Someone, somewhere out there is selling designer or artisanal-crafted dumpster diving shoes "for the very best comfort and agility during your homebrew solid-waste recovery activities."
U2 literally employ a stylist who buys their clothes from second hand clothes markets. An incredibly expensive way of supporting a “no consumption” aesthetic.
Any demand pull will ultimately increase consumption of resources at the end. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism. The only thing that works is consuming less. Pretending like there is a way to do it only opens up avenues for guilty-free consuming.
I've seen this catchphrase thrown around a lot online, but I've never seen anyone explain how consumption becomes any more ethical under any other system without leading to other systemic problems
"Consume less" seems to imply that any consumption is unethical by default. If that's the case, then the only way to consume ethically is by minimizing consumption
This seems like a reasonable stance, but it leads to other problems. Who gets to decide how much is enough?
If each individual decides for themselves, then we clearly have a problem because some people will never be satisfied. If everyone lets them continue, then they will hoard resources for themselves. This is sort of the situation we're already in
However, if we have the group (community, society, country, whatever) decide "how much is enough", then we have to have a group mechanism for making that decision, like a council, or government department
Then we need another group mechanism to enforce it, police, courts, etc. "Ethical consumption" becomes very authoritarian very quickly
If the idea is "We could have ethical consumption if people would just consume less" then you don't even have a starting point because "people will never just
So feel free to consume less if you think that's more ethical. That's what I try and do, myself. But I know that I cannot simply expect others to do the same, and I also don't really have any interest in policing how much others are allowed to have
Runaway consumption is bad. But it increases profits quarter after quarter. You're right, people will not give it up. Neither those who want to consume more and more, nor those who profit from and foment that cycle.
Consumption under capitalism is therefore a problem, because it creates and reinforces rampant consumerism, which is destroying the habitat.
We will drive society all the way into the ground before we give that up. I understand that. But I will not contort my mind into convincing myself it is either natural or ok.
Ok, but the "demand pull" for clothing is not really optional. I don't see how you can argue that the demand for used clothes is more damaging than the alternative, namely new clothes. The only complication is the layer of hiring someone else to buy them, but it's pretty likely they would do that for new clothes anyway, so... what's left to argue about?
Consumption has a bit of a bad rap. In my view, perceiving consumption as automatically unethical requires some particular interpretation of ethics that might not be taking into account human flourishing. Human flourishing is generally accompanied by reducing local entropy through consumption of energy and resources—capitalism or not. It does matter if that is ethical or not—whether it causes suffering of living beings, whether it is sustainable, etc.—but that is separate matter.
In that sense, capitalism is a decent system that does not inherently dictate whether consumption is ethical or not. You are free to (and should) make ethics part of the value. If you like what your neighbourhood bakery makes freshly, you buy from them and thus encourage and enable them to make more. You benefit, they benefit. They give you a good price, but you do not buy more than you need (how much bread would a healthy person eat anyway?) because your neighbours also enjoy it. If you determine that a company is unethical, you vote with your wallet and buy from another (and tell your friends). You do your best.
What breaks this overall pretty sound logic of “give value to people who create value to help them create more value” in practice is a bunch of not unrelared to each other things like bad actors, information asymmetry (usually in favour if producers; in extreme: lying), or poor mental well-being. These imperfections lead to regulation (not without its own can of worms) and open up avenues for, indeed, unethical consumption.
I was following this guy on instagram that makes the most amazing dumpster miniatures. Together with miniature trash that you can put in and out fo the dumpster.
Somehow I'm not even surprised. Train watching/spotting and train miniature making are both popular with overlapping communities, and apparently there is a smaller but still extant community of people who are big fans of garbage trucks in the way that others are with trains. Dumpsters seems like a natural extension of that.
Incidentally, train fandom is definitely commodified, but I think not to the consternation or detriment of those into trains. I wonder why some subcultures are at odds with commercialization of their interests while others are at peace with it.
