Are We All Living Beyond Our Means Now? With rising costs of living, debt, and the doomscroll-to-checkout pipeline, we’re overspending more than ever.

TLDR: An American writer catching up with 2010: "oh we're wasteful"

People are not overspending, most are literally just trying to maintain their basic needs

Industry and capitalism are!

More food is being wasted (actually trashed) on systematic scale than is required to solve world hunger.

Ecological efficiency is killed for profit. The global population of cows kept for meat receive more grain than is required to produce bread for literally everyone.

Natural solutions to things are purposely obscured to sell you mass produced crap. Aloe vera is well known but there are many useful plants neglected and replaced by microplastic goo.

Objects that could be build to last are purposely sabotaged by producers to force you to rebuy in time. Right to repair is constantly under attack.

Important technical information that could improve the sustainability of many products is kept locked behind copyright protection. “First to exploit” as a right is more important than the wellbeing of all.

We exploit natural resources not because we have a need but because some organization knew it could trade it for shiny numbers and know all of the workers have no choice to comply if they want the means to function in society.

Do i need to go on?

If we pooled all of the worlds money and spend it on a single communal worthless nft ape what would we actually lose? Its not the planet, the value of money today is not in any way based on any natural reality.