Negatives Of Consumerism

Introduction:

Consumerism has an incredible effect on the society. In order to keep up with others and the world, people want to buy and spend more than they did before. This practice has been going on since the last many years and therefore this continuously increasing demand has turned the balance of the earth upside down. The imbalance of the Earth now displays itself in many forms of climatic changes. This high level of consumption has affected the planet in many ways: large amount of energy input is required, large quantity of pollution is produced during production and equally large amount of waste at disposal of the product. The economic activity has become restricted as the natural sources are exploited during extraction. Another shortcoming of consumerism is

Consumerism has relatively helped in some countries to boost up economic production, export and profits. It works to fight off unemployment, inadequacy and poverty and has raised the standard of living. (Dwyer, 2007) Some countries’ economic health would suffer if there is lack of consumerism and people are not talked about what new products are available – their advertising and marketing etc. With the increasing number of sales over the past years, the joblessness issues have gone down. (YEN, 2013)

One major advantage of consumerism is that, consumerism has given birth to competition between companies. Since every company wants to produce consumer goods that would best meet the demands of their consumer, therefore the rivalry to produce the best consumer goods with the best pricing has increased and this has benefitted the society as whole. Companies start needing more employees for better production and management which in turn, gives job to a number of individuals. Consumerism also gives a diverse range to choose from and they choose the best among all the products and get consumer satisfaction. (Day, 1977)