system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is capitalism possible without mass consumerism?

My understanding is that capitalism and the free market became the prominent societal model in the 18th/19th century during the industrial revolution, but it was not until the post-WWII era and the rise of the middle class, plastic and mass manufacturing that consumer society soared and eventually led to the destruction of the environment.

Can free market capitalism exist without mass consumerism?

One can argue that capitalism inexorably leads to mass production since change is motivated by increasing profits for shareholders, but is there a way to go back to standardized milk glass bottles delivered to your door and reused ad eternum instead of infinite choice enabled by single-use packaging?
gpt
Sure. For the economy, it doesn't make any fundamental difference if people buy $3 per gallon cheap milk out of single use containers or half as much $6 milk from happy cows in environmentally friendly packaging. GDP would be the same.

I mean, one rather large factor is that greenhouse gas emissions are a negative externality. The entities that cause greenhouse gases aren't the ones that incur the cost of emitting them. And uncaptured negative externalities are generally less economically efficient than capturing them. That's also why a lot of economists have been advocating for carbon taxes for ages.

And sure, you could argue that capitalism might eventually lead to mass production, but how exactly is that bad? Instead of smaller producers whittling away at making their own glass bottles, you get huge factories serving entire regions mostly because that's more efficient and less resource intensive. That's honestly actually pretty important. Especially if you're concerned about the impact on the environment, not taking advantage of economies of scale seems like an incredibly dumb idea tbh.

But you have to keep in mind that consumers also have power. People like choice. Doesn't really matter at all what companies do, if people wouldn't take advantage of a wide selection of products, these products would just sit on shelves and would at least get cancelled and at worst the company goes bankrupt. Sure, in some sense companies can have a lot of power, but if nobody buys what you make, that's entirely moot.