Who wins in consumerism?

Bearing in mind what Consumerism is, who wins when we play that game? Who loses, and what do they give up? How can we make the game sustainable, or replace it with one that is?

Some Great Links.
Video: Big Ideas that Changed the World, Consumerism
Video: The Story of Stuff and click the “Play” triangle, then the word “Play” on the opening screen.

How Consumerism Came to Rule the World.
When America emerged from WWII with its industrial infrastructure uniquely intact and with no further need to churn out war machinery and supplies, it posed a serious problem to the nation’s economic health. Had we just shut down all that industrial capacity, we would have slid right back into the crushing unemployment of the Great Depression. Instead, we retooled industry after industry, converting its wartime function to the closest analog available in the consumer sector. Tank factories could make cars, trucks or locomotives. Uniform manufacturers could make civilian clothing. Explosives factories could make industrial chemicals, paint bases, etc.

Early on, we had two things making that a winning strategy. The deprivations of a long, dreary depression and a bloody world war left tons of pent up consumer demand at home. And the destruction of infrastructure in all the lands where the war was actually fought meant there were huge export markets for any consumer goods the US turned out.

Those two factors alone drove a wave of unprecedented prosperity in the USA during the beginning of the post-war boom. But there came a point where continued growth in quarterly profits and growing manufacturing competition from a rebuilding Europe, Japan and China meant the US needed something more to keep the engine accelerating forever.

Along came Psychologist Edward Bernays with the answer. From the article on Bemay’s, consider this: “People act on information. But they act much more strongly if you can connect with them on a very deep and more unconscious level. It was Bernays, based on his uncle’s [Sigmund Freud’s] research into the unconscious, who discovered this.”

“And based on this discovery, Bernays fast became one of America’s first real marketing superstars. Some even say it was Bernays who invented modern consumerism.”

Now that we know what Bemay’s unleashed on the world, how do we tame the monster, or do we let it destroy life as we have known it?