#consume

By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products. ↗

— Ellen Willis

#contained #continually #could #demand #easily

The Bush administration did stop filling the reserve in 2002 when it helped the oil industry. Now they should do it to help the consumer. ↗

— Ron Wyden

#bush #bush administration #consumer #did #filling

The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products. ↗

— Mark Fisher

#capitalism #capitalist-realism #charity #consumerism #cultural-capitalism

Flowers die and wine gets consumed. Both are lovely. I appreciate both. Wine and roses. I actually had someone bring me a lobe of foie gras once. ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#appreciate #both #bring #consumed #die