Can economies grow without consumerism?

[simonova]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

[abhiseshakana]

Yes, I firmly believe that prosperity can be achieved without excessive consumption and endless waste. The key is understanding that true prosperity is not simply the result of the abundance of consumable goods, but rather the quality of life, the distribution of wealth, and social and ecological sustainability.

After World War II and the Industrial Revolution, growth depended on consumption, thus driving mass production, credit, and the emergence of the advertising industry, which ultimately shaped the consumerist economic system as the engine of growth. Furthermore, in the modern era, consumption is not merely about fulfilling needs but also about expressing one's identity and status. Ultimately, prosperity is judged by how much we buy and own (a culture of waste). Thus, prosperity is simply a competition. Unlimited consumption is inefficient and actually reduces long-term social welfare.

Prosperity with equity can be achieved by improving the economic structure from an economy based on volume of consumption to an economy based on values, sustainability, and quality of life. Because in a modern economy facing ecological and social limits, growth without conscious consumption will be counterproductive. In my opinion, true happiness is when I am able to enjoy a decent standard of living, a clean environment, sufficient free time, and healthy social relationships without having to accumulate things and leave waste for the next generation.

[Hispo]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

In the eyes of traditional American and western economists, no.
They directly associate consumption and production as being directly proportional with quality of life and development, in the eyes of western economies if people cannot buy work and save money, then there is no actual development, being the most important part the fact they can spend money.
In reality, government do not want people to be able to save much money, as they need people to continuously buy and waste products, as that is what keep factories always running, if you think about it.
If people save money and they decide not to spend endlessly, then there is less job creation and economy stops accelerating, that is why inflation is used to prompt people to spend and spend, since saving money with no yield would be a waste of wealth.

[Royal Cap]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

I think that prosperity means spending more which is actually a big misconception. Consumerism may give some people temporary satisfaction, but in the long run it does not create sustainable prosperity. On the contrary, it often increases pressure.
Real prosperity comes from efficiency, savings, investment and a little calculation. You don't have to stop spending completely but if you consume blindly you will do more harm than good. So in my opinion, consumerism cannot be called completely bad but if it goes unchecked, that's when the problem starts, although this is my personal opinion

[coupable]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

The title you chosen is somehow misleading. Yes, economical prosperity can be achieved without excessive consumption and endless waste, not without consumerism in general. Any market requires two elements which ark offer and demand. The demand is the consumerism that can lead to prosperity or recession is some cases.

In some other cases, excessive consumption can lead to a reversable result. While we think the rise demand will prosper the market, the opposite occured so the demand empties the market and the prices rises resulting a damage that wouldn't be easy to overcome later.

[tsaroz]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

It's our economy that is designed to flourish on consumerism. We always predict the demands for goods and services increases over time and if something is successful, we have a large market to capture. Be it production of grains or smartphones or Cars.

People invest in Apple in expectation that it would grow its profit margin and deliver better profits to the shareholders than what it is currently providing. For that Apple needs to increase its sales or decrease its production costs every year. It might work for a few decades but that market model won't hold for long. Specially so when we are seeing an unprecedented demographic situation where the world population is going towards its peak. There already are less people in the world in the age bracket 0-20 than there are 20-40.
This demands our economic shift towards sustainable and waste free consumption model and a redefining of how the world economy runs.

[Despairo]

No, consumerism is the key why the economies grow.

Consumerism isn't always mean you spend a lot of money to purchase whatever you like, any kind of spending from low to high are include as consumerism. If everyone start to save their money instead of spend it, the whole economy will collapse because they keep hold their money when their money actually "worthless", it's just a paper money, nothing valuable.

[Ucy]

Not really about not consuming atall, but to avoid consuming the unhealthy, bad and unnecessary things. You could start where you live... analyze what you own, 'are they good or necessary'?, if no, then it becomes very important to destroy or get rid of them and never buy them again. The unnecessary ones, if good/safe could be sold or given to people who need them. Invest the money earned from the sales in productivity, profitable investment like Bitcoin, or give them to the needy, and that becomes a sown seed (including money or good things given to the needy) you'll reap later in the future. It's like sowing apple today and continuously reaping apples in the future—, this is based on "what you sow you reap" investment/work principle.  You sow Bitcoin, you reap more bitcoins. You sow money in the needy, you reap more. It's basically how the CREATOR of the Universe designed things to work.

By the way, we aim to fully replicate this in Bitcoin space so that bitcoiners can invest or produce more good and necessary things while consuming/spending less unless what they consume or spend bitcoins on is good, necessary and profitable,.. And also adds value to Bitcoin . It's like producing good/necessary things that aid the growth and development of Bitcoin Network, and then selling them for bitcoins. They add value to the Bitcoin Network, to the buyers and to yourself.  That's how we should move in life generally and Bitcoin in particular. And it's possible to move better than this

[el kaka22]

Depends, what is your end goal? If you want innovation and growth, then yeah people need to buy, how are you going to grow without selling? And buying is consumerism, and that means we are going to grow that way.

If you want to just get rid of all the trash and garbage items and focus on only the high quality ones, not everyone will be able to afford that, and culture makes sure that we buy all kinds of crazy stuff at times, look at fifty years ago what stupid stuff people bought, we don't do that now, but in 50 years they will look back at us and see us buying trash again, just different ones. So long term short, we will always end up buying useless trash but it will happen one way or another, it's just the reality.

[Dunamisx]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

Human needs are insatiable, this means that they are unending, however, there's a difference between need and want, in other for us to achieve prosperity and posterity, we must know when to put a pause or limit to some of the things we often demands and are of no benefits to us and others, because the latter part of them often resulted in waste of resources, which others could have utilized and benefited from.

