GarrettS_Consumerism @garretts6 - Tumblr Blog

Picture Post #6

This relates to almost everyone on this planet. We buy things that we don’t need or can’t/have no use for them. We buy them just for the sake of buying. We see something that catches our attention and if it is a good price or on sale, we are tempted to buy it even though you have no use for it.

Picture Post #5

In today’s society, we normally spend all of our money on what we want, rather than what we need. We take what we need, like food and water and shelter, for granted and keep on consuming and consuming. We buy things that we don’t need, and we use for a week or so, then just put it away.

Picture Post #4

This picture isn’t necessarily true, but I think that it indirectly says that, with all of our trash that we produce by consuming, it will sooner or later be one of the causes that may end life. We have to stop consuming so many things, or else one day our trash will be the cause of our deaths.

Free Choice Post #3/Picture Post #3

In this picture, we (citizens) are the rats. This is true for most people; we work really hard, get a great job, and earn tons of money. With all the money people earn, they buy expensive products or services and they live a life full of happiness. We work hard, get money, buy lots and lots of things, and then the cycle keeps on going and going. When people buy stuff, they don’t realize the impact the product and they have on this world. They think just because they are rich, they can do what ever they want. They affect people in the third world country, because instead of trying to help them out, they just think of themselves and buy. I know that it is hard to help out other people in a different country, but people don’t take the time to stop and think about them. We only care about ourselves and the people we love, but there are some people who will help out others, but it isn’t a huge percentage of Canadians and Americans.

Free Choice Post #2/Picture Post #2

On Black Friday people get trampled by other people, and get seriously injured. They would risk their lives just so that they can buy a whole bunch of products that are on sale for 40-60% off. Half of the time, their kids or family members only use the toy for a couple of weeks, and then it goes up on a shelf not to be played with in a long time. People wait for Black Friday, so that they can buy and buy and buy things that they don’t really need, but they never think what effect they have or the product they are buying has. Most of the products that are sold during Black Friday have been made in sweatshops in China and other countries. Not only are you affecting the people around you, but you are also affect people worldly. You are affecting this earth by buying toys. All the people that work in sweatshops work in horrible conditions and get paid bear minimal for the amount of hours they work. You are affecting this planet by buying product, throwing away the plastic, then later on in life, throwing away the actual product. My consumer identity is that I will only buy brand name products that are well known to people and myself. What I buy affects my life because I am contributing to destroying the planet that I live on. The things that I buy have a huge impact on my life; because I play with some of the toys that I have, I don’t do anything but play with them.

Free Choice Post #1/Picture Post #1

I find this picture so true, all we want is money so we can have a better life and have all the expensive things. Since we as consumers want the really expensive, nice and elegant things, our values is that we want/need money so we can buy all the expensive and nice things. Our value in our world (first world, third world) is that we need to become rich to gain tons and tons of money so we can buy a life of happiness. I think that this picture relates to what I want as a consumer that affects my values. In this picture I can sort of relate to the guy that is in the wheel running trying to get money, because as a consumer I want the well-known brands and brands that I can rely on. Because I am that kind of consumer, my values are different than someone that just wants clothes or food. Since I live in a first world country, or a thriving country, my values are a lot different than someone in a third world country. My consumer choices are that I would go for something that I know, like Nerf, or Nike, etc. rather than a no name/brand kind of product. This affects my values and my individual identity. I am the same as pretty much everyone else in this world, we want to consume, because we can and it affects us as a community and as individuals. Our identity is that we are brand name slaves. It affects our everyday lives; we also consume and consume anything that catches our eye. My Value and identity are somewhat intertwined because what I value contributes to what my consumer identity is. Everyone can relate to this picture because everyone wants to have more money, because more money equals “better” and “nicer” things, and he or she wants a life of happiness.

Video

In this video the main character only needed to buy one thing, went to the store and ended up buying and spending a lot more than he came for. For some people, especially my family and I, we go to the grocery store only wanting to buy a few items, but things go on sale or are a good price, so we end up buying double what we originally wanted.

Quote #2

Author: Unknown

In today’s society, a lot of teens try to impress random people by wearing the cool and stylish shoes, hoodie, etc. Most of the time, they buy 100$ shoes and expensive clothing, when they don’t have the money to pay for it, so they ask their parents. People don’t need 100$ shoes, you can buy shoes that look somewhat as nice for 40$.

Quote #1

I agree with this quote 100%. Our society has become slaves to consumerism and that we will always buy and buy and buy, not even knowing that we are. We have now become slaves to consumerism, all we do is buy and throw away, buy and throw away.

Consumerism is economically manifested in the chronic purchasing of new goods and services, with little attention to their true need, durability, product origin or the environmental ...

People buy products because of their well-known brand names, or they are on sale or something. When we buy products, people could care less where the product originated from, as long as they can play with it and have fun. We also buy products because their company advertises it in a way that makes consumers want to buy it even more. They don’t say everything about their product, they only tell the good thins about it, and it isn’t technically lying, because they are telling you the truth, just not the whole truth.

http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/the-effects-of-consumerism-on-the-environment-428509.html

It is true, everyday everyone around the world buys tons and tons of products, whether its food or toys. The waste from all of our products that we buy goes towards destroying this planet. When we buy something, the plastic or the actual thing has a huge impact on the environment.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. National Labor Relations Board on Monday said it has authorized legal action against Wal-Mart Stores Inc for allegedly retaliating against workers who participated

Because Wal-Mart cannot meet the demand of their workers, they end up going on strike. The strike affects that Wal-Mart’s economy, because they are not making money, and they have no employees to help run the company. This is an example of when the producers don’t have the labor to sell their products and merchandise to the people.

