the.com/consumption
The art of turning desire into garbage, one purchase at a time.
means The act of using up, eating, drinking, or buying goods and resources — and, in older usage, a wasting disease (now called tuberculosis) that seemed to consume the body from within.
from From Latin 'consumere,' meaning 'to use up, eat, waste away,' built from 'com-' (an intensifier) plus 'sumere' (to take up). The same root gives us 'consume' and 'consumer.' For centuries the word carried a darker weight: 'consumption' named the disease we now call tuberculosis, because sufferers appeared to be eaten away, their bodies literally consumed. Only later did the word fatten into its modern economic sense — the steady devouring of goods rather than flesh.
- old name
- Tuberculosis was called consumption for devouring bodies from within
- economic engine
- Consumer spending drives about 70 percent of US GDP
- conspicuous version
- Veblen named buying purely to flaunt wealth in 1899
- planetary cost
- Humanity uses 1.7 Earths worth of resources yearly
- the paradox
- More stuff correlates weakly with more happiness
china coal consumption — 57% of global coal burned in china in 2022, over 4 billion tons
instagram daily active users — 2 billion accounts consuming content daily as of 2024