What's so bad about materialism?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by The Shaw, Jul 8, 2012.

  1. C_G Well-Known Member

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    Poverty is entirely a matter of perspective. There is only poor because there is rich. By owning excessively you are massively depriving a group of people of something else.
  2. UtterlyImpeccable Well-Known Member

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    I'm disturbed, yet unsurprised, at your lack of humanity.
  3. Demondaze Xenos Scum

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    If we were to operate according to this train of thought, it would only be a matter of time before materials become so thinly spread that demand creates a situation where owning the basic necessities required for ones vital existence falls under the category of excessive ownership or hording.

    In reality, there is with and there is without. Prosperity and poverty.
  4. The Shaw Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second

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    Why do you pretend that not wanting to be poor is a bad thing? Or that being rich and having nice things is a bad thing?
    thelistener likes this.
  5. pedro3131 Running the Show While the Big Guy's Gone

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    Buying crap we don't need is my god given right and is the only way to fix the economy and encourage the private sector to hire more workers. So by not buying things you're directly contributing to unemployment and contributing to the determent of your fellow man.
  6. Demondaze Xenos Scum

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    They're all bark anyways. Practicing what you preach is whole other ball game, and I doubt this lot is really so altruistic as to sacrifice every bit of comfort, luxury, and security they have for some ambiguous greater good.
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  7. Yarpen Well-Known Member

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    I have the same pair of sneakers (that's the name of the things that go in your feet, right?) for about 3 years I think. I'm a terrible human being.
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  8. Viking Socrates I am Mad Scientist

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    So be like women and buy lots of shoes for no reason?
  9. Kali The World's Best Communist

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    Your fake sentiment is the only inhuman thing here. Trying to deny what I said is simply unreasonable.
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  10. UtterlyImpeccable Well-Known Member

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    I would deny that 'having things' is a nice thing in itself. Many things are nice to own, if you will make use of them, but simply owning lots and lots of things is not something I aspire to.

    @The Shaw
    I wasn't talking about rich or poor, this was about whether simply having things should make you happy. Not earning or using, simply having.
  11. C_G Well-Known Member

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    Bullshit. The effort can't be made by individuals. It comes down to the need to manage that extraction and distribution of all resources world wide. Where more resources are to be needed, more resources are to be directed there. It might seem an impossible task, but when things really start to go wrong then the crap will start to fly. When there is so little oil left to transport products across the world, when people in developed countries start to die from a lack of water, when people in the western world start dieing from starvation, then everyone look back and everyone that never gave a shit about it will say "shit, why did we ignore this huge problem". I can guarantee you.

    At the turn of the twentieth century, several studies were made of the masses that were trapped in poverty were made in the industrial centres of the United Kingdom. The two major conclusions that were drawn from such studies were the following; that it was not their fault that they were trapped in the poverty cycle, and that there was nothing they could do to escape from the cycle. Essentially, they could do nothing to escape the hellholes in which they lived their life.

    So, how can you easily dismiss the notion that the rich need not help the poor in order for them to live a comfortable life? You can't, the poor depend entirely on the rich in order to rise socially. That conclusion is inevitable. Furthermore in many cases the maintanance of the wealthy is entirely dependent on the poverty of the poor. It is simply not in the interest of the rich for the poor to not be poor. This makes the richer class' existence an existence that lacks moral justification, and so it can't possibly be considered by a person with a decent set of moral principles to be a good existence, and so it is a bad existence.
  12. Demondaze Xenos Scum

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    We do this already.

    As I've said before. Only a matter of time before "To each according to his need." becomes "To each according to his ration card.".

    The energy crisis is an entirely different subject. Regardless of where the oil is being used, it's still being used.

    Further more, we in the developed world won't be experience any death checks, we will however have to deal with the resulting side effects of mass depopulation in the more poorer regions of the world. Our decadent materialism and hording of the wealth is exactly what saves form this inevitable unpleasantness. If we were to dived up the materials so that everyone got an equal share of what was produced, then 1. these death checks would only be delayed and their effects multiplied, and 2. every nation would experience crippling mass depopulation as opposed to just the poor ones.
    thelistener likes this.
  13. Jingles Well-Known Member

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    You know, when Marx originally said "to each according to his need" he actually meant "need" in the somewhat archaic sense where it really means "want". In the sense that you might say, "I have need of a jolly good bottle of Black Dog, old boy." Just throwing that out there. I've pretty much lost track of the discussion anyway...
  14. Karakoran Well-Known Member

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    Kali is right. People need to stop doing things like pretending they've "lost respect" for people whenever they post something they slightly disagree with it. It is the shield of those who have nothing more intelligent to say than an insult disguised as sentimental thoughts.

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