The Poverty of Affluence, by Paul L. Wachtel (1983)

One of the best books I have ever read. It was everything I hoped it would be — a validating examination of our current economic model and the feelings of discontent that accompany it.

It blows my mind that this book was written in 1983, before the age of the internet and online shopping. The patterns and behaviours the book berates have been taken to new heights since. Our wastefulness, our tendency to seek security and meaning in material wealth, our reluctance to acknowledge the psychological and environmental damage our consumer habits cause, and our employment-oriented culture that creates busywork and serves as a poor basis for our social identity are all aspects of society that we have doubled down on.

The book lays out plainly the vapid soullessness of our current arrangement. The erosion of our communities, of our rootedness in a place and context, and of our meaningful human relationships as a result of a growth-oriented mindset and consequent aspirations of upward social mobility is noted as a particularly damaging part of the cycle. In aspiring to move upwards and away from families and friends, and in turn accepting that we will be left behind by others, we have lost a deep sense of security that has left us neurotically trying to plug the hole with more and more stuff.

Our identities are no longer provided to us by a steady community around us; instead we must earn them. Friendliness and sociability fall off as affluence increases because our time becomes scarcer and more economically valuable, and we become less dependent on the people around us.

We have inhumane economic conditions in which we must compete and move upwards constantly in order to fight against the discontent and misery that is pushed downwards. As a result of our efforts to keep our heads above water, we are lonelier and more vulnerable, neurotically searching for meaning and security in increased ownership and social status, perpetuating our current condition in the false hope that having more stuff will make us happier.

Changing things will require alternate structures that support the mental shift from growth based expectations to ones of acceptance and contentedness. These do not currently exist, which makes it hard to live in any way that differs from the economic mainstream for very long.

I thought this book was excellent. A bit sad, because I’m not optimistic that a meaningful change in mentality or behaviour will ever take hold. And, as the author points out no fewer than forty years ago, our current way of living has us racing towards environmental disaster.

Highlights

xi.

An economy primarily driven by growth must generate discontent.

001

A mood of pessimism and a sense of imminent decline have become increasingly evident. Sober warnings that the era of affluence is drawing to an end resonate with the daily experience of millions. It is not really affluence, however, that is threatened, but growth; we have confused the two for reasons that go to the heart of our national psychology.

003

Even with regard to the middle class, it is not very useful to argue that their complaints are based on needs that are not "real". The way we have set things up, people really do experience a need for the things they buy (or wish they could buy).

005

Much of what we produce we neither need nor really enjoy.

006

A rich material life is in our grasp, and I hold no brief for poverty. But riches that do not yield satisfaction are worthless. By failing to understand our experience we make ourselves poorer than we need to be.

017

It is ironic that the very kind of thinking which produces all our riches also renders them unable to satisfy us. Our restless desire for more and more has been a major dynamic for economic growth, but it has made the achievement of that growth largely a hollow victory.

017

Our entire economic system is based on human desire's being inhexhaustible, on there being a potential market for almost anything we can produce.

018

I do think that advertising stirs desires that might otherwise not be there, and often to our detriment. But it does not write its message on a blank state. We are all primed to receive its messages, and our priming, our state of mind, plays a critical role.

020

So immersed are we in the assumptions of growth, so inured to what we actually have and preoccupied only with whether it is more than we had before, that our ability to make certain basic logical distinctions has declined; for many of us not having more has become equivalent to having less.

038

By seeking to maximize goods rather than other amenities such as leisure or clean air, we are required to manufacture each item in the cheapest way – that is, the way that leaves the maxmimum amount of money available for other purchases.

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