I've commented on this previously, although not with such a pithy phrase. Our society is largely consumer based. But what happens when most consumers have everything they need...and even everything they want? What then will drive the consumer society?
The vast amount of transactions will involve needs based objects. Food, of course, always a good bet. Limited clothing. Energy. Sure...it's fairly cheap right now...but it remains a need. One thing is certain...I don't
need a damn thing from IKEA...
“
If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff … peak home furnishings,” Steve Howard said at a Guardian Sustainable Business debate. He said the new state of affairs could be called “peak curtains”...
http://www.theguardian.com/business...k-home-furnishings-says-ikea-boss-consumerism
I think it's cultural, rather than a question of people having enough stuff. If you'd shown someone from the 1930s what the average family from the 1970s would already have, I'm sure they would have expected the family from the 1970s would be content and not particularly interested in acquiring more stuff. After all, by the 1970s most families were living in homes that made those of an average 1930s family look like hovels. Most had cars, too, and sometimes two of them. They had multiple color TVs. There was at least one telephone in every house -- and not party lines, either: everyone had the luxury of a private line just for their family. Even middle-class families had refrigerators instead of ice boxes, and they had washing machines and dishwashers, and so on. And the closets of someone from the 1970s would be packed with more outfits than a 1930s family could imagine you ever needing. Surely, from the perspective of a 1930s family, those 1970s families were poised to step their consumption way back, because they already had just about everything a person could want.
Yet, as we know, the 1980s ended up being a time of increased consumption. People found they just had to have a bunch of products that either didn't exist or were an extreme luxury or novelty in prior eras -- personal computers, pagers, cordless phones, CD players, video game systems, VCRs, cable TV, third cars, Jacuzzi tubs, microwave ovens, and on and on.
The irony here is that right-wing policies "broke" the culture, from a right-wing perspective. The government austerity they imposed resulted in sustained high unemployment, especially for young people, and it broke people of the habit of thinking in terms of keeping up with the Joneses. The conservative policies unintentionally trained people to think about success in non-material terms, such that a person could be living unemployed in her parent's basement and still think of herself as very successful based on her twitter follower count, how popular her crafts are on pinterest, and how cheaply she manages to get by using extreme couponing. We're not all rushing out to buy 3D printers, home-automation tech, 4000 square foot houses, VR gaming suites, and whatever else the next big consumer craze might be. We went long enough with a depressed economy that the culture changed in a way that's less favorable for the producers of consumer products. The conservative policies made the rat race so depressing for everyone except the ultra-rich, that a lot of people stopped even trying. In a way, they made our culture more European -- in that Europe long had a less materialistic culture forged in part by sustained high unemployment among youths. Basically, the ultra-rich killed the golden goose.
