Consumerism

2 Pages 565 Words

North America has become the world’s largest consumer driven continent since the mid 1900’s. With the addition of easily accessed media, technology, and advertising budgets, it is no wonder we are all drawn into consumerism madness. The Rebel Sell article tries to prove, more to the anti-consumerist, how everyone is involved no matter how you portray yourself or the actions that one might take against the system.
So how does a person who won’t buy Nike shoes or Levi’s jeans or BMW’s contribute to this nation of consumers without even knowing it? The authors point out many key issues that have created this cycle throughout the past 40-50 years.
Let’s start back in the 60’s with the sudden growth of advertising and a long-haired, un-showered, rebellious group of youth we refer to as hippies. Just at the right time, when the hippies refused to be capitalist pigs and buy anything from the large companies such as the Detroit automakers, Volvo and Volkswagen started an add campaign claiming that by buying their cars, you can show the big automakers that you are too smart to fall for their advertising and be a victim of consumerism. Of course, all of the hippies bought the VW bugs and buses, and all of the left wing academics bought Volvos. By buying these products in the name of anti-consumerists, they created a whole new market in the world of consumerism.
The authors use several instances much like the hippie example throughout the article and make many great points as to why capitalism relies on consumerism. When living in a capitalist country, you are taught many things and trained many ways to conform to make the system work. The authors suggest that it is this training that causes humans to want to exploit their individuality, which in turn causes them to consume products that will ultimately allow you to identify what kind of person they are. This creates the different markets and separates the athletes fro...