All my life I have been bothered by the notion that things are going faster and faster. And that there was something wrong about this.

Since I have become an adult it is my distinct impression that things are, indeed speeding up. Planes, automobiles, electronic communication all help humans interact faster, better, more efficiently.

But the cost is great and obscured by a variety of mechanisms: this article is just about a sliver of them.

Some History

In the late 1800's the concept of "slavery", openly practiced in America up to that point, was officially rejected and processes were set in motion to end it and, ostensibly, wipe it out.

UPDATE: Please see the excellent Juneteenth and the seeds of freedom by tface1000 currently on the diary list at Daily Kos

Today is June 19...otherwise known as Juneteenth. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of of the emancipation of the slaves in the United States. The significance of June 19 is that day in 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas and announced the order that the slaves had been freed. This was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the reasons for this could be one of many, including the desire to not let them know so owners could reap another harvest, to the fact that there weren't enough Union soldiers to enforce it until Granger arrived. Nevertheless, they were finally freed from their enslavement, and Juneteenth is the celebration of that day.

To paint in broad strokes, slavery was replaced by the what I call a debt-based Peonage System.

Since the late 1800 there has been a large concerted effort to wrest "freedom" from Americans. The demise of the family farm, the addiction to petroleum as the means of producing our society's goods and electrical and other power, hitherto unknown by any other peoples, are 2 giant interlocking themes in what has happened to this country.

The introduction of mass-production and the Industrial revolution have been another profound influence on this development. More and more, people were working in regulated shifts: infamously barbaric at first, but, with activism, we got weekends, a 40 hour week, vacation time, sick time. A regular money-making scheme.

Then came the TV and it;s as-yet unmeasured impact on humankind, it's power stolen from the people by and funneled into the hands of a few massively-powerful corporate entities and their elected representatives. The vast power of the TV is used to sedate, to deceive, to influence thoughts, values, beliefs, attitudes and behavior. The single main purpose is to make Americans want to buy things.

The Consumer Society



Modern America, the offensive, shrill, shallow, mindless consumptive beast , the Ugly America whose government is wholly co-opted by corporate interests, exploiting the entire world for what it can steal and sell back to you for a fat profit - this is the America I want to destroy.

The America that wants gas-guzzling Hummers and houses the size of the Castle Dracula, with their patchy frankenlawns and their $50,000 cars and IMAX-sized plasma TVs and their fine, fine suits, and $400 shoes. And that $35,000 watch chrongraph that so accurately tracks the $50,000 car's navigation system.

See: The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need.

[I could not get the video to link from You Tube. It's a very good overview of what I gloss over here.]

Dropping Out The Permanent Protest

I have two general ideas to air about damaging this monstrosity. 1 is what I call "dropping out", the general overview, the other is the concept of the cheap car - a case in point.

Basically the Consumer Society envelops you like a fish is water: you're soaking in it now! The first thing a person has to do is become comfortable with the idea that the whole of the commercial media is employed to deceive you at least a little tiny bit. Usually a whole hell of a lot. 3 great examples - WMD's, cannabis prohibition, and the current firestorm over global warming. Add Iraq war coverage to this.

In the end I think , perhaps idealistically (sue me), if enough Americans adopt SOME of this stuff - which is essential for the coming future realities anyway - the "system" will lose steam. I know it sounds crazy.

The main thing to get started is TURN OFF THE TV.



I turned mine off many years ago. I have noticed in the past few years I am not necessarily consumed with thought of buying this or that material item.

There are things I need to buy but these are more or less based on identified and actual need, not on TV commercials and product-placement in made for TV programming and commercial films.

The information, ie "news" on TV isn't as fresh or accurate as what you can find online. It just isn't. And print media sees the writing on the wall - their days are numbered if they don't get creative. Printing the Truth would be pretty creative. I digress.

The next thing is to reduce your consumption

This actually means 'change' or 'alter' it because you gotta live, right?

In My 30 Days of Consumer Celibacy the author, who references a group called the Compactors a consumer group, goes on a special sort of "diet": no new purchases. No purchasing anything new for 30 days.

Call me an impatient American consumer, but the truth is, I both care passionately about the environment and live in a world where I often have zero extra time. And shopping for used stuff takes lots of time. I made a commitment some time ago to use my purchasing power to help the environment, and spending a month Compacting forced me to reexamine my priorities. It also helped me reconsider my needs versus my wants. ***** I wondered: Am I really making a difference? Do I need to eliminate everything I would ordinarily buy new? The answer surprised me. In The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, Michael Brower and Warren Leon of the Union of Concerned Scientists calculated the impact of various consumer purchases on four environmental problem areas: air pollution, water pollution, global warming, and habitat alteration. They analyzed the environmental footprints of everything from cheese to carpet to feminine products and then aggregated them into 50 categories of goods and services. In the end, they found that just 7 of the 50 categories were responsible for the lion's share of environmental degradation: cars and trucks; meat and poultry farming; crop production; home heating, hot water, and air conditioning; household appliances; home construction; and household water use and sewage treatment.

Dropping out, for me, has been a process.

Following seeing Supersize Me, I stopped eating at "fast-food restaurants". McD's, Burger King, Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, none of these places get my money anymore. It's been nearly 3 years.

I also cut out corporate grocery stores as much as possible. I hate like hell to shop in a Publix or Krogers. I do when I have to but 90%+ of our money goes to about 4 different locally-owned individual businesses, Asian and other farmer's markets. The food is better, cheaper and its much easier tog et organic stuff.

