The End of Consumerism - and why it is not that bad...
In times of extraordinary changes, Europe celebrated Christmas in fear. People all over the old continent are shocked. Never have they thought that one day the well-being they have experimented throughout their entire lives would have been in trouble.
After a summer of financial “earthquakes”, which ended a year of uncertainty, winter brought the reality to every one’s eyes: we are becoming poor.
It all stems from a consideration: that financial markets are just certifying the existence of a spread between the amount of wealth produced by Europeans and their expenses.
Continental Europe does not have a culture of “debt” and “consuming”: unlike the Americans, Europeans are a bit more conservative with private finance. But they enjoy a lot of public spending, which has become “the” problem. If Europe does not cut expenses, defaults not only in Greece, but also in Italy and Spain are very much there waiting. Of course, cutting expenses might not help and might bring more depressive effects on the economy: but this is just another potential threat to our wealth.
European citizens realized that: however, as history shows, human beings tend not to understand react until it is actually too late. So, let’s speculate on a future scenario of economic hardship: major EU economies are incapable of paying off their debts and they default, or they simply go in a state of perennial stagnation. Banks seize deposits and foreclose mortgages to stay alive. The European economy plunges in double digits.
In order to have a plausible scenario, we can use as sample what happened in Argentina in 2001, although the effects in Europe would be on a much bigger scale.
When Argentina fell into depression, it was tough: unemployment reached 20%, recession was steady for a year (some minus 10% GDP) and the political leadership had to change.
People hit the streets in rage and protested for months: salaries lost their purchase power and families had to struggle their way through.
This situation could have been potentially explosive: rich people against poor people, jobless against employed, powerful against powerless. It is not like South America had not seen this happening before... Instead, the crisis triggered a solidarity race: people started sharing living space and food, organized collective kitchens and gave away spare clothes. In other words, they found the spirit of burden sharing and slowly but steadily they came out of it.
The two scenarios cannot be economically compared: Argentina started to grow again thanks to the rising price of commodities - which it has in great quantity - and is scarcely populated, while Europe is a service-based economy with little or no natural resources and it is densely populated. But Argentinian people taught us how well a society can react to a turmoil: human relationship were not driven by prevarication anymore, but by a sense of common belonging. Precisely what happened in Europe after World War II, when the necessity to share the costs of the reconstruction forced France, Italy, Germany and the Benelux to sign the CECA Treaty and then to voluntarily decide to give away some of their sovereignty in order to achieve common goals.
In time of crisis, sovereignty is meaningless: whether you are an Argentinian family who wants to share food or a country who wants to share coal, it doesn’t matter.
The end of consumerism should push European societies to rediscover solidarity in human relationships: but it should also drive European countries to start a new debate on what they really want for their future.
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