Over-consumption Pandemic
Robin | August 25, 2008
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
3 billion people live on under two dollars a day. Now look at what the world spends its money on:
Global Priority (the amount spent on these products in one year)
Cosmetics in the United States: $8 billion
Ice cream in Europe: $11 billion
Perfumes in Europe and the United States: $12 billion
Pet foods in Europe and the United States: $17 billion
Business entertainment in Japan: $35 billion
Cigarettes in Europe: $50 billion
Alcoholic drinks in Europe: $105 billion
Narcotics drugs in the world: $400 billion
Military spending in the world: $780 billion
The moral of this story is “NO, you don’t need more shit!”
And for those of you who think it would take soooo much money to fix the world, look at this:
Additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in ALL developing countries:
Basic education for all: $6 billion
Water and sanitation for all: $9 billion
Reproductive health for all women: $12 billion
Basic health and nutrition: $13 billion
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” -Esther de Waal
“The combined military expenditures of all the world’s governments in 1987 were so large that all of the social programs of the United Nations (192 nations) could be financed for three hundred years by this expenditure.” -William H. Koetke
“You are not your job.
You are not your bank account.
You are not the clothes you wear.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
You are not your bowel cancer.
You are not your grand latte!
You are not the car you drive.
You ARE NOT your fucking khakis!”
.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
“The things you own end up owning you.”
-Fight Club (movie)
Here are the comments that this blog had when it
Robin | August 25, 2008 | 3:46 amHere are the comments that this blog had when it was on myspace:
On June 19, 2007 Becca said:
Well then, I say we exchange all the cosmetics, perfumes, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and military spending for that other stuff.
Everything except ice cream. If you get rid of military spending it’s okay to still keep the ice cream. < @
But how does one go about doing this…?
Yeah. They don’t.
It’s pretty much impossible.
The world sucks.
People suck.
They’re all greedy assholes.
SIGH… x100,000,000
I think I’ma repost this blog. I liked it a lot. =]]
I love you Robin! <3
[That picture gives makes me shudder. It's so sad..]
On August 14, 2007 myspace.com/makapa said:
Boycott Everything! At least, as much as you can. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the product or service, and has more impact on our society than your political ballot vote, since there are no candidates telling America that we need to stop growing and consuming so god damn much. Yeah, our economy is the biggest, most obese economy in the world. Our economy is so obese it’s unhealthy. It’s so morbidly obese that it threatens our very lives.
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From: adbusters.org
São Paulo: A City Without Ads
In 2007, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country’s slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city’s conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.
As the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising industry with the help of key allies amongst the city’s elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained,
“The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.