The treadmill of consumption, Globalization, and Global Warming To give you back
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The treadmill of consumption, Globalization, and Global Warming
To give you background on this chapter, here is a brief synopsis of Bell’s ideas:
Bell uses a metaphor of treadmills to explain why we in the modern world produce so much and consume so much, and yet end up less happy and more polluted than people who lived before industrialization. The Treadmill of Production is caused by the nature of capitalism. A firm must produce something to sell in order to make profit. That firm competes against other firms who are also trying to make profit. The easiest way to make profit is to cut costs, so both firms begin to pay workers less money, and at the same time produce more goods to sell, in order to compete successfully to make profit. Thus workers are losing out on pay, while at the same time the firms are making more and more stuff, which causes pollution (factories emit carbon into the air, chemicals into the land and water, etc) and uses massive amounts of energy in the form of fossil fuels to make the stuff. But neither firm can jump off the treadmill, because capitalism is based on profit – if you don’t make profit you fail. So both firms run faster and faster on the treadmill, producing more and more to make profit, and polluting more and more in the process.
But those firms cant keep running on their treadmills unless people buy their products. And that is where the treadmill of consumption comes in. The chapter that is available is all about that.
So read the whole chapter first, then come back and think about these questions.
What does Bell mean when he talks about the treadmill consumption? How do the social desires for goods translate into consumption?
Think about the ways social status influences this treadmill, and use Veblen’s insights to illustrate.
How do these two treadmills (which operate together to keep each other going) create environmental problems?
Now put it all together in terms of a global economic system. Think about the interconnection of our global economy, and discuss how these treadmills are running at the global level. How is global warming an outcome of this system (or, another way to ask it is, how does this system cause global warming?)
Explanation / Answer
The treadmill of consumption means people are running on a path which ensures more use of products. Jusat as running on a treadmill consumes energy so also running on the treadmill of consumption involves utilising more to keep up the pace.
The idea of consumerism arises from the greed than from the need. Take the example of land and housing. People with small housing are never satisfied even if the need is met. This is cexample of middle classs need which has now turned into greed. People are amassing land and houses to satisfy the greed which is a social curse. Hence the production of houses is unregulated and leads to dangerous mining of resources like sand, rock, metals, wood from trees etc. Most of the production units are industries which follow no norms leading to unmindful pollution of the environment.
Thornsten Veblan was an economist who introduced the term conspicous consumption.Most goods have a downward-sloping demand curve because demand goes down as price goes up but a Veblen good has an upward-sloping demand curve.Again we can claerly see this in the land demand and price which shows a upward slope.As explained in the previos paragraph demand for producing housing on land runs on the treadmill of production because there is a parallel treadmill which runs on consumption by the society's greed.Increase in population especially in developing nations is also a contributory factor. Production of housing on land involves multiple industries. Clearing of forested land, construction material involves industrial processes which as explained earlier consume energy and release pollutants that has gone unchecked for years. Even the Taj Mahal was built at a cost that involves all the above factors!
From times immemorial, leaving the simple homes and lives of monks and rishis, the human race has built a social order which is an outcome of his greed than need. The desires both physical and mental run on the treadmill of consumption which sets the pace for the tredmill of production. Any unsutainable production activity invoves the unlimited use of natural resoures. Consumption may shoot the economy but if not contained will certainly cause imbalnce in our ecosystems. The unabating production by indutries to satisfy human greed has caused disaster in form of increased chloroflurocarbons. gases like carbon dioxide, methane, etc The outcome of the activities is the trapping of the heat which has resulted in increase in the earths temperature by 0.5 degrees centigrade at the beginning of 21st century.
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