A Quick Look at Consumerism

This paper will investigate the role of insolvency in a growing consumer credit world and look at the role of bankruptcy, insolvency and consumer financial assistance to help consumers with money problems.

There can be no doubt about the spread and power of consumerism in our modern world. Beginning with the explosive growth in consumer buying activity in the U.S. following WWII, consumerism has become a modern value to purchase material goods or services that we believe that we want or need that help to make us feel better and improve our lives.  That time period also marked a cultural shift of early adopting countries of consumer debt from an attitude of save to spend to a new generational attitude of spend now before you can save for it.

We also now know that a reasonably substantial level of consumer debt is a positive influence to any countries economy and that the role of solutions to remedy bad debt also serves as a catalyst for a strong economy. If consumers are aware that fair solutions exist they are more likely to take on more credit and fuel the economic engine.

There is an entire encyclopaedia that could be written about the consumer need to spend, the use of behavioural economics and spending pathology in creating increased consumption, the emotional impact and benefits of the consumption of material goods, the role of marketing for creating need and the underlying issues which lead people to get into financial trouble. Because those issues clearly exist there is not going to be any examination of those issues here.

Consumerism is like a genie once let loose from the bottle that you can’t put back. No amount of protest or indignation is going to return any consumer, free market, growing or capitalist economy back to a time of perceived economic prudence and restraint. Today with the globalisation of advertising and culture, the invisible seeds of consumerism have been and are being broadcast to every corner of the earth, and beyond if ET is watching. And those seeds sprout into fully functioning consumers which drive the modern economies with full consumptive performance.

Free market economies are not to blame for the spread of consumerism. It is much like the early iron age when one person had thicker stone walls and a better thatched roof than the next person and people longed for that better perceived structure. People will naturally be attracted towards luxury and convenience over pain and suffering.

Since the dawn of time man has always been drawn towards those things which provide pleasure, the perception of pleasure or the illusion that having something will bring more happiness. Hedonism is a basic human trait that is so engrained in the psyche of man that no amount of education or punishment is going to beat it out of the masses.

There is no doubt that modern consumerism is fuelled and accelerated by credit and easy access to money. As with anything else in life, credit is yet another commodity, like food or drugs that can be easily abused and over indulged in that can lead to dire situations.

Many suggest simple solutions to combat the consumption of credit and proclaim that society will be better off with increased financial education or loads of regulation to control lenders. While those efforts might have some marginal effects, it would be foolish to think that those measures alone would going to slow the spread of consumerism in any meaningful way.

As long as there is a profit to be made fuelling the basic human want of consumption there will be a lender and a merchant striving to fill that need. Even in the farthest reaches of every continent a lender can be found or a credit card easily accepted to use borrowed money to fuel a purchase. If you have travelled behind the mountains of the poorest sections of the Appalachia’s in America or down a dusty road in the back of Botswana you will find lenders waiting to assist people with the extension of credit. You will also find new generations that are now educated to shop and almost always in pursuit of entitled luxury. This need for things has even reached so far into many cultures that birth rates are declining in some countries due to the need of couples to both work to afford current lifestyles.

Consumerism does serve a needed role in our modern energetic economies based on the production and consumption of disposable items, acquisition of items of high status, perceived value or brand needs. Without the purchasing power of the consumer the economies of countless countries around the world would be significantly harmed and even the powerful economies of countries like the United States would collapse.