# You do not need to consume

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2017/04/25/you-do-not-need-to-consume/
- Published: 2017-04-25T13:55:36+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/a23df-1sj0r0aljtqbnpyvz9ju_6a.
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#### Consumption is not an actual need, it is a necessity

Needs differ from necessities, because humans can rationalize adversity.

> Rationalisation is the action of attempting to explain or justify behaviour or
> an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.

A need is solvable adversity. For all adversity too complex to solve we rationalise
a wrapper that integrates it into our world building. A necessity is rationalised
adversity.

Scarcity is a type of adversity, for obvious reasons. Scarcity for the past 99% 
of our history was unsolvable. Consumption is rationalised scarcity.

Consumption is a type of adversity. It wasn’t initially, it is a modern adversity.
Why? Because of deregulation, industrialised production and globalization. Shopping
is rationalized consumption.

Ownership is a type of adversity. Has always been, because of time’s arrow. Things
lose their value and their initial state in time. Services are rationalized ownership.

Consumption, shopping, services are necessities of existence inside the current 
state of our world. We wouldn’t really need them, if this world would unravel. But
we need the world.

The world is founded on three pillars: politics, economy and civilisation.

Politics is the management of life which empowers our survival. Economy is the management
of survival which empowers our society. Civilization is the management of society
which empowers our progress.

Politics, economy and civilisation, in their turn, are all formed by layers upon
layers of rationalisation.

For example, the basic building blocks of our modern economy are a rationalisation
of the adversity caused by the concentration of wealth built by the middle ages’
politics. Before it, there was another economy rationalising the adversity of guarded
knowledge. And before it, there was another economy rationalising constant war. 
And so on.

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little known fact of life

> All systems decay because of increasing complexity.

Think of Adam Smith and his simple view of economy: rational economic actors. Now,
compare that to the economy of today: financial jungle. How many layers apart are
we from that original vision?

But we still employ those simple explanations of Adam Smith’s original basic ruleset
when we justify the hardships of the losers of the economy game. That is unfair,
and wrong.

Everything is about humans. Neither about taxpayers or consumers, nor about capital.
This way, the way in which we make tangible and painful experiences abstract, is
hurting us on the long run. Life is visceral, death is real, humans experience pain,
loss, angst and failure. Everything else in the game feels nothing. Capital doesn’t
lose nights because its value is down. Land doesn’t think about the inevitability
of death, and labor doesn’t worry about loved ones.

And here comes the doom of the mall.

The way retail works today is through guards around the silo. This concept must 
fade into our past. Our current efforts to keep capitalism afloat are misdirected,
just because we’re pumping resources into justifying silos with rotten contents 
in them.

We fear uncertainty. Uncertainty causes pain, hence we work hard to keep systems
from evolving, and, instead of creating evolution, we make convolution.

Like, nationalisation of basic consumption for turning it into a service would quite
possibly be a very good way to preserve retail as we know it and enable markets 
to be reborn. But we keep considering basic food a free market as if it is still
an adversity. It isn’t, we throw tons of rotten food away every minute. The idea
of free market must move on, must enter a new loop of rationalisation, because free
_global _markets need to be dealt with _rationally. _Laissez faire is irrational
by definition, we entrust our future into the whimsy hands of the archetype.

We are taught as young as possible that we are all amazing wildcards who can be 
anything and which can achieve everything. The wildcard human is a lie. That is 
simply the prepping for a life of being _played like a wildcard —in _Laissez faire
_you don’t actually get to play._

Is this the kind of progress we strive for? Because,

> the nature and number of our necessities are the mirror for the kind and speed
> of our progress.