The counterculture of the 1960s (which really dated between the 1950s and early 1970s) was in part a reaction to and rejection of the consumerist culture that emerged in western societies in the post-WWII decades. One thread in the counterculture embraced simpler styles of living, valuing nonconsumption and voluntary poverty over the glitz and glitter of everything new and for sale.

Now my old friend Chuck Smith’s “Of Two Minds” blog, suggests that a new wave of anti-consumerism may be coming not as protest, but more as a natural adaptation to the shape of the new economic “realities”.

He writes:

For the past two centuries, each Next Big Thing magically created more wealth and more jobs. The progression has been straightforward: production moves to lower-labor cost areas or is automated/mechanized, and labor moves to providing higher-value services.

What if we’ve run out of Next Big Things that generate more jobs? What if the next big thing is Degrowth, i.e. consuming less and doing more with less?

The post provides links back to several other posts which expand on several points underlying his current viewpoint.

Chuck goes on:

A Degrowth economy is not only entirely feasible in my view, it is the only way forward. The low-hanging fruit of Next Big Things have been picked, and wearable computing (Google glasses, etc.) is simply not a global growth engine. Robotic vehicles will eradicate millions of jobs without creating any more jobs at all; manufacturing self-driving cars will add very little labor to the manufacturing process.

Wages are no longer an adequate means of distributing the surplus of an economy. But this is not doom-and-gloom for society–it is only doom-and-gloom for the current unsustainable arrangement (Plan A). Plan B is actually a better plan, though few are able to see that yet.

I’m not sure I yet buy into Chuck’s particular take on the economy and society, although my Quaker-influenced tilt away from gross consumerism suggests we could all benefit from a bit of regrowth.

On the other hand, there’s been a good deal of growth in recent decades. The problem is that it’s virtually all been captured by the one-tenth of one-percenters, the ultra-rich whose accumulation of wealth has accelerated while the rest of Americans have faced stagnant or falling prospects.

Are there other ways of reasserting the principle of social equality without promoting the collapse of the current system as a way forward?

Anyway, Chuck’s a people’s intellectual. I think you’ll find his views provocative and stimulating.