"But I still want to know how all the people thrown out of work by reduction of consumption are going to earn a living. It's not that I'm in favour of consumerism, but that you have to have a vision for the whole economy."

I think the video is a well-produced, excellent converation starter.

It has quite a few blind spots. One of them pointed out by PMB. It's so wonderful to think of consuming less. It's been a directive from God to do so ever since God first spoke to man. But if we (forgive the pun) buy into the notion of suddenly stopping our buying habits, millions of people lose their jobs. After the first million or two lose their jobs -- and even by the video's own admission -- we are a population that is now EXTREMELY disconnected from the land...

(many of you guy were alive during the depression years *ha ha ha -- li'l age humor*. In the midwest the depression was CONSIDERABLY less impactful because, back in those years, the Midwest's population was VERY connected to the land -- lots of individual farmers AND LOTS of people still growing their own stuff)

...give us the depression caused by a cease-buy and it would be CONSIDERABLY more severe than our first depression (the one from the 20s and 30s -- there's still some debate over whether the 1880s was a depression).

That may be fine by many people's standards. Maybe the planet needs to have a severe kill-off of humans. But it doesn't sound too humanitarian in the short-run.

And the video wants to think of the government as being by the people, but corporations are ... what? ...things?.

No way. Corporations are of and by the people. For the people too. And the same self-interest that spoils government spoils corporations. But they aren't any more evil than government. We just think that there's hope in government as long as we can vote in the people we like...

...trouble with that is...One party builds the government big for its agenda....then loses it way by self-interest...the next party comes along and finds themselves at the helm of a now bigger, more powerful government.

For instance, the left currently has a jones to censor talk radio -- to re-institute the "Fairness Doctrine". Great. So you grow the government so that it can squash that dissent...and you're okay as long as you keep your power (and squashing that dissent might help in that regard) ...but history shows us that the pendulum will swing. Usually it is that when the left has its way for too long, the economy suffers from the confiscation from the producers (and when that happens, the unintended consequence -- the poor suffer even more). So when the pendulum swings back the other way, now it is the right in control of a government with the new power of censorship -- a censorship that the left intended to squash the enemy on the right, but now is in the hands of the right.

The video also makes some strange assertions -- like implying that trees are not renewable. In fact, the whole video avoids even bringing up that many resources are renewable.

Still, I like the video's take on consuming as a lifestyle. In fact, the newer consumption model is strange in that it actually seems to eschew the more permanent. I know because I am in the "future heirlooms" biz. The makers of future heirlooms are really hurting. The new generation of consumers actually favors NOT buying things that will last -- even for household furnishings. No antiques. No worthwhile artwork. In fact, they seem to now want to buy ANYTHING that will tie them down to some decorating style that they can't easily change in a few short years. First it was clothing styles that changed overnight -- so that one must buy new to stay hip. Next the automobile changed every year so you wouldn't keep your old car. Well, now household decor is spinning its wheel MUCH faster than ever before.

...and the thing about happiness declining as consumption rose? God predicted that several thousand years ago.