I like French titles. In New York it is difficult to sell a calamari sandwich, but if you say it is a “baguette aux calamars a l’armoricaine”, they eat them so well that you charge double the price. The truth is that as a neighbor to the south I have admiration for many of the things that France has given to the world… Joan of Arc, Laetitia Casta, Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot… and let us not forget the Citroën CX and the Chateneuf Du Pape!
Following Picketty, I am going to lower the price of the calamari sandwich in New York because it will create inequality and not everyone will be able to taste it. Actually, I think it’s because by lowering the price and considering that this has elastic demand, I will sell more and make more money (that thing that Biden, Draghi and now Lagarde print). Which brings me to the praise of consumerism.
Humanity has spent most of its history surviving in the conditions of life that have touched them. It is enough to look at that in all the wars of humanity until just 100 years ago, more soldiers died from disease than from the hardships of battle. If one looks at migratory movements, the direction is always towards countries where consumerism is “a problem”. Since immigrants praise consumerism with their feet, I will do it with words.
Consumerism is defined as the tendency to excessive and unnecessary consumption of goods and products. It is interesting how many assumptions there are behind those few words…. Ah language!
Can there be excessive consumption when there is a market of supply and demand in which the actors decide according to their availability of resources, skills and wants or needs? No, excessive consumption only occurs when someone does not agree with what you buy or how much you buy freely. Consumerism occurs when someone wants to tell you what or how much you can buy. And for that they even invent accounting terms such as the accounting externalities of fossil fuels, which only they know how to quantify! Thank God for having sent us these lights. I thought that the Holy Inquisition had been abolished in 1834 by Isabel II. It sounds like the Imperial Catechism that Napoleon and the Catholic Church agreed upon in 1806. Follow our rules, we know better!
All economic activity requires a legal framework that guarantees private property and the freedom to pursue its objectives for each of the players in that market. The basis of all consumerism is ultimately a decision to buy or not within a framework of freedoms that go from the producer through the merchant to the consumer. And that is where the condemnation of the modern Holy Inquisition comes… including the church with this undocumented Pope at the forefront… It seems he read Guardini, but he left it there and did not understand much of it. Guardini in his most important book speaks of the uniqueness of man as body and soul, with an unequivocal bodily circumstance that does not diminish the experience of being. The truth is that I love the chapel of the Palace of Fontainebleau, a marvel of baroque and human art (all excessive and marvelous) while Lana del Rey says that we are born to die.
Perhaps in this world of Instagramers the summary is in Fontainebleau!
References
History of military Medicine (1992) by Richard A Gabriel and Karen S Metz
Picketty…. I have not read his book but his interviews, it does not take more to realize that your theory is wrong. Another Gauche Caviar …
After Babel (1975) by George Steiner
The Spirit of the Liturgy (1918) Romano Guardini
Lana del Rey Born to die