Niklas Olsen
Author
Overconsumption have long been a huge problem in the global North. “We live on a finite planet that cannot support endless growth and unequitable, unchecked consumption”, Jennifer Molidor, Senior Food Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, recently warned. “The pressure to constantly consume is driving destructive resource extraction, pollution and waste, and contributing to the climate and extinction crises.”
Overconsumption is arguably related to the hegemonic idea that individuals should be understood as critical, independent, and ultimately sovereign consumers able to dictate economic production and drive political activity by choosing between available products on the market. This idea causes overconsumption by rewarding consumerism and promoting growth. Moreover, it disregards ideals about the redistribution of income and wealth in pursuit of societal equality. Forming part of the ubiquitous neoliberal political paradigm, the idea of consumer sovereignty is mainly interested in safeguarding free consumer choice.
Historically, consumers and consumption have been framed and politicized for many other societal frameworks and goals. To mention some examples from the American context:
In the interwar era, New Deal reformers launched the ideal of the citizen consumer as an ideal that would secure the rights of individual consumers in the face of unsafe products, unfair pricing, and misleading advertising. The citizen consumer invoked a vision of the new American democracy based on the popular mobilization of consumers in cooperatives and movements, with consumers also represented in federal advisory boards and agencies and supported by a state-regulated welfare economy.
And in response to how the growth- and consumption-oriented postwar economy threatened to destroy the environment, in the 1960s, social movements sought to reduce the sale, use, or manufacture of products that they considered harmful to the ecological system. Next to pressuring government and business to change production patterns, they promoted more responsible individual consumption practices and lifestyles to improve the environment.
However, since the 1970s, the neoliberal paradigm has gained supremacy. Its breakthrough was aided by the parallel ascendance of neoclassical theory within economics. This theory builds on a notion of the market as a realm of freedom, choice, and reason wherein rational agents can realize their wants and desires. The market is thus understood as a site for the maximization of individual interest rather than an arena devoted to the search of public interest.
Moreover, it treats environmental destruction as a correctible market failure, which can be fixed through carbon taxes, cap and trade, and other flexible mechanisms. This is also a premise for the agenda of green growth that has emerged as an off-shot of neoliberalism and which claims that improving the environment and securing economic growth can coincide.
From the perspective of green growth, limiting ever-increasing production and consumption is not a priority. Environmental problems are to be fixed with technological solutions, so that people can still get as much as they want.
Hence, if we want to address overconsumption and its neglect of the principles of sufficiency, it is necessary to challenge the neoliberal paradigm and its idea of consumer sovereignty.