Essay On Buy Nothing Day

Rough Draft
Imagine a store, a struggling family business, that counts and depends on every dollar received, that is aware of the likelihood of failure if their daily income is not met. Now, imagine what would happen if for one day, this store and all others like it nationwide received no business. This would result in a forced raise in product price or cutbacks on other expenditures, like employee salary. All of which would eventually result in less business and thus less income. This is not a hypothetical, as such a movement exists. Buy Nothing Day exists to reveal the damaging effects of excessive consumerism by persuading consumers to buy nothing for an entire 24 hour period. The creators of this movement argue that overconsumption of goods is both unethical and bad for the environment. The impractical concept of

On days like Black Friday, it is appalling to watch buyers fight others for a material item with an inflated value. If the higher-ups of big corporations, or any company, for that matter, do not distribute their profit back to those who helped make it than the extra funds are not well deserved and received unethically. On the other hand, consumerism provides a wider job market, and thus more opportunity to many areas throughout the world. A company that does give bonuses to its well-deserving workers, that helps people who would not be successful otherwise succeed makes up for the ones that keep the fruits of overconsumption to themselves. Buy Nothing Day hurts the world more than it helps it. It is ineffective, impractical, and hurts the wrong people. Consumers will not have learned anything from their one day without participating in the economy. Those who greatly depend on consumers for their day-to-day income, or smaller businesses that could be broken down by a single bad day resulting in a severely harmful