Comment by epolanski

+1, I think you're spot on.

Albeit I feel like OP was right on something else: his grandparents weren't heavy consumers, but that transcends city vs rural debates.

I see us modern people, except very old folks being extremely heavy consumers.

Sometime I pay attention to my friends and relatives and how much do they consume.

E.g. I spent 5 days with my mother in December at my grandmas and I've noticed that she just bought stuff non-stop, but her metric is money, not "stuff".

So, e.g., she bought a new pillow for my grandma even though my grandma didn't need/want one (she doesn't use it), bought plenty of plastic toys for her own dog, bought a set of new dishes just because the old ones were old, changed her worn phone leather case for a new one, bought plenty of Christmas lights because she didn't want to dig for the old ones she couldn't quickly find, bought some kind of table hook for purses for herself and her friends, etc, etc.

At the end of the week she didn't even spend 250 euros (her metric), so she doesn't realizes, yet, the amount of borderline useless stuff she bought was major and her ecological impact quite huge, especially for how little to none the payoff or utility is.

I had colleagues in my office, back when I was in the office, that just had Amazon packages coming every single day...And here's a smartphone holder, here's some gadget that keeps your mouse cord, here's a yet a new pedal for the drums, here's a set of pens, here's a rubber duck to talk to when debugging, etc, etc.

I mean, I have even a difficult time pointing out that there's something wrong with any of those items per se in isolation, but when it's a lifestyle of non-stop consistent consumerism I think the trend is worrying.

There's so many things that are so cheap nowadays that it's hard to say "why not?", yet they feed into this endless life style that's toxic for the planet but feeds this neverending more more and more.