Swapcity (Collaborative Consumption)

Today in class we did a bartering/trading experiment. We were supposed to bring something in to trade with other people. I brought in a handful of pencils, a bouncy ball and a hacky sack. I traded one pencil for a rice crispy square, and that was all. I think that if I were to talk to more people I could have traded a lot more than just one pencil. For me, my experience wasn’t the greatest compared to other people who talked and traded their items. If we were to do this sort of thing again in the future, the main thing that I would do differently would be that I would talk to everyone and just bargain to trade my things. Instead of just sitting around and talking to the normal people that I talk to everyday. This is a different way of an economic system, but both bartering/trading and the economic systems relate to consumer choices, especially mine. In this trading process, our consumer choices are that we want to have similar or better value than what we walked in with. Because of this people with the better “value” than others will have a greater chance to gain more things, or something that is more valuable. Our consumer choices is that you want to have nicer things than you already have, so if someone in the trading experiment had a very valuable thing like food (cookies, brownies, etc.) or like an IPod/IPhone would have an upper advantage.

aidanmor-blog

Our debate on which country had a better quality of life, the United States or Canada

garretts6

I am going to reblog the debate that Aidan recorded. This is my caption on the debate we had.

In the debate we were just doing, we had a group of 4, 2 people debating for America, and 2 people debating for Canada. My debate partner Aidan and I were debating for America and our opponents; Reuben and Paul were debating for Canada. The three pillars that Aidan and I talked about during the debate were that Canada has to pay more taxes than America (38% vs. 28%). Second was why should we be paying for services like schools or hospitals, if we never have a kid or get sick? Our final pillar was that our economy is a Market economy, which means that the citizens of America get pretty much full control on what kinds of goods they get to produce. In the debate, I talked about how America has better capitol, and labor to better solve scarcity than Canada. During the debate, we had some really good points, but Paul and Reuben also brought up some good points that were difficult/challenging to response to, but it also changed my mind a little bit on how America is better than Canada. The biggest question that made me pondering and was literally impossible to answer was that Reuben asked us, “if America’s economy is better than Canada’s why are you guys in dept. 13-17 trillion dollars and how come you guys can’t produce enough money to get yourselves out of dept.? My personal response to the guiding question is that America has the better economic system that better solves scarcity and it helps the citizens, but Canada’s economy helps the citizens with our economy. It just all depends on what your opinion and thought of things are, if you like to be more independent or more together as a community.

Consumerism Mash-up

In Sierra Leone, their scarcity problem isn’t really being met; they don’t have money to buy what they want. They don’t have the luxury items that we have in the “first world country”. They have the materials and labour to get what they want, but each village is way too poor to get anything fancy or nice. The government controls all of the money that they have, and their economy isn’t good enough to import things like 100-dollar watches, or IPods/IPhones, even though they have mines full of diamonds. In Sierra Leone their economy is definitely a planned economy, because they don’t have really rich, doing good, kind of business to really affect what happens to the country. The people of Sierra Leone have little to no opinion on how to solve scarcity; they barely have money to buy food. The only place that is safe (away from the rebels) is the city where the government is.

In Canada, we have really good social plans, like senior pension plan and free health care; the people in Sierra Leone don’t have those kinds of plans. They barely even have hospitals (they only have 1). Even though they don’t have social plans, they don’t have to pay taxes, like we do, they don’t even make income. They don’t have the things we do in Canada, we have nice homes, good income, social plans, etc. but people in Sierra Leone have the exact opposite life. The taxes that we pay in Canada go towards roads, health care, and a lot of other things to benefit us. It didn’t really say where the money goes, but I’m guessing that all the money that the Sierra Leonean government makes go towards making their own little city/town better, not other villages or towns. The taxes that the government makes, makes the whole city of Calgary and province better, where in Sierra Leone, the government doesn’t really put any money to make the villages a better place.

Boycotting Circuses

For this boycotting assignment I have decided to boycott circuses for many reasons, but they fall under the same category, pain and punishment. Animals that the circus uses, like chimpanzees, elephants and tiger’s and many more. Each animal has a different way of being trained, for instance, chimpanzees get kicked and abused in order to train it and tigers are chained and dragged across the floor while getting pocked at by electric prods. The trainers at the circus use abusive ways to “train” them, even from young.

For starters, circus trainers use many different weapons to bring pain to their animals, like Bullhooks, whips, and electric prods. They would take an animal at young, and start using these weapons to break their spirit and mentally tear them apart before they can start to actually train them to do tricks. This is just what they do for, not just elephants, but baby elephants. They would bring pain to them so that the baby elephants will learn from young, and is easier to train. They would also often torture the baby elephants in front of their mother. The pain and torture is part one of two of “their training”.

Not just one or two circuses use this technique to train animals; most or all circuses use this way. This should never happen, and should never keep happening, because we can’t just abuse animals because we want to, they have feelings just like us. Animals always get abused and tortured for our amusement, but we never once stop think what the animal feels and how we would feel if they or someone else would do it to us. Animals deserve their own rights just as much as we do and can’t destroy that.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/11118330300368773/

My family consists of 4 people, my mom, dad, brother and I. When I look at these pictures of what my family and I eat, I think of “wow, we eat a lot” or “we eat way too much”. I think that my family is keen on buying big brand names because it is more reliable and it is known throughout the city. My family members are slaves to eating brand name food, all we eat are all well known brands, and we rarely to never eat brand less foods. If my family and I lived in China or Japan we would be eating a lot of already cooked food, going out a lot, barely staying in at home for supper. My consumer identity would be “eating out” or “already cooked food” instead of it being “brand food slave”. In Canada, we eat a lot of brand named food and we rarely eat out, where in China we would probably eat out most of the time, and never really stay inside to eat.

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