Comment by juleiie

Reading itself is an intellectual and imaginative activity, not consumerism. However, how people acquire and treat books can easily slip into consumerism and overconsumption

When Reading Becomes Consumerism:

Book Hoarding & Hauls: Buying massive stacks of physical books faster than you can realistically read them (often driven by social media trends like BookTok or Instagram).

Aesthetic Collecting: Treating books as interior decor, buying multiple special editions of the same title, or prioritizing how a bookshelf looks on camera rather than the text inside.

Surface Level Consumption: Reading purely for status, volume goals (like churning through 100 books a year for a tracking app), or keeping up with hype rather than deep engagement.

Why Reading Itself Is Not Consumerism:

The Act Is Immersive: Engaging with a story, learning a concept, or exploring ideas requires time, mental effort, and imagination. the exact opposite of passive commercial consumption.

Low Cost or Free Access: You do not have to buy anything to read. Public libraries, used bookstores, digital swaps, and public domain archives make reading widely accessible outside of retail markets.

Long Term Relationship: Unlike fast fashion or single-use goods, a well-loved book is often kept, reread, annotated, or passed down for decades.

So as you can see modern publishing relies on consumerism to drive profits and exist in an economic sense but it is not remotely the same as a pure act of experiencing literature detached from collectible drive or acquisition.

In similar vein you can experience a sunset by consuming a product - a travel agency trip. The act of watching the sunset is not consumerism. Yet the purchase of the holiday trip is consumption.

Buying a brand new, special edition hardback from a massive retail chain is the equivalent of buying the holiday trip. Actually sitting quietly, turning the pages, and letting your mind build a story is the equivalent of watching the sun go down.

However I am not claiming that capitalism or consumerism is inherently bad. No one managed to ever establish the connection in a rigorous scientific way that capitalism is morally bad and eg. Communism is morally good despite countless attempts to prove so. (When Cohen realized that a pure exploitation framework could actually justify inequality (like a naturally gifted person earning millions and keeping it all, à la Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain argument), he had a "Road to Damascus" moment. He realized he didn't actually care about arcane Marxist economic formulas; he cared about human beings having enough to live a dignified life.)

Too much of consumerism is definitely unhealthy and so it is important to know what is consumerism and what isn’t to apply the antidote once in a while while keeping the economy we all profit from in a good shape.