Cirilla writes about Buy Nothing Day.#

Thanksgiving was one of the only holidays that has remained somewhat untouched by obligatory consumer activity. That is until some bright executive felt they could remedy that by holding massive sales, transforming the simple, family-centric holiday into yet another melee of frenetic spending.

Buy Nothing Day is an exercise, and I think of it as a way to resist the call to arms corporations send out. By staying home and NOT spending needlessly, you are proving that you aren't under the thumb of economic programmers who seek to invade your revery and capture your gaze until they've transferred what is YOUR money into THEIR profit, leaving you with goods you didn't need until they convinced you you did.

I am not above spending, but that is why I study it. I want to know why I've been so utterly seduced by something so harmful and I want to know if I can hit the brakes on this massive country-wide brainwashing. It's not a revolutionary act, but it is a start, one I think everyone should try.

Here are my thoughts on Buy Nothing Day and the comments to her original entry by other readers.#

Tim has written that while doing this shows that you are free from the economic programmers, you are not actually making much of a consistent statement. If you did want to you would "boycott holiday spending entirely." Previously I've linked to No-Shopping Christmas, where Agent000 describes such a statement and boycott:

No Shopping Christmas is a simple, yet heavy concept: buy no gifts for Christmas out of obligation, and inform others of your intent so that they do not feel obligated to buy you gifts in return. Don't waste money on lame decorations, and thank you kindly for not killing the trees. Spend time with your family and friends instead of spending money on them. Participate in the traditions of your religion of choice. Or not. Accept Christmas as a time for rest, relaxation, and spending time with people outside of shopping malls.

Implementing this concept, I see a world with much less stress and much more value. A world where children would receive fewer cheap plastic toys, but have their college education paid for. A world where we plant a tree in our backyard, not our living room. A world where time is valued more than money.

This holiday season, go out and don't buy something.

This, I think, shows some of the core of what Buy Nothing Day is about. Like a religious fast, it teaches the practitioners that they can have a happy, full life without giving into temptation and desire. In this context, Buy Nothing Day forces you to realize that you don't need to buy things every day - hopefully giving you the courage to plan what purchases you must make more wisely and lead a less stressful life. That is the case for controlling your buying in general. In the case of holiday shopping, a No-Shopping Christmas takes something negative ("Don't spend money on Christmas.") into something positive: "Show people that you really care about them, whatever the methods."

We have now reached a point where it is interesting to bring in Tim's next comment, that doing this would cause the market to become stagnant and that this would "cause more damage to the system" if everyone hoarded their money. I think inherent in this comment is both a misunderstanding of economics and an assumption about rights that the "market" has that it does not.

The market has no rights. It is not our responsibility, either individually or as a collective (i.e. the government), to guarantee that what was profitable in the past is profitable in the present or the future. The only markets that should flourish are the ones that are beneficial for the people that are involved in them. If you are providing a product or service that I want for a price we can agree on then I will buy it. If there is no one selling any product or service that I am interested in then I am not obligated to put my money into the market. (Note: This scenario would never occur anyways because of the specialization inherent in humans, there is always someone with a Comparative Advantage over me in something I need, so I would be better off trading with her.)

There seems to be a misunderstanding of the greater meaning of Buy Nothing Day. It serves as a symbol of choice against spending your money. It encourages you to think about WHY you are spending your money, and not spending simply because everyone else is or because advertising tells you to. Even Buy Nothing All Year doesn't suggest that you remove yourself from TRADE (the abstract of money,) it only suggest that you be mindful about where you put your money.

 

Adam writes,

furthermore, you aren't going to actually take away from the profits of the companys, because everyone's just going to go and spend their money within the next couple days anyway."

Again, the point is not to destroy the profits of large companies by one day of protest. Or even really to destroy the profits of large companies with continually boycott. The goal of Buy Nothing Day is to open your eyes and free your mind. And the goal of any boycott, I should mention, is to get the boycottee to change their methods and give in to your demands - in the case of many multinationals this is generally to treat their employees and the environment better. It would be malicious to just single out companies are destroy them through boycott for the sake of destroying them. If there is a successful company, that is not a monopoly, then it exists and is successful because it offers the market something of value and to deny your fellow man that value would be unjust. In fact, to deny that company market share would be to exercise monopoly power of your own, as monopoly is defined as the ability to control entry to a market.

As previously noted, I'm a highly opinionated arm-chair intellectual who consistently covers his ass in the final paragraphs of rants and criticisms. But I post this here because I would get grateful for corrections in my method of argument.#