Benjamin Barber On Consumerism Summary

Benjamin Barber in his essay “overselling capitalism with consumerism” undertakes to disclose the contrast between both capitalism and consumerism. The author, in a detailed analysis describes the changes from capitalism to consumerism by clearly drawing not only the value that capitalism has but also its positive impact in the society, as well as the impact that consumerism has on the people. The emergence of the United States over the last century as the world’s dominant economic powerhouse, has helped elucidate that capitalism is the most effective system that can be adopted to steer economic growth but at the expense of the working group who are crushed (Barber 22). The paper therefore undertakes to explore how effective capitalism is as
an economic system as well as undertake to establish whether championing capitalism is courting long-term disaster.
In the essay, Benjamin Barber is able to use the example of the crisis in the subprime mortgage. This is largely aimed at elucidating the deep rooted challenges in the society and which have developed as a result of the society adopting capitalism as its profound economic system. He argues that the capitalism ideals unlike those championed by other economic systems that advocate for “protestant ethos” encompassing hard work and deferred gratification. This
Al Faris 1 further promotes impulsive consumption and self-interest instead of focusing on the achieving the greater common good.
It will be realized that the author focuses on the opinion that capitalism although effective in producing goods that consumers need and securing profits for the producers.
There is also overproduction of goods to meet the wants in the society and his has led to over flooding of goods in the market that are meant to meet a few needs of the society. This is believed to significantly affect trade resulting from the surplus goods. He posits that “capitalism requires us to “need” all that it produces in order to survive...” and thus instead of producing goods that conform to the needs of the truly needy in the society, it has led to the development of global inequality (Barber 22).
The idea of capitalism and rise of inequality within the people can be attributed to the fact that the truly needy in the society although having little wealth at their disposal, they have many needs to meet. This is different from the rich in the society who have so much wealth at their disposal but few needs to meet. However, Barber argues that this is the biggest problem that has been systematically created by the adoption of capitalism. It makes consumption in the society ubiquitous and omnipresent by turning activities such as shopping into addiction that is driven by the availability of quick
cash.
Consumerism on the other hand has promoted the adoption of the infantilist ethos promoted by capitalism since it promotes laxity and leisure in the society instead of discipline and denial which have through the years shaped human culture (Barber 23). This is elucidated in the shift for example, from the conventional town squares which were composed not only of a