The constant production of scarcity

from Jason Hickel

We can also see the logic of artificial scarcity at work in the realm of consumption. Industrialists who fear that people’s existing needs are too limited to absorb capitalism’s immense productive output must seek to create new needs, or else the juggernaut will grind to a halt. This is accomplished by various means. One is to expand desires through sophisticated advertising campaigns – and to extend these campaigns into all public and private spaces – manipulating people’s emotions and psychology to create new “needs” for products that promise to grant them a sense of self-esteem, status, identity, sexual prowess and so on that did not exist before and indeed do not have to exist. Another is to create products that are designed to break down quickly (like laptops and smart phones today) or become rapidly obsolete (as with the rise of throwaway fashion), and which therefore must be replaced more frequently than would otherwise be necessary. Another is to preclude the development of public goods in order to ensure that people have no choice but to purchase private alternatives: for instance, blocking the construction of effective public transportation systems in order to ensure a steady stream of demand for the automobile industry.

On top of this, a significant portion of consumption in highly-industrialized countries is driven by an artificial scarcity of time. As pressure on labour mounts, the structural compulsion to work unnecessarily long hours leaves people with so little time in the day that they must pay firms to do things that they would otherwise be able to do themselves: cook meals, clean their homes, watch their children, care for their elderly parents. Meanwhile, the stress of overwork creates needs for anti-depressants, sleep aids, alcohol, dieticians, gym memberships, therapy, marital counselling, expensive holidays, and other products that people would otherwise be less likely to feel they require. To pay for these products and services, people need to work yet more to increase their incomes, driving a vicious circle of unnecessary production and consumption.

All of this reveals an interesting contradiction. The ideology of capitalism is that it is a system that generates immense abundance (just think of all the products that one sees displayed on television and in shopfronts, which parade as an extraordinary cornucopia of stuff). But in reality it is a system that relies on the constant production of scarcity.

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