The Negative Effects Of Consumerism

Consumerism is one of the greatest factor affecting our lives. In the modern society, consumerism is often portrayed to be a negative aspect of people’s lives. Researchers often emphasize on the negative effects of consumerism and how it can be a constraining force in one’s own life. However, one can also argue positive effects that result from consumerism. Consumerism is an idea of an economic policy that the market is shaped by the choice of the consumer and continues to emerge to shape the world’s mass markets, so consuming and wanting are human nature. But the consequences of over consuming is dire. Excessive consumerism is destructive as it misuses land and resources, brings on economic depressions, and is also a contributing factor to

In most countries, consumerism mainly increased due to the industrial revolution, which led to the development of luxury products that have become status symbols, generally these products tend to go out of fashion or become undesirable within society, thus they turn to be waste, which eventually has led to many socioeconomic as well as environmental problems. How land is used can have enormous impacts on the environment and its sustainability. People often blame the rapidly increasing population for environmental degradation and other environmental issues. They blindly assumed that the cause of the environmental destructions is because we are populated by sheer numbers. However, while populations can burden the environment, it has been proven that the most populous regions in the world use far less resources than the wealthiest nations, so the issue is more about how resources are used and for what purpose. For instance,“Junk-food chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut, are under attack from major environmental groups in the United States and other developed countries because of their environmental impact. Intensive breeding of livestock and poultry for such restaurants leads to deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of water sources

Sometimes, companies may use some tactics to manipulate the consumers to buy their products. This overexploitation of consumerism has the potential to cause an economic recession or even depression by continuously increasing the consumption levels at less developed or poorer nations. For most cases, much of this mass consumerism culture has not been based solely on natural demand, but a created demand from large businesses and industry wanting to sell more products and make more profits. This has been also encouraged politically as it helps create a more conforming populous satisfied by material needs. As such businesses also made endeavours to eliminate competition and gain more profits, this has become more destructive on a wider scale. Take the economic crisis in the US in 2001 as an example. Even as the United States began to feel the onset of a recession that is due to crisis of overproduction coming on in the middle of 2001, the economic and political leaders respond by attempting to encourage people to spend more. Because the entire industry has over estimated the consumers demands, we can see a distinct evidence of over production. This had led to dominant companies trying to consolidate losses and maintain profits,but that would form a chain reaction creating more economic losses which would only make the matter even worse. Besides causing damage to the economy, over consumption can also lead to