Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (New York: Polity Press, 2007) ("The consumerist economy thrives on the turnover of commodities, and is seen as booming when more money changes hands; and whenever money changes hands, some consumer products are traveling to the dump. Accordingly, in a society of consumers the pursuit of happiness--the purpose most often invoked and used as bait in marketing campaigns aimed at boosting consumers' willingness to part with their money (earned money, or money expected to be earned)--tends to be refocused from making things or their appropriation (not to mention their storage) to their disposal--just what is needed of the gross national product is to grow. For the consumerist economy, the previous focus, now by and large abandoned, portends the worst of worries: the stagnation, suspension or fading of buying zeal. The second focus, however, bodes rather well: another round of shopping. Unless supplements by the urge to get rid of and discard, the urge for mere acquisition and possession would store up trouble for the future." Id. at 36-37. "If freedom of choice is granted in theory but unattainable in practice, the pain of hopelessness will surely be topped with the ignominy of haplessness because the ability to cope with life's challenges tested daily is that very workshop in which the self-confidence of individuals, and so also their sense of human dignity and their self-esteem, are formed or melted away. Besides, without collective insurance there will hardly be much stimulus to political engagement--and certainly not for participation in a democratic ritual of elections, since salvation is unlikely to arrive indeed from a political state that is not, and refuses to be, a social state. Without social rights for all, a large and in all probability growing number of people will find their political rights useless and unworthy of their attention. If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to keep political rights in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival n only be their joint achievement." Id. at 141. Food for thought?).
Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumer? (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna Lecture Series) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2008).
Zygmunt Bauman, Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (New York: Polity Press, 2013).
