Consumer under consumption

Initiatives disregarding consumers in favor of other people 
become a threat to consumption

Consumers are those who consume. Consume something until the end. Consumers are extremely popular, everybody talks about them. The consumer chooses, the consumer demands, the consumer votes with his dollar, the consumer has to be pleased.

Consumers are, of course, people. One kind of people, the kind which consumes. Other kinds of people are not as popular as the consumer kind. Non-consumers don't choose, don't demand, don't vote with dollars and are not pleased.



Products which are made with consumers in mind are consumable, even when they aren't. A seed was genetically modified for consumers by Monsanto, for example. The consumer buys the seeds, plants them and harvests the crop. The crop produces new seeds, but the consumer wants to see consumption. So Monsanto protects the consumer's interests by including in the patent that the new seeds cannot be used; they are there, but we can pretend the whole original product has been consumed. The consumer's position is guaranteed and he can buy new seeds from Monsanto to consume. Even if the product itself is not consumable, legal systems are put in place to assure the consumer's position is intact.

The music industry also loves consumers. It provides songs for them to consume, and they are protected from sharing, so their friends can be consumers as well. Record labels think about their consumers' friends' need to consume. The same goes for the movie industry, blocking disks to artificially make naturally non-consumable products, consumable. The publishing industry loves consumers so much that they are making digital books which self-destruct, doing the consuming for the consumer, so the consumer can relax and be sure the product will be consumed. These industries are developing technologies with the consumer's best interests in mind.

Digital files and seeds are very similar, they are easily replicable and not really consumed, but consumers can be sure that there are industries working hard to satisfy their need to consume, using both technology and legal systems to ensure the product will be consumed. Companies are not only developing useful things, they are also putting a lot of effort on making products more consumable. To please the consumer.

The world is not a perfect place however, and the consumer now finds his position to be threatened. Recent trends in products and services are going as far as to ignore their dollars and thirst for consumption. These trends are greatly influenced by the advent of the internet. While traditional industries like the ones above still struggle to please consumers, more and more initiatives are showing up with complete disregard for them. Wikipedia for example is under the creative commons license to make sure its material won't be consumed, self-destruct or become inaccessible to someone by law. Wikipedia is not for the consumer, it is for his nemesis, the non-consumer.

As if the virtual world wasn't enough, the trend is spreading to the physical world as well. One particular target are the consumers who enjoy hotels and hostels. They are being attacked as people all around the world offer their couches for free on CouchSurfing.org. Consumable disposable combs, tooth-brushes, and those little shampoos which consumers love are faced with the non-consuming new threat of sharing. Beyond couches, there are numerous other online initiatives focused on passing things from one person to another and avoiding consumption.

Consumer, beware, for the zeitgeist is changing in such a fast pace that the world might reach the point of no return for consumption. The paradigm is shifting so smoothly that consumers might not feel the danger they are facing. Take the RepRap project for example, which has the objective of making a 3D printer which can print a copy of itself someday. In one of his presentations, the professor which started the project calmly said that there's no point on selling a self-replicating machine, because you'd only sell one and it would replicate from then on. See what's happening, he didn't think of consumers even for a second, no struggling to use technology to control the spread of self-replicating machines, no struggling to use legal systems to force consumption. This is the world we are in nowadays, where the consumer is not even slightly thought of. Companies like Monsanto, which use legal tricks to overcome the self-replicable nature of their products and help the consumer consume, have new competition.

Capitalism, the ideology of consumers, is at risk. One of the main pillars of capitalism, competition, is backfiring and slowly taking the capital out of capitalism. It is clear that the consumer is endangered, and now is the time for him and the industries which represent their interests to take an attitude before it's too late. The more society advances the more attention other kinds of people get and consumers are left behind holding their useless dollars, displeased. Technology, which has been developed exclusively for consumers for the longest time, is now betraying them.

Consumers, tell me, how do you feel now that the world is moving towards this complete disregard for consumers and their desire to consume? Are you starting to feel like your dollars can't vote? Are you displeased? Do you feel like your own identity is at stake? Do you think the world's movement towards a non-consuming future is inevitable? Do you think the path the world is taking is unethical for not taking your consuming needs into consideration? Do you fear all the peace and understanding which might come along a world which values cooperation over greed and consumption? Do you find the open-source movement to be a threat to society? Are you sad that the environment might be preserved if products are made to last, be reused, upgraded and not consumed? Do you feel tempted to joining the non-consuming?