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Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.
– Victor Lebow, Economist, 1955
This quote by Lebow is everywhere on the internet (it appears in The Story of Stuff and I suspect that book/film helped spread the quote a lot), but it’s tricky to track its source. Steve here does a fantastic job: https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2007/12/victor-lebows-complete-original-1955.html.
Regardless, it seems like Lebow turned out to be a prophet.