[Spaceman1000$]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

Of course there's no way economy will grow without consumption, consumption brings  the need for buying and selling, buying and selling brings in profit, this profit can go in for large scale and small scale businesses, however a sustainable economy should not rely majorly on consumption, productivity is the hallmark of a sustainable economy. China today is known as one of the world economic power because of the level of production they have, not necessarily about their level of consumption, so consumption plays a role in an economy but productivity plays a major role.

[Eternad]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

There’s no way you can avoid consumption if you want prosperity. People need to spend their money for their necessities after completing their work that consume energy on their end.

The cycle of being productive and spending is important factor for a country to grow. Those waste problem can be limited by recycling method on the waste.

[justinlamode]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

Excessive consumption and waste leads to the prosperity of the producers and poverty of the wasteful consumer which make your post partly correct that prosperity is being created but that is only on one part. You should be on the side of the producer if you want to experience prosperity because wasteful consumption will mean more sales for you which is more money to your bank account.

[mindrust]

Too late now. We can’t go back to that anymore. Capitalism won’t let us. Either consume forever or collapse. Look at what the Chinese are doing. They are building empty houses just so their construction industry can survive. The moment they stop building, that industry and everything connected to that will collapse and you know what? It already did. It is called “evergrande”. It made it to the news a few years ago that China’s biggest real estate company went bankrupt but then the Chinese government bailed them out. On a bigger or smaller scale similar cases happen all around the world and it won’t stop till the whole system eats itself in the end.

[Accardo]

Excessive consumption and waste leads to the prosperity of the producers and poverty of the wasteful consumer which make your post partly correct that prosperity is being created but that is only on one part. You should be on the side of the producer if you want to experience prosperity because wasteful consumption will mean more sales for you which is more money to your bank account.

Consumption drives revenues High and puts nations on the financial map. Citizens must power facilities needed for comfortable survival and are trained to cohabit around consumables - food, electricity, gas, etc. Considering the rate of investors and the individual purchasing power the economy of a nation blows up with high consumption of goods and services, and falls at low consumption rate.

[AmoreJaz]

Excessive consumption and waste leads to the prosperity of the producers and poverty of the wasteful consumer which make your post partly correct that prosperity is being created but that is only on one part. You should be on the side of the producer if you want to experience prosperity because wasteful consumption will mean more sales for you which is more money to your bank account.

Consumption drives revenues High and puts nations on the financial map. Citizens must power facilities needed for comfortable survival and are trained to cohabit around consumables - food, electricity, gas, etc. Considering the rate of investors and the individual purchasing power the economy of a nation blows up with high consumption of goods and services, and falls at low consumption rate.

Consumerism will always be part of a growing economy. We can't eradicate such human activity. Because without it, how can industries grow? But excessive consumption will use so much resources and most of them will just go to waste. So consumerism is vital in any economy but people should have responsible consumerism so as not to waste resources.

[IjawMan]

Depends, what is your end goal? If you want innovation and growth, then yeah people need to buy, how are you going to grow without selling? And buying is consumerism, and that means we are going to grow that way.

If you want to just get rid of all the trash and garbage items and focus on only the high quality ones, not everyone will be able to afford that, and culture makes sure that we buy all kinds of crazy stuff at times, look at fifty years ago what stupid stuff people bought, we don't do that now, but in 50 years they will look back at us and see us buying trash again, just different ones. So long term short, we will always end up buying useless trash but it will happen one way or another, it's just the reality.

The end goal of consumerism is to enormously increase the goods and services consumption in a country to improve the economy and living standards.

But it has to be with selling the right Innovations that is called for base on the prevailing circumstance of that society. Where the innovation for enormous production goes wrong, the intended growth will not be achieved. And time has shown that innovations fade away, and it is natural that what made sense and value yesterday will not today.

The trash-garbage or low quality and the high quality are all necessary for consumerism to be effective considering the variations in social status so for every consumer there is what they can afford to consume by their financial capacity.

[EarnOnVictor]

Is there a way to achieve prosperity without endless consumption and waste? Sometimes, it looks like even consumerism is good overall or I am wrong in this assumption ?

I read some of the replies of people, and I think some of them do not understand what consumerism is as a context in economics, and neither do they understand the "waste" you indicated in the body. Economics is clear about it, as it's a two way beneficial ideology for the parties involved, which is a win-win for the producer/manufacturer or the person rendering a service and the customers/clients.

When you buy a product or were rendered a service, you get the value of them, and the other party gets the money value for it. This is what actually drives the economy, and more of that transaction is needed to call the economy progressive. Now, it doesn't matter whether it's a frivolous spending, all the economy wants is more of such transactions, which thrives it more. This means that if it reduces, that means the economy will retard. This is nonnegotiable!

[zaim7413]

Prosperity can be achieved without excessive consumption as long as you are able to live a simple life by reducing unnecessary expenses. Proper financial management is essential to cut expenses, then invest the money in valuable things.
Consumerism is often driven by the desire to satisfy emotional needs (rather than actual ones). If this lifestyle continues, it will be difficult to achieve prosperity. Temporary satisfaction will only make the economy more difficult, this habit will make life more difficult when you need money to get something you really need.

[Accardo]

Consumerism will always be part of a growing economy. We can't eradicate such human activity. Because without it, how can industries grow? But excessive consumption will use so much resources and most of them will just go to waste. So consumerism is vital in any economy but people should have responsible consumerism so as not to waste resources.

Waste and industrial deception - counterfeits won't leave the consumption market. The whole settings have loopholes that dries up world resources. Thanks to the true form of nature that endlessly provides raw materials regardless of how wasteful and unaccountable humans are to the natural resources. Without Earth's provision, consumerism won't be a thing and the world would have ended long enough.