But what about the economy?

I’ve been thinking about the economy a lot recently which is unusual for me. Big politics and economics aren’t really my forte, I’m more of a pheasant-prepping, bread-baking gardener. That’s not to say I don’t think about the bigger issues, I just like to tackle them on a local or domestic level.
But a few things have happened recently.  My country is hurtling towards an uncertain future at best and the possible impact on the economy is discussed endlessly on the media. I read the tweet below that was shared on Facebook

I watched an episode of a Marie Kondo tidying programme where ONE member of the household had enough clothes to fill a double bed and the pile almost reached the ceiling. And then a Facebook friend posted a picture of a huge container ship, loaded with....what? She asked if we really needed all that stuff and somebody said yes, to keep the economy going.

I have wondered this before. What happens if we all stop buying stuff?

Personally, I'm fed up of a house full of crap; of presents nobody needs; of gimmicks that are hilarious for all of about 5 minutes and then are destined for the charity shop at best. I tell my family we don't need to buy new, that there must be enough mirrors/wardrobes/chests of drawers in the world already without asking somebody to make more for us. I'm trying to buy more clothes secondhand (though I buy very few anyway, I hate clothes shopping). I'm trying to just buy less. I am trying, less successfully, to persuade my family to buy less.

Does that mean I'm dismantling the whole Capitalist system? Hardly. But I am a big believer in small actions adding up. So if everybody should suddenly stop buying unnecessarily, what would happen? The standard answer is that all those factory workers, transport drivers, marketeers, shop workers, would suddenly find themselves out of a job and it would be All My Fault. I would be responsible for starving families.

But where does that argument end? I don't smoke to keep tobacco farmers and producers in a job. I don't eat in McDonalds in order that people can get a job flipping burgers. Farmers in the Hindu Kush, although pressured into growing opium, actually make enough money from it to send their children to school and generally enjoy a better lifestyle than they otherwise would but that doesn't make me buy drugs. Perhaps I should allow junk mail to keep printing companies and the post office in business?

Maybe less factories would be needed to produce the stuff that we keep buying to make ourselves happy, even though it has exactly the opposite effect. I once read that there's a whole factory just to make the plastic hangers to display plastic Crocs in the shops.
Maybe those families could instead have jobs to support their own local economy and parents could stay with their children instead of having to leave them with relatives whilst they work in the city for a pittance? The factory owners are not running them from some altruistic wish to keep people employed.

My argument is simplistic and I'm not sure would stand up to professional scrutiny but it comes down to doing what I believe to be right.
The rest of the population isn't going to suddenly stop shopping anyway. Should we keep going with them? Humans don't like change, lets not rock the boat, eh? But something has got to give and much as we like the status quo we're also adaptable. We could move onto different things. We've changed and adapted over our history but we forget because we're stuck in the right now. And frankly, if some factories have to shut down (including the Croc hanger factory), then that's all to the good as far as I can see.
We can't keep using precious resources making, packaging, transporting stuff to buy and then declutter in an endless cycle of binge and purge.
The system isn't going to change unless we force it to. Small actions add up. Just as every purchase we make is a message to the manufacturer to make more, everything we don't buy is a signal that we don't want it, Maybe we can dismantle Capitalism between us.