Consumerism Is The Perfection Of Slavery:

[ret5hd]

(i found this very interesting. i know nothing about him…other than this:
https://globaled.gse.harvard.edu/people/xueqin-jiang )

[comradebillyboy]

1. Let's just minimize the horror that was actual slavery.

[ret5hd]

2. ok...if that what you took away from

that after watching…well, carry on.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I think that it does minimise slavery

There's a lot more than that wrong with it, of course - I think the guy is too young to be able to opine about what happened in the 80s, when there are plenty of people who were adults then who can put him right. He's a really annoying lecturer; he has a tendency to say "this is right" without explanation. He pretends consumerism was invented in the 80s; he pretends that suddenly, it was the only way to behave - he keeps on saying "it's the only way to think". And this pretence is his basis for saying it's slavery. And, yes, that does minimise the horror of real slavery.

I heartily recommend that everyone skips the video. It's rubbish.

[Oopsie Daisy]

4. I'm one step ahead of you... already done... and THANK YOU!

[Scrivener7]

5. I disagree with all the other posters in this thread. I think this video is a bit of a mind-blower.

He's right that the consciousness of the past is gone. I remember when union households were proud of being middle class and the ethos was to stand together. The rise of the McMansion and the TikTok "unboxing" and "haul" etc. culture prove his point that desire for prestige through consumption is what is now driving a very large chunk of the population. And all of this consumption, which has reached absurd proportions, is in the end geared to enriching the elite. That means that a large proportion of the labor and time of the entire population is enriching the elite, and that enrichment has gone beyond any level that could sanely be considered reasonable. And I don't see many people who have enough being satisfied. I see people just wanting "more" no matter how much they have.

I saw a reddit post yesterday that asked, "You wake up and it's 1990. No internet, no cell phone, no social media. What do you do?"
EVERY answer was about how to make money on Apple or Amazon or Facebook stock. No one had any other thoughts about it. So yes, we ARE slaves to consumption.