User:Walter195806

OVER CONSUMPTION

ORIGINS

Western science and thoughts in the last two hundred years have been guided by a Cartesian Dualism between men and its environment (William Rees, 2000). Scientific disciplines like Economics and Geology, address men and environment as two separate entities disregarding their mutual dependency. Human nescience of the consequences of over-consumption has generated an obvious leisure class that has reached one fifth of the world’s population who consumes 80 % of the global economic output (William Rees, 1999). This leisure class over consumes to acquire leisure and social power developing into competitive spending (The over consumption myth, Elizabeth Warren) among existing and potential leisure classes causing overload of goods, debt, anxiety, and waste. Non conducted expenses in increasing household incomes lead to over-consumption. Instead of saving, families tend to satisfy their wish lists (The over spent American, Juliet Schor).

TACKLING OVER-CONSUMPTION

When humans are freely left to decide how much to consume they tend to act on their own benefit (The Tragedy of Commons, Garrett Hardin), thus the need for regulations to reduce over-consumption are a need. Lei Fang and Richard Rogerson (Working Paper 12891), suggest the regulation of product market relative to labor income and consumption with out considering the impact of real resources costs. Under this concept the prices of products become higher as the income of the population and the consumption of goods increase.

Use of modern technology can be applied to regulate over consumption of goods. Existing bar code systems can be used to regulate the amount of goods being purchased in stores. A limited amount, per average family members, can be purchased at regular prices, any item above the limit then would be extra charged. This technique will control both over consumption and population growth.