📘 Part 3: Consumer habits

This episode's vocabulary

Built-in/planned obsolescence - the fact that a product is intentionally designed and made so that it will not last for a long time.

To accumulate (verb) - to gradually increase in number or amount.

Toxin (noun) - a poisonous substance, especially one produced by bacteria, that causes disease.

Water table (noun) - the level below the surface of the ground at which you start to find water.

Consumerist (adj.) - relating to a society in which a lot of goods are sold to individuals, and this activity is very important to the economy.

To equate (verb) - to consider one thing to be the same as or equal to another thing.

Necessity (noun) - the need for something.

Deliberately (adverb) - intentionally.

Horrendous (adj.) - extremely unpleasant or bad.

Immoral (adj.) - morally wrong, or outside society's standards of acceptable, honest, and moral behaviour.

To adjust (verb) - to become more familiar with a new situation.

Neuroplasticity (noun) - the ability of the brain to form new connections and reorganize itself as a reaction to new experiences or information.

Adaptable (adj.) - able or willing to change in order to suit different conditions.

To crystallize (verb) - if something crystallizes your thoughts or opinions, it makes them clear and fixed.

Status symbol (noun) - a thing that people want to have because they think other people will admire them if they have it.

Durability (noun) - the quality of being able to last a long time without becoming damaged.

Radically (adverb) - completely or extremely.

Fundamentally (adj.) - in a basic and important way.

Questions and Answers

M: Does consumption have any impact on the environment?

R: Absolutely. Have you seen the mountains of rubbish building up in places all over the world? And that's all because people want the latest version of something, or because of some kind of built-in obsolescence that makes you need a new thing by design. So all of this trash accumulates, and it doesn't just sit there. It breaks down over time and releases toxins into the air or the water table, and that can't be good for anyone.

M: Why do some people always want to buy new things to replace the old ones?

R: Well, part of it will be the obsolescence I mentioned before, but there's also this consumerist mindset people seem to have where having the latest thing is equated with a higher status. That's a combination of necessity and, well, imagined need too.

M: Why do some people replace things more often than others?

R: Aside from the reasons I mentioned, some goods are lower quality and fall apart more easily than others, so they need to be replaced somehow.

M: And do you think it's a trend that goods are lower quality and fall apart more easily for people to buy new things?

R: Yes, that's a horrendous thing to do. If you can do something well and avoid the problem of rubbish building up in the environment, then you should do that. It's immoral to do anything else.

M: Why do young people change things more often than old people?

R: I'm not sure how true that is anymore, to be honest, but assuming they do, it might be because older people have a harder time adjusting to new things, so they just prefer to stick with what they've got. Younger people have more neuroplasticity, so they can be more adaptable.

M: And what do you mean by neuroplasticity?

R: Their brains are faster to adjust to new circumstances and ways of doing things because they're younger, their brains are fresher, for lack of a better term. Older people don't have that, their brains are crystallized, or their understandings of how things function are more crystallized.

M: And that's why young people buy more things, buy things more often?

R: Yes, because they're more prepared to do it, whereas older people are not.

M: Why do some people like to buy expensive things?

R: Like I said, it's a status symbol for some people and for others, maybe they associate the higher price with greater durability and higher quality. Since if something costs more than it's reasonable to expect it will last longer or be of higher quality in some way.

M: And do you think it's true that something which is super expensive is durable and of good quality?

R: Generally, yes, it is. Otherwise, what are you paying for? There will be times when that is not true, but the general rule is that this is the case.

M: Why do some people prefer to buy things in the supermarket rather than online?

R: Well, it's hard to say, really, but it's possible that they might want to see and touch goods before buying them, so they can better judge the quality. I mean, a vegetable you see online might be radically different when it's delivered to your door.

M: Do you think that people's buying habits will change in the future, and how?

R: Well, yeah, there will be new products and things to buy, which will influence that, unless you mean more fundamentally, will people need to buy things? In which case it won't change, because people have always needed to buy things.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your answers!

R: Whoa, capitalism being criticized.