It is just this simple
So when people – archbishops, G20 demonstrators, the preposterous psychologist Oliver James – attack consumerism, and as the credit crunch brings them bigger audiences and more credibility, I think they are really attacking something far more banal. I think they are dressing up their assault in fancy language – like undergraduates who get involved in college politics and start calling themselves student unionists – to make a prosaic idea sound impressive.
I think that they have looked back at 5,000 years of human history – at pestilence and famine and disease and degradation, at genocide and civil war, at fear and loathing, at bigotry and ignorance, chauvinism and dictatorship – and concluded that our biggest problem is… shopping.
RTWT
Found @ Samizdata