there is no buying of the things we need to live

Developers opening new malls this year clearly timed the economic cycle poorly. And the cultural cycle isn't helping matters any. The extreme consumption of this current gilded age has inspired a backlash. In December, hedge-fund bil­lionaire Ray Dalio ran full-page advertise­ments in newspapers urging Americans to eschew Christmas gifts and instead make donations to charity. Maybe he's just run out of things to buy. Or maybe he's surfing the zeitgeist. "There's a glut of stores," says Judith Levine, author of Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. "Our physical, intellectual and emotional and psychological space is filled up with consumption." Levine laments the wholesale transformation of open spaces into enclosed retail environments (like, say, Barnes & Noble superstores, where you can buy Not Buying It). And the in­cessant bombardment of advertising may be inspiring a backlash that pushes people to consume less. The anti-con­sumer freegan movement—urbanites who try to get by through recycling, scrounging, and foraging—are taking it to the extreme. These modern Henry David Thoreaus have opted out of the whole rot­ten capitalist system. Working 60 hours per week and chasing job promotion "for the sake of buying the latest crap off the Sharper Image store shelf is no way to live," says Adam Weissman, spokesman for Freegan.info.

[Why America Has Too Many Stores]
title: phil elvrum
image: picturesofwalls.com