Showing posts tagged: capitalism

(M)embers of Congress, who often gain access to inside information about a company while they are lobbied and who also have some ability to influence the fate of companies through legislation, return a profit on their investments that beats market averages by 5 to 10 percent per year, a remarkable rate that would make even Bernie Madoff blush.

Nate Silver, “The Signal and the Noise,” page 342. (via joshsternberg)

nybooks: ‘A Frightening Time in America’: An Interview With David Foster Wallace Ostap Karmodi: Do you feel we’re living in an age of consumerism or is that just a media concept that doesn’t have any real meaning? David Foster Wallace: This question, as you know, is very complicated. I can give answers that are somewhat simple and I can really talk only about America, because it’s really the only society that I know. America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse. Photo: Steve Rhodes Read this please. Troof.

nybooks:

‘A Frightening Time in America’: An Interview With David Foster Wallace

Ostap Karmodi: Do you feel we’re living in an age of consumerism or is that just a media concept that doesn’t have any real meaning?

David Foster Wallace: This question, as you know, is very complicated. I can give answers that are somewhat simple and I can really talk only about America, because it’s really the only society that I know. America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.

Photo: Steve Rhodes

Read this please. Troof.

(Source: nybooks)

Buy less. Question more.

I wish people would stop buying stuff and question their motive, question the product/service, question their need of that product/service and realize that about 90% of the time they’re just trying to buy their own happiness. Consumerism is a disease. And it is killing us all slowly.

This is your anti-government talking.

Buy less. Buy only the very best and buy less of it. Buy local. Buy responsibly. Buy from the guy you know. You know, the one who takes pride in what he makes because he knows you. Vote with your wallet. Save more. Save your soul. You’re not poor. You only think you are. When you behave in the opposite way your politicians and corporations would like you to, you may just find what you were looking for the entire time. And you’ll be saving the world. You’ll save yourself.

You have the power to kill off the McDonaldses and the Doles and the Philip Morrisses and the Krafts and the Monsantos and the Urban Outfitterses and the rest of the corporations that exploit us for our consumerist tendencies.

Anti-consumerism will kill capitalist extremism and we will all be way better off.

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