94 How Much Should a Country Consume? 



over-specification. We have frequently designed products with httle 

 concern for getting maximum service from their materials and labor. 

 We drive heavier automobiles than is necessary for mere transporta- 

 tion, and we adorn them with chromium. . , . We blow thousands of 

 tons of unrecoverable lead into the atmosphere each year from high 

 octane gasoline because we like a quick pickup. We must become 

 aware that many of our production and consumption habits are ex- 

 tremely expensive of scarce materials and that a trivial change of taste 

 or slight reduction in personal satisfaction can often bring about tre- 

 mendous savings." ^ 



The captious will want to inquire, if the losses in satisfaction here 

 are trivial and the savings are tremendous, why the commission did 

 not seize the opportunity to urge savings. Why did it make no recom- 

 mendations? But given its position on growth and the meaning of 

 growth, it could in fact go no further. At first glance it does not seem 

 impossible to pick out kinds of consumption which seem especially 

 wasteful — things which reflect not use but wasteful use. Surely the 

 utility of an automobile is not diminished if it is lighter or if its gaso- 

 line contains less lead. But this is a distinction that cannot be made. 

 Consumption, it quickly develops, is a seamless web. If we ask about 

 the chromium we must ask about the cars. The questions that are 

 asked about one part can be asked about all parts. The automobiles 

 are too heavy and they use irreplaceable lead? One can ask with equal 

 cogency if we need to make all the automobiles that we now turn out. 

 This question gains point when we reflect that the demand for auto- 

 mobiles depends on that remarkable institution called planned obso- 

 lescence, is nurtured by advertising campaigns of incredible strategic 

 complexity, and on occasion requires financial underwriting that 

 would have seemed rather extravagant to Charles Ponzi. 



As with automobiles so with everything else. In an opulent society 

 the marginal urgency of all kinds of goods is low. It is easy to bring 

 our doubts and questions to bear on the automobiles. But the case is 

 not different for (say) that part of our food production which con- 

 tributes not to nutrition but to obesity, that part of our tobacco which 

 contributes not to comfort but to carcinoma, and that part of our cloth- 

 ing which is designed not to cover nakedness but to suggest it. We can- 



ePMPC, Summary, p. J 6. 



