Will Shoppers Ever Care About the Destruction of the Planet? Tactics to convince people to buy less aren’t working. A quirky new documentary by Patagonia takes a different approach.
Will Shoppers Ever Care About the Destruction of the Planet? Tactics to convince people to buy less aren’t working. A quirky new documentary by Patagonia takes a different approach.
Tactics to convince people to buy less aren’t working. A quirky new documentary by Patagonia takes a different approach.
Surely it's the shoppers fault. Can't be the fault of a system that rewards companies doing the most evil shit possible
False dichotomy, it's all of our fault. We are all perpetuators of the system, some small, some large. Just like with cocaine, placing all the blame on the producers and ignoring the massive demand and the reasons for it isn't how drug problems are solved.
For things to change, we all need to change, if your effect is small because you're just a person, the needed change is small, like buying less and making better choices. If you're a large perpetuator like a company, the needed change is large, up to and including stopping or radically altering operations because they are fundamentally unsustainable (e.g. Exxon).
In a capitalist world, if there's a demand it will be supplied consequences be damned.
You're right, of course. But people want to be convenient. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the most convenient path is one that funds "unseen" human misery and climate catastrophe, that's still gonna be the path a lot of people are gonna take. Especially if it results in the lowest costs. With the majority of people earning little money, the effect is gonna be predictable.
"Demand" is a very sketchy concept. People are gonna want what they can easily get. So the best solution is to penalize the negative production chains and reward the positives.
we’re right back to the Vimes’ boots theory – it’s not that shoppers don’t care about the destruction of the planet, it’s that they have no other option – when your choice is shopping at Walmart or freezing your ass off, telling them to just buy less ain’t gonna cut it
It's funny, boots theory has been largely retired since the rich can no longer get the kind of quality that lasts decades. They could certainly afford it, it's just not available for purchase - capitalism killed it off.
Omg regulate the fucking companies! Appealing to shoppers senses will do nothing when supply and demand have been completely divorced and the product is made before the sales are even there
Ikr, why is it so much to ask? People are still buying shitty products because they feel they need them for quality of life? Make the products and their producers not shitty. It's a simple solution and, in comparison to blaming the consumer, an effective one too.
This is kinda horse shit. I have said this before on here and i will say it again. Blaming the individual is inefficient and its only purpose is to shift blame, and to specifically not solve the problem. If you really wanted to solve the problem you go to the source. You control the corporations. Will this make things more expensive? Yes. Will it disrupt the market? It better. Will it force people to adapt and be unpopular? Only if you are doing it right. Thats the point.
If these facts upset you, then you do not really want to stop global warming or control garbage, or save the animals.
The problem with using democratic institutions to enact policies that "force people to adapt and be unpopular" is that some large chunk of voters are ill-informed, selfish or at the margins already and do not want to/cannot make any sacrifices. Regulations have to walk a fine line to actually solve problems and not be seen as too disruptive because then you start losing elections and backsliding further.
This is ultimately why the whole "don't blame the individual" trope doesn't make sense to me - if individuals can't stomach any sacrifice at a personal level, can they be trusted to stomach some amount of unknown sacrifice at the polls? Change has to come from the individual and it needs to be a wholesale cultural shift. We can't shift the culture telling people they don't need to do anything except for vote. To be clear I absolutely agree with you on the level of disruption required stop warming and save ecosystems, and I fully support it.
(Saving for later)
It’s sad that most people are commenting without even reading the article nor watching the mockumentary. We can be better than this :)
I watched it and it has some nice jokes and sketches in it. There is no blame, just plain explaining some psychological mechanism and also even mocking the corporate greenwashing.
It does not address capitalism, yes. It pushes Patagonia, yes. Still, it’s a good little video, I would send it to people around me if it was in my language.
(also hard not to see this as yet another Patagonia publicity stunt)
Yep, this move was sad.
Like when Birkenstock, notoriously worn by communists here in Europe, decided to go public lol
I am sure they are not guilty of some shady deeds.
But I would much prefer billionaire to build documentary convincing people to consume less; than pretending to care about the environment, while designing their product to be dysfunctional after couple years (apple); or force woman to give birth to rapists's children ( https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-cola-walmart-donate-anti-abortion-political-committee-roe-wade-2022-5 ).
Shoppers can’t even be bothered to avoid products manufactured using slave labor.
as if the average shopper could afford anything from Patagonia …
What does this have to do with the thread you're responding to (besides both comments being shit takes)?
Also, for the "average shopper" in the West (as in, someone who is not actually poor), it is untrue. Buying Patagonia is simply a matter of priorities. E.g. a Patagonia vest costs between 119 and 199 USD. At that price, it's much less expensive than the most expensive thing in that "average shopper's" household.
But to a lot of people that vest will be less important than, say, a dishwasher or a car. Or maybe they actually want a vest but they prioritize buying 5 super-cheap vests to have more choice.
Nb: There are luxury items that those people literally can't afford. And there are also people below the poverty line who indeed never have 120 USD on hand at once. Neither is relevant here.
[Edit: Quite honestly, I would be interested in why I get downvotes on the observation that, above a certain wealth threshold, which items people spend money on depends on their priorities.]
Shoppers often don't know.. blame the companies not the individual shoppers. This should be regulated top down.. heavy handed... Like chuck a CEO in prison if it comes to light his company sold stuff made by slave labor while he was in charge.. see how fast this stuff will end.
Same as the bosses and higher ups of shell from the 70s and 80s that suppressed their climate reports.. these guys should be hailed in front of a Nuremberg style tribunal.. with similar outcomes. They knowingly poisoned all of us... For profit...
First thing about this. Force companies to audit their supply chains. Ignorance is NOT an excuse... Because then "not looking" is the tactic.
most cases, the companies are not ignorant – Nestlé got out of a child slavery case because they claimed nothing happened on US soil (while their PR campaign said their chocolate would be much more expensive if they had to audit for child slavery)
I think more people do but it's genuinely quite hard to know. If you walk into a shopping centre, you need to buy some pants. There are 8 stores that sell pants, in each store there's some price range from low to high with some overlap, maybe the range for the cost is 5 dollars to 300 across the whole shopping center.
Which pants were made by slaves? There's no label, the 300 dollar pants are still mass produced cotton and polyester crap probably made from cotton picked by literal child slaves. How do you decide? Ever company puts up signs about responsibility and ethical supply chains but there's no enforcement so it means nothing.
There are some specialty sellers online but they're often extremely expensive and not widely available. Is that the real cost? are they honest? Buying the 5 dollar pants is probably terrible, are the 50 dollar pants 5 dollar pants with a 1000% mark up? If so you're even worse for buying those :/