What is a consumer? Has this type of person existed before capitalism?
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Yes. Everyone is a consumer. Most people are producers. When we talk about "consumers", we are just talking about people in their capacity as someone who buys things. It doesnt mean that is their whole identity. It's just a useful shorthand. And yes, we can talk about producers and consumers as far back as trade goes, which goes all the way back to pre-history.
Capitalism’s rebranding as "consumerism" is reducing people to that one thing they do in order to not starve to death. Capital is a collectivist term (so disliked by the hegemon), while consumer is by nature very individualistic, like CO2 footprint and similar propaganda language.
Are... are you high? "Consumerism" and "capitalism" are completely different terms, used in completely different contexts. And I have never once heard someone use "consumerism" in a positive light. This is conspiracy bullshit
It's not positive, that's right. It's a way to shift the blame away from the owning class.
If you're trying to blame "stupid consumers" or "evil companies" you're not thinking about things systemically. Of course, under our current economic system, companies are going to end up exploiting, because there's lots of pressure to maximise profits, and minimal pressure to avoid decisions that make money but harm society. And consumers are going to make bad decisions, because they live in a society where they are constantly bombarded by advertising and social values that encourage spending and don't punish buying unnecessary shit.
The naïve (or self-serving) status quo view is "but consumers should know what they can afford, and not waste money. And customers should take their business elsewhere if a company does bad things". If that's really what you want to happen, then create a system that incentivizes that - have strict rules on credit and loans, so that people can't buy takeaway food on credit, enforce strict anti-monopoly measures so that there lots of genuine alternatives for consumers to turn to, have requirements for news media to inform the public about all the actions that companies take that are harmful to the environment, their workers, or the general population (and make clear who are their competitors, and only those alternatives that aren't owned by the same conglomerate), and so on...
If someone promotes a system that relies on "personal responsibility" but doesn't promote tools that facilitiate that responsibility, then they are being disingenuous.
"are corporations whose sole purpose is to extract as much money from the masses as possible with no thoughts to anything else up to and including destroying the house it occupies in order to maximize profits to blame for the world around us? Or is it those dirty fucking people with all their bad gross nasty purchasing of the things the corporation shoves down their throats?"
I'm sorry but did a CEO write this?
I'm sorry but did a CEO write this?
I sure hope not. The CEOs should be leveraging their AI contracts to write things like this, to maximize synergy.
Irrational customer behavior is usually manufactured by well-funded marketing departments.
Think systemically like the other guy said. Under capitalism consumption is purpose. I can't blame people for wanting purpose. If you dislike consumerism, you need to create a system that gives people purpose in something else.
I also think that theoretically there's not anything wrong with consumerism as long as the profits are distributed amongst the workers fairly, like with a cooperative with worker-owner-shareholders who democratically decide their own working conditions and hours and output.
With a large enough amount of stakeholders in that business (workers) who all have democratic decision-making power over the business, I doubt they would collectively decide to shit up the planet with waste or poison consumers since none of them would be shielded by extreme wealth from the effects of all that.
Sometimes people just want the shiny thing, thats okay. I think it would actually shine a bit better if it wasn't made by slave or sweatshop labour in the global south and the profits didn't all go evaporate in some private equity ponzi scheme.
IMO, consumers aren't necessarily stupid as much as corporations have very expertly learned to weaponize FOMO through advertising; allowing companies like apple to inflate their profit margin from something reasonable to "whatever the consumer is willing to pay."
Is that "capitalism"? Yes...technically. But to me, it goes against the spirit of capitalism, which at its heart sums up as "Farmer has a cow that produces milk. Farmer sells the chicken farmer down the road his extra milk and charges enough to be reasonable but doesn't get greedy because he needs eggs."
Corporations don't need our eggs. They don't believe they need anything from us and so don't care about being reasonable about profit.
Its "capitalism", but in my opinion, a perverse, stilted form that should have been kicked to the curb the moment Reaganomics started making it popular.
I don’t think it “goes against the spirit of capitalism” as capitalism prioritizes profits. I’d say it goes against free markets tho bc companies are encouraged to monopolize industries or work together to artificially inflate prices and depress wages. I think capitalism without intense regulation always ends up placing profits over people
it goes against the spirit of capitalism
What you describe is not the spirit of capitalism. Of course, the cow farmer is free to sell his milk at under market value if he wants... but there is nothing about the spirit of capitalism that says that he should or that he must. Far more in line with the spirit of capitalism would be that the cow farmer, say, charges his neighbors low prices via handshake deals to keep things friendly, and then raises the price that he sells milk at on the open market in order to optimize his profits along the demand curve. And then, said farmer would likely expand his milk production operations in order to increase his profits more. Or else the chicken farmer might buy some cows of his own to cash in on the market demand for milk. The important part is that no one has to keep milk prices low out of the goodness of their hearts, because high milk prices are a good thing. They signal to the market that there is an untapped potential to make money if they just produce more milk. And that competition is what keeps milk prices low. The spirit of capitalism isn't keeping milk prices low so that everyone can keep buying one handful of milk at the price they are used to. The spirit of capitalism is make more milk.
allowing companies like apple to inflate their profit margin from something reasonable to “whatever the consumer is willing to pay.”
In an open market, the price will always be set by what the consumer is willing to pay. Apple's markup exists partly because of low-information consumers ("I heard iPhones are better, so I have to pay this price"), luxury buyers (they are buying because of the brand name, and often, because the price is outrageous, as a signal that they are part of the upper classes), and fomo ("I'm not cool if I don't have the green dot!!!"). But it is also because Apple has a legitimate claim to being better than their competition - mainly because they remove options from their customers' pool of choices. Searching for an android phone, you have an endless ecosystem of manufacturers, models, designs, features, and prices. If you are an iPhone user, you have only a few options. On android, you have a different flavor of operating system for basically every different phone you buy - often filled with each manufacturer's bloatware. On an iPhone, you have iOS. And android's PlayStore is full of garbage, trashy apps that try to scam you by impersonating other apps. iPhone users have the app store, which verifies the quality of every app that appears there. In a very real way, iPhones are the better phone because they allow their users to not think about their phone - which is the whole point behind Job's "It Just Works" slogan from so many years ago.
Can one exist without the other? Can capitalism thrive without the relentless senseless consumption? Honestly, I don't know.
Well the people are the ones that don't have to buy mindlessly so as much as I hate Starbucks. I just can never go to them.
Is it really that simple? That we should just stop consuming? I honestly don't know much about sociology, but it's really not that simple.
Don't leave our corporatism, that's also at fault.
They already said "capitalism", theres no need to broadcast your inadequacy