[bestbits] Fwd: Preparing for the End of Consumer Society

[willi uebelherr]

Dear friends,

this is our main task. Not to end the capitalism. It is easy. Much more 
important are this big parasitic elitists structures. Military and 
paramilitary with states, all the trade unions, political parties, the 
whole representative systems. All pure "consumerism".

We need creative and productive societies with an open space of free 
knowledge and communication, based on Sumak Kawsay: The good life in 
harmony with the nature, anorganic and organic.

This discussions can help us.

many greetings, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [New post] Preparing for the End of Consumer Society
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2016 11:01:19 +0000
From: P2P Foundation <donotreply at wordpress.com>
To: willi.uebelherr at gmail.com

Post   : Preparing for the End of Consumer Society
URL    : 
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/preparing-for-the-end-of-consumer-society/2016/11/24
Posted : November 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Author : Stacco Troncoso

> As the familiar features of consumer society recede, new institutionalized forms of cooperativism can help to ease some of the disruption and foreseeable hardship.

This is the first of a series of posts on post-consumerism ( 
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/tag/post-consumerism ) . It was authored 
by Maurie J. Cohen and originally published at TruthOut ( 
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/35548-preparing-for-the-end-of-consumer-society 
) :

By famously implementing the $5 per day wage ( 
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/267145552/the-middle-class-took-off-100-years-ago-thanks-to-henry-ford 
)  in 1914, Henry Ford was the first industrialist to recognize that a 
consumer society can only function when workers have access to ample 
income to finance discretionary purchases. During the 1930s, under the 
tutelage of John Maynard Keynes, this understanding became a key tenet 
of macroeconomic policy in many parts of the world. However, by the 
1970s, high inflation, obstinate unemployment and other sources of 
economic instability called this strategy into question and unleashed 
during the following decades a wave of neoliberal reforms.

Ensuing years brought forth a protracted period of stagnating wages and 
increasing income inequality, and consumer society was perpetuated, as 
is today widely recognized, by deregulation of the banking sector and a 
deluge of easily available credit. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and 
subsequent Great Recession exposed the fallacies of such policies, and 
uncertainty has resurfaced about the durability of consumerism as an 
economic engine.

Consumer society as a system of social organization appears to be in 
jeopardy on a number of fronts. First, populations across North America, 
Europe and most of Asia are ageing, and demographic change is shifting 
preferences away from lifestyles premised on material accumulation. In 
addition, millennials continue to face extremely precarious job 
prospects. The resultant consequence of these dual trends is evident in 
faltering rates of home ownership ( 
http://www.governing.com/news/headlines/gov-housing-report-shows-declining-homeownership-increasing-cost-burden.html 
)  and declining levels of personal automobile ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_car )  use in a number of countries.

Second, rising income inequality is fracturing the middle class that has 
for more than half a century been the flywheel of consumer society and 
solidifying a two-tier, hourglass-shaped social structure.

Third, private consumption is dependent on complementary public 
procurement, and austerity policies over the past decade are emblematic 
of declining political wherewithal to make requisite investments to 
renew the social and physical infrastructure on which consumer society 
relies.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, consumerist lifestyles have 
long been predicated on waged employment and the willingness of workers 
to spend relatively reliable income streams on goods and services. 
Steady work that compensates employees on a salaried or hourly basis and 
provides modest benefits are disappearing, and less regularized, 
contingent work ( 
http://krueger.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/files/katz_krueger_cws_-_march_29_20165.pdf 
)  is becoming commonplace. Some analysts have disingenuously 
characterized the proliferation of Uber-type jobs as "sharing," when 
this trend actually demonstrates how workers are finding it increasingly 
necessary to string together freelance assignments to make ends meet.

At the same time that we are beginning to transition away from consumer 
society, a new wave of digital technologies ( 
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/ 
)  premised on artificial intelligence is set to unsettle a large number 
of economic sectors -- from health care to engineering. One upshot of 
this disruption will be that short-term tasks will become an entirely 
normal feature of the employment landscape.

In response to these developments, several governments have begun to 
evince interest in providing workers with a non-labor source of income. 
These proposals come in several varieties and include a universal basic 
income ( http://www.usbig.net/ )  (UBI), a citizen's dividend ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_dividend )  and broad-based 
stock ownership ( 
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo8056093.html )  in 
corporations. Particularly notable is Finland's recently announced 
program ( 
http://www.fastcompany.com/3054340/the-future-of-work/could-finlands-universal-basic-income-ever-work-in-the-us 
)  to test the viability of a UBI scheme that will pay all eligible 
recipients approximately €800 per month. Other countries are actively 
debating similar initiatives.

Unfortunately, extreme political fractiousness in the United States and 
Europe makes it improbable that these ideas will promptly receive wider 
legislative endorsement. In the meantime, what are struggling households 
to do as theorganizational pillars of consumer society collapse and the 
most readily apparent alternative resembles a 21st century version of 
feudalism?

We seem to be at a juncture where we need to rediscover the lessons of 
mutual assistance ( 
http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-A-Factor-Evolution/dp/1497333733 ) . 
One option entails building on novel modes of cooperativism ( 
http://www.id-coop.eu/en/KeyConcepts/Pages/Cooperativism.aspx )  that 
meld production and consumption into a single organization.

The largest worker-consumer cooperative ( 
http://cultivate.coop/wiki/Multi-stakeholder_cooperatives#Worker_Consumer_Hybrid 
)  in the world is the 800-store Eroski supermarket chain ( 
http://www.eroski.es/ ) , a subsidiary of the venerable Mondragón 
cooperative ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation ) 
headquartered in the Basque region of Spain. Smaller prototypes thrive 
in the United States in the form of the Weaver Street Market ( 
http://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/ )  in North Carolina and the Black 
Star Co-op Pub and Brewery ( http://www.blackstar.coop/ )  in Texas. 
There are also indications that the reticence that has traditionally 
marked the relationship between cooperatives and trade unions is giving 
way to a new spirit of collaboration ( 
http://www.usw.org/union/allies/The-Union-Co-op-Model-March-26-2012.pdf 
)  supportive of this general idea.

History suggests that economic transitions are extremely painful and 
chaotic. This was the case as agrarian society gave way to industrial 
society during the second half of the 18th century. Similar forms of 
dislocation were widespread as the service economy in turn displaced 
manufacturing two centuries later. Even as this latter transformation is 
still playing out, a new era of expansive socio-technical change ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociotechnical_system )  is starting to 
unfold. As the familiar features of consumer society recede, new 
institutionalized forms of cooperativism can help to ease some of the 
disruption and foreseeable hardship.
Maurie J. Cohen ( http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/52086 )
Maurie J. Cohen is Professor and Director of the Program in Science, 
Technology, and Society at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and 
author of the forthcoming book The Future of Consumer Society: Prospects 
for Sustainability in the New Economy ( 
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-future-of-consumer-society-9780198768555?cc=us&lang=en& 
)  (Oxford University Press).

Photo ( http://wpinject.com/ )  by 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11223807@N04/15252717051

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