Affluenza summary

Do you have kids? If so, what do you do when you’re not looking after them or working? Do you go out, or are you too exhausted? Do you find you prefer to spend your free time just flopping down on the sofa?

You aren’t alone if you answered yes to that last question – most people would prefer to flop. Because we spend most of our time working to raise money to buy things, we scarcely have time left for our family, friends and communities.

The social cost of affluenza is massive, but something else is being destroyed at an even greater rate: the environment.

After decades of rapidly increasing consumption, we’ve mined most of the world’s easily accessible resources. This means we have to turn to more dangerous and complicated mining procedures.

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that the worst problems caused by overconsumption are felt most by the poor.

In our quest to have cheaper and cheaper products, we’ve shifted a great deal of our production to developing countries like Bangladesh, where wages and working conditions are abysmal. At least 1,800 workers have died in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh since 2005.

When people criticize affluenza, they’re often told that overconsumption is inevitable. The desire for material things, people say, is “human nature.” But is there any truth to this claim?

There isn’t. Affluenza is not a part of human nature.

One reason that affluenza is so difficult to escape is that it’s actually built into our economy.

Many companies have a planned obsolescence for their products. That means the products are designed to only last a short time, or else be continually upgraded. Gillette's disposable razors are an example of this. Planned obsolescence means that customers are forced to continuously buy a new version of the same product.

How long do you think you can walk down the street without seeing an advertisement? Probably only a few seconds, if that.

Adverts are everywhere. We see them constantly: two-thirds of newspaper space and half the mail we receive is advertisements.

So now that we’ve learned about affluenza, how can we move on? How can we cure ourselves of it?

Well, the first step is to identify its main symptoms. Recognize that consumption can’t buy satisfaction, while reducing your consumption can lead to greater happiness.

Affluenza is all around us. Every street, every TV and every newspaper we see compels us to buy more and more things we don’t truly need.

As with any other disease, we need a kind of vaccination to protect us. And that means we need to use the virus itself to generate the resistance.