Curing Affluenza

How to Buy Less Stuff and Save the World

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 25 Jan 2018 | Archive Date 28 Feb 2018

Talking about this book? Use #CuringAffluenza #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

Affluenza has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. Short of money? Borrow some. Caught in the rain? Buy an umbrella. Thirsty? Buy a bottle of water and throw the bottle away. Our embrace of "convenience" and our acceptance of our inability to plan ahead is an entirely new way of thinking, and over the past seventy years we have built a new and different economic system to accommodate it.

There is nothing inevitable about this current way of thinking, consuming, and producing. On the contrary, the vast majority of humans who have ever lived would find the idea of using our scarce resources to produce things that are designed to be thrown away absolutely senseless. The fact that our consumer culture is a recent innovation does not mean it will be easy to change. Indeed, the last few decades have shown how contagious affluenza can be. But we have not always lived this way, which proves that we don’t have to persist with it. We can change—if we want to.

Affluenza has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. Short of money? Borrow some. Caught in the rain? Buy an umbrella. Thirsty? Buy a bottle of water and throw...


Advance Praise

"Curing Affluenza will, with luck, kickstart a conversation about mindless consumerism and what we do about it."
— Marc Hudson, The Conversation


"Richard Denniss is the freshest economic thinker I know, brimming with ideas, challenging old views, and finding new opportunities for progress. A path-breaking book."
—Ross Gittins

"Curing Affluenza will, with luck, kickstart a conversation about mindless consumerism and what we do about it."
— Marc Hudson, The Conversation


"Richard Denniss is the freshest economic thinker I...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781771133678
PRICE CA$23.95 (CAD)

Average rating from 3 members


Featured Reviews

Was this review helpful?

Has good concrete examples of how consumer spending on luxury goods can be shifted in ways that protect the world economy and the planet. Usually books on this topic just explain the problem but are light on actual doable solutions. Curing Affluenza lays out solutions that are possible from small to big steps.

Was this review helpful?

I think we can all agree that Western culture is awash in goods, more than we need, sometimes more than we want. Richard Denniss hopes to promote a cure for affluenza, "that strange desire we feel to spend money we don't have to buy the things we don't need to impress people we don't know." The size of our shopping malls--and the size of our garbage dumps--attest to the widespread infection of affluenza. Denniss, an Australian economist, wants to change the culture of consumerism, not by "chiding people for their current conduct and consumption patterns" but by "creating smarter, more attractive patterns of behavior."


Denniss makes a helpful distinction between materialism and consumerism. Materialism is not the problem. It's consumerism's "love of buying new things" that drives affluenza while leading to a stream of waste. "Consumerism is based on the transient thrill of the new. . . . Materialism is based on love of the old." Materialism is the love of things that encourages us to cherish what we have, to care for them, to repair them, to use them carefully, and enjoy them. This is the opposite of consumerism, which encourages seeking the new and disposing of the old.


This distinction is important to the extent that our economy is driven by consumerism. Denniss criticizes the use of GDP as a measure of economic activity. He says is "like bragging about a car's top speed." It doesn't say anything about the direction of the economy or the sectors of activity. Consumerism boosts GDP, but can be detrimental in other areas of a society's health.


Denniss's case for moving society toward a culture rejecting consumerism is strong and makes a lot of sense. A recurring example is the bottled water industry. Who would have thought that a very inexpensive, easily acquired (in the developed world) commodity like water would become a huge, profitable industry? The bottled water is great for GDP--created jobs, consumers spending money on something they spent very little money on in recent years--but has adverse environmental consequences with the waste created by all the bottles, and redirects billions of assets that could be used for other things. If our culture began to buy less bottled water (as I believe we have begun to see), that small change could have a great impact. Small changes by millions of people, whether buying less bottled water, choosing to drive less, or using and repairing their goods rather than replacing them, can lead to great changes.


While Denniss makes a good case for materialism over consumerism, pointing out the waste and pointlessness of affluenza, he steps too far down the road of centralization and communalism. We in the West love our freedoms. We are free to ride bikes to work, and to promote bike lanes, ride sharing, and other means of reducing urban traffic. But we also want to be free to drive our gas guzzlers. Granted, Denniss talks about gradual changes in culture more than statist decrees. But he seems to be OK with statism, too.


His bottom line still stands: "Just as your stomach should tell you when you have eaten enough, your cupboards and your garage should tell you when you have consumed enough." Denniss overplays the "spending to impress others" angle, but we definitely spend more than we need on stuff we don't need. I'll join him in making those choices in my family to resist the culture of consumerism and promote a culture of materialism rightly understood.




Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Was this review helpful?

Readers who liked this book also liked: