Terms like “sustainable development”, “eco-responsibility” and “degrowth” have long established themselves as standards of environmental awareness. But their overuse has emptied them of their substance and their mobilizing power, relegating them to the rank of conventional clichés.
Faced with growing indifference towards old slogans, we note “deconsumption” as a new rallying cry.
Of course, everyone is free to rethink their relationship to consumption. Moving away from the cult of possession and giving back to the verbs “to have” and “to be” their respective importance can only be beneficial.
Error
On the other hand, let’s not commit the “composition error”!
This is a widely documented logical flaw which consists of extending to society what is valid for the individual.
However, to elevate deconsumption to the rank of supreme societal value is to go astray royally by extrapolating individual behavior to the collective scale.
Let’s imagine for a moment that a part of the population adheres to this modern asceticism and commits itself to never buying anything that is new.
First, without consumption, production plummets and job losses multiply, with predictable domino effects on all industries, on supply, distribution and marketing chains, and on stock prices.
After the Great Depression of 1929, we could experience the Mega Depression of 2029.
Second, without consumption and work, government revenue collapses.
The lack of funding will require the reduction of public services so valued by deconsumptionists, notably public transport.
Finally, since you need something new to get something used, how can you imagine that there are enough second-hand goods to satisfy everyone’s needs?
What begins as voluntary poverty will quickly become imposed poverty.
Poverty
Let us therefore be wary of the deconsumptionist thesis.
Far from being the panacea that would open the doors to happiness and ecological paradise, this new fad is a harbinger of widespread poverty!