The Value of Consumption

Abstract

We have already considered the objection that some people—ascetics, monks, adherents to voluntary poverty like Thoreau, or enemies of modernity like Kaczynski—do not like consumer goods that are purchased on the market . But this does not mean that they hate all con­sumption. They may still like homespun cassocks, for exam­ple, and other subsistence goods produced by unpaid work. Man does not live by pure ideas alone. According to their own individual preferences (and the constraints they face), these people may choose more leisure and less consumption, and are more inclined to produce their consumer goods as a do-it-yourself enterprise. What they don’t like, in fact, is only certain forms or certain levels of consumption. Their indi­vidual preferences are covered by the economic theory used thus far. They just have different preferences.