This is a more work-intensive lifestyle. My wife just happens to be an awesome "cook" - I hate to use that word as it doesn't convey her masterful understanding the selection, purchase, and storing and cooking of raw foods but it cuts several hundred dollars off our monthly food bill and we eat unbelievably well. (Last night and, umm, right now, we are having fresh squid stir-fried with ginger, shrimp/broccoli soup and rice. Very fresh squid @$1.49/lb.)

There is very little packaging that we buy. Our trash container is seldom half full while I drive past homes that have twice-weekly trash pickup and their trashcan - just like mine - is always heaped full of crap. The boxes and packaging trash by-product of the un-examined consumer lifestyle.

So if you start just looking at your trash and wonder how to stop paying for all that stuff you are throwing away, you will be inconvenienced but you'll have saved money and taken a good step towards unhooking that yolk around your neck.

Next Step: Credit is Debt & Debt means slavery

During the days of slavery, some of the educated/specialist slaves were allowed, by necessity, to travel away from the plantation to conduct business. They would wear special tags or badges that identified where they "belong".

I essentially view the credit card as the evolved version of this concept.

Peonage is a system whereby people are legally kept in slave-like bondage by a creditor until such time that the debt is satisfied.

Many slaves elected to stay on at plantations as hired free people but gut sucked into the peonage system buying goods on credit.

Basically, as long as you pay the man every thirty day, so says a good friend, you are a "free person".

Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Well, yeah, I think there is.



The TV blasts nonstop messages of consumption across America and across the world.

Credit is pushed by predatory lending firms harder than heroin on a virtually sonambulent mass which buys all that crap on credit and finds itself working 2 and three jobs to keep up.

And it's killing them.

Repos and foreclosures have recently hit new highs, haven't they?

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday that the percentage of payments that were 30 or more days past due for subprime adjustable-rate mortgages jumped to 15.75 percent in the January-to-March quarter. That was a sizable increase from the late 2006 delinquency rate of 14.44 percent and the highest on record, said Doug Duncan, the association's chief economist. Foreclosure filings, meanwhile, were up 90 percent in May compared with last year, according to industry data firm RealtyTrac Inc. Many people who took out subprime mortgages, especially adjustable-rate loans, have recently been clobbered by a combination of rising interest rates and weak home prices, making it increasingly difficult for them to keep up with their monthly payments. Lenders in the subprime market have also been hard hit, and some have been forced out of business.

Many reading this may be aware of the concept of Affluenza as well as what to do about it. These are good sites for information and some mild motivation to help one make the jump.

My plan for destroying Consumer America and the Capitalist System

It's all very simple, really.

I discovered this recently as I tried to find a decent used car for my wife.

She is from a foreign country where she never drove a car. She has learned to drive on my 4 wheel drive Toyota truck with a manual 5 speed. She hates it. She can drive it but she hates it. So we have been looking for a car with an automatic. Atlanta traffic is so dangerous she doesn't want to be figuring out gears.

We looked and looked.

We have seen a lot of trash paraded as a decent deal.

She has been in front of some of the best examples of slimy used car salesmen.

We have taken several cars that I thought we "ok" to my mechanic who quickly diagnosed obscure but serious problems which were more or less purposefully-hidden.

I got CARFAX and have run 50 VIN numbers on different cars many OK but horribly over-priced, others affordable buy having very sketchy pasts or multiple accidents or were in New Orleans in September 2005. So on and so forth. And a lot of car dealers posing as private sellers with the primo vehicle. Crooks and Liars one and all.

Finally, a person she met networking within the Vietnamese community has very kindly offered to sell us a car they don't use much for $1200. It appears to be worth, on the corrupt but legal market, about $3600.

It's CARFAX is the best one I have seen, locally-owned and operated, 2 owners, no accidents, and still under 100000.

It took me a little while to overcome my skeptical ways. How can a car that really runs cost only $1200?

It hit me: It's just not American.

Not the New 21st-Century Consumer Society American values.

If MOST people could easily get a car like this for $1200 or even $1500 a large part of the Consumer Society scheme collapses. (Yes, the same principle applies to mass transportation but we will get a wave of used cars before we will get effective mass transit in THIS country.)

So MUCH of the Consumer Society is about the automobile. They define who we are to ourselves and others. They reflect our status in life and all that.

Cars mean so many things but I want to focus on the following:Cars mean

Profits from Credit

profits from petroleum consumption

profits from selling cars, new and used.

There is just so much money to be made if you have the ability to buy a running car for $1200 and resell it for $4000, which I believe happens constantly. Large amounts of money are funneled into an ever-smaller group of hands. It's called business and allegedly is good for you and me.

But just imagine for a moment being able to go buy a decent, mechanically-sound car for under $2000. One that would run 2, 3, 4, 5 years.

You didn't use any credit. Nobody made money from you borrowing money.

A new car dealer didn't make some obscene profit from you buying a new vehicle. The one that loses $10000 in value the day after you drive it off the lot.

A large part of the profit stream gets by-passed while you have got what you need to get you job and buy your food and get around.

Buying very cheap use cars, a nightmarish and distasteful task, undercuts 2 of the big three profit streams related to the use of cars.

Can you imagine depriving that system of that much sheer, needless profit?

I sure can.

Well, there you have it. We can do some serious damage to what America has become by working on dropping out of of the Consumer Society.

Turn off your TV

Kill your credit card and debt

Stop buying so much packaging

Eat Healthier

But it's just NOT easy. It's real work and real adjustments have to be made.

The upside is that it is SO big you can start pretty much at any point in your life.

Come on, man, Join the Permanent Protest!

Drop Out!

Doc