Voluntary Simplicity and the Global Economy

But what about jobs, and the economy?

There are lots of reasons why these statements are untrue and are only a ploy to get us to buy things we know we don't need or even want. In a nutshell, here are a few:

• The global corporations that are behind the consumer economy are already shedding jobs right and left even as they multiply productivity. Your decision not to buy will have much less effect on unemployment than the continued automation of the manufacturing and handling of consumer goods.
• Though people tend to think of big corporations as the place where most jobs are created, it is actually small businesses, which often have local sources and markets, that produce the largest number of new jobs every year.
• North Americans use 30 to 60 times the amount of the Earth's bounty as people in Southern countries such as India. It is clearly unsustainable for us to continue our present rates of consumption. We need to find other ways to keep people working than unsustainable economic growth.
• Our current economy considers human labor a cost and tries to cut it whenever possible. In a decentralized economy based on the premise that human beings are more important than production of things, there would be many more jobs than there are in today's global economy. The recycling industry alone, for example, holds the potential for a huge number of jobs--many more than logging and other extractive industries now employ, and certainly more than these industries will employ when the resources they are extracting are gone.

Subversive activity

As the global economy continues making the entire world one unified market with no more local or regional economies or cultures, "dropping out" can be an effective, peaceful, easy way to "just say no." The global economy can only continue on its current path with the acquiescence of all of us in playing the consuming game. What if a lot of us just stopped buying things?

I suspect that the corporations have already begun to notice the simplicity movement: Ads are now using the language of simplicity to sell everything from cars to shoes. If they can co-opt it, the marketers think they can turn the simplicity movement into another "style." But for those who truly practice simplicity, it isn't a style. It is a disengagement from the whole system of styles and fashions and must-have, latest model, life-is-incomplete-without-it stuff. Staying out of the consumer economy as much as possible sends a subtle but definite message: "I'm not having any, thanks." When a large enough faction of consumers are saying this, the consumer economy will either wither away peacefully, or transform itself somehow.

Voluntary or involuntary?

The true purpose of capitalism is become more and more clear, as corporate CEO's get multi-million-dollar compensation packages after eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, and investors go home happy because the company's stock went up as soon as all those people were cut from the payroll and the company got "lean and mean." Capitalism works for the wealthy and works against those who don't have capital. Its first concern is return for investors; since workers are considered a cost of production, its main concern with them is not their well-being but how to reduce that cost as much as possible.

With more and more people finding themselves laid off, and unable to get a job at their former rate of pay, many are forced into "involuntary simplicity." To avoid this situation, and remain in some degree of control over your life, adopting a simplified life now, even if you are pretty sure you aren't going to get laid off, makes a lot of sense.

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