consumerism, although it cannot be stopped.
Supply and consumption are two major engines that drive world economy. The balance between them is as important as the size of these two. Once the balance is lost and people started to consume more than necessary, they have entered the era of consumerism. The era in which consumption is no longer the process of meeting certain physical needs, but type of behavior that encourages excessive expenditure. Consumerism is when people do not pay attention to the nature of the things they buy, but do it in order to belong to the high-class society and follow popular trends. Along with changing the interpersonal attitude within the society, consumerism is resulting in severe deterioration of environment in most countries. Considering the consumerism to be an improper economic engine, its effects on population and environment are to be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Having focused only on enhancing state budget, the economists caused the country to enter the era of consumerism. Previously, GDP (gross domestic production) was considered as an accurate measure of standard of living. In other words, the higher the GDP of a country, the more goods and services the population in the country will buy. Therefore, allowing them to enjoy more possessions and products, economy of a country generates larger revenue and extracts more taxes from the revenue, thus will inject budget into an economic cycle so that the next year there are even more goods and services will be available. However, according to XXX, GDP is an imperfect measure of happiness. As a proof he compares GDP rates per capita in the UK in 1710 ($35) with 2000 ($19000). It is clear that even though people had earned marginal amounts of money in the beginning of the 18th century, they still lived more or less happily, in large families and on wide areas. In case current economic concepts, the country will have enough resources to build factories, new industrial areas and etc., even there is inflation and devaluation of country currency. Logically, there is a point when the authorities must stop boosting production and start investing more on social capital: medicine and education, which was skipped in many developed countries. The period of expanding state budget took so long that people became addicted to spending their entire earnings. To make things even worse, increased business competition and advanced marketing tools made people squander their wealth on the goods they barely in need. Consequently, the consumerism causes changes in the society and environment.
It is the society that suffers most from consumerism. To be specific, the relationship between people and ways to be happy within population are negatively affected by it. Since consumerism involves numerous attributes of materialism, people tend to use materialistic approaches to influence others. Such notions as willingness to help others, open-mindedness and kindness are no longer more powerful when compared with paying people for their loyalty, attention and favor. For example, a boy in from the neighborhood will take walk with your dog only if you pay him a tip, because too many things are connected with money and his kindness is more likely will not be returned by others in the consumer society. Moreover, people start to value each other in accordance with their wealth. The worst effects probably are in the families, where parents are pouring the wealth to meet the children's needs. The reason lies in the seduction trend caused by consumerism that young people are vulnerable to. However, not every single parent is able to keep up with this trend, which results in the gain of disrespect from the children and close relatives. Next exemplifying fact is about creating families. The attributes of personality such as mental maturity and self-awareness are not as reliable as personal wealth in the consumer society. Based on this notion, people tend to choose their spouses according their annual earnings.
Along with the society, environment is also heavily affected by consumerism. Since consumerism means increased consumption of goods and services, the businesses are supposed to meet the growing need of the population. So, more and more factories and plants are involved in production process. Car production itself, for instance, produces almost toxic gases into the air, while its cars emit enormous amounts of fume. If looked from other perspective, both production and consumption processes pollute air. Even though there are a bunch of regulations concerning eco-friendly production and utilization, numerous companies dump their industrial waste into the water in order to avoid extra expenditure. According to (16.03.2012), 220 Billion cans, bottles, plastic cartons and paper cups, are thrown away each year in the "developed" world. Furthermore, tobacco production results in the severe degradation of the soil, which means the land will soon become useless for harvesting. This is, again, done so as to supply enough tobacco. Lastly, the space is becoming scarce. However, ruthless businesses are cutting trees in need for space. To "conquer" vast areas from the wildlife brings to forest degradation in a long run. Consequently, less fresh air in the globe and global warming are waiting to concern us. The core cause is that consumerism made us lose balance between environment and rational human beings.
In conclusion, it is obvious that every decision must be made with proper forecasting and evaluation. Single mistake can lead to enormous losses, which was observed in previous paragraphs. It is true that in order to have betterments in the society the economy must be developed. However, the pace of enhancement is to be controlled. Otherwise, it can result in deterioration of the environment around and changes in the infrastructure of society. In my opinion, the root of many conflicts between nature and humans is consumer society and its appearance in many ways. Yet consumer society reached its peak; it is on an upward trend, which means there is still time and opportunity for people to take responsibility not only for themselves, but for the nature that surrounds them. It other words, a complete understanding of consumerism will help the world population to properly shoulder responsibility towards safety of the globe. To be specific, less supply of goods should be considered to control the consumerism, although it cannot be stopped.