November 24: Buy Nothing Day!!!!

[Red Mile Style]

Howdy CPers.

Tomorrow (November 24 for North America) and Saturday (November 25 Internationally) is Buy Nothing Day! It is the busiest retail day on the American calendar and is the unofficial start to the Christmas shopping season. Thousands of activists and concerned citizens in 65 countries will take a 24-hour consumer detox as part of the 14th annual Buy Nothing Day, a global phenomenon that originated in Vancouver, Canada.

Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending.

http://www.adbusters.org/bnd

Reasons for participating in Buy Nothing Day are as varied as the people who choose to participate. Some see it as an escape from the marketing mind games and frantic consumer binge that has come to characterize the holiday season, and our culture in general. Others use it to expose the environmental and ethical consequences of overconsumption.

Two recent, high-profile disaster warnings outline the sudden urgency of our dilemma. First, in October, a global warming report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern predicted that climate change will lead to the most massive and widest-ranging market failure the world has ever seen. Soon after, a major study published in the journal Science forecast the near-total collapse of global fisheries within 40 years.

Our headlong plunge into ecological collapse requires a profound shift in the way we see things. Driving hybrid cars and limiting industrial emissions is great, but they are band-aid solutions if we don't address the core problem: we have to consume less. This is the message of Buy Nothing Day.

Buy Nothing Day isn't just about changing your habits for one day. It's about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste. With six billion people on the planet, the onus is on the most affluent - the upper 20% that consumes 80% of the world's resources - to begin setting the example.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Red Mile Style

Our headlong plunge into ecological collapse requires a profound shift in the way we see things. Driving hybrid cars and limiting industrial emissions is great, but they are band-aid solutions if we don't address the core problem: we have to consume less. This is the message of Buy Nothing Day.

And what a poorly executed message it is. What people dont buy today, they will buy tomorrow. A better endeavour would to actually promote less consumption overall, as opposed to no consumption for one day.

[BlackArcher101]

Just like the gas boycotts. Nearly empty the tank and run out of gas one day... fill up the next anyways.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Snakeeye

And what a poorly executed message it is. What people dont buy today, they will buy tomorrow. A better endeavour would to actually promote less consumption overall, as opposed to no consumption for one day.

Yeah, it's like those "don't buy gas today and gas prices will go down" things. If you still drive around, you'll have to eventually buy that gas.


--- EDIT ---

^ Great minds think alike...and fools seldom differ.

[Red Mile Style]

Originally Posted by Snakeeye

And what a poorly executed message it is. What people dont buy today, they will buy tomorrow. A better endeavour would to actually promote less consumption overall, as opposed to no consumption for one day.

Meh, something is better than nothing.

Maybe someone will start by one day, and feel better and start doing it regularily.

If you click on the link, the page will also supply you with a link to the buy-nothing Christmas page... also interesting.

One Christmas I had a corporation-free Christmas, everybody got a unique and child-labour free present. Cutting out the commercialism of Christmas was awesome, and I actually enjoyed shopping rather than waiting in line at the GAP, listening to the cranky woman behind me complain about how many more presents she has to buy, so I can buy some ugly sweater that 10,000 other people in the city also had.

Yeah, I like granola, you wanna make something out of it?

[Red Mile Style]

Originally Posted by getbak

Yeah, it's like those "don't buy gas today and gas prices will go down" things. If you still drive around, you'll have to eventually buy that gas.


--- EDIT ---

^ Great minds think alike...and fools seldom differ.

I don't know, I see some differences between this and the gas boycotts, mostly because there are alternatives to consumerism, but it's much more difficult to find alternatives to gas (at least at an individual micro-level). If you boycott gas for a day, so you just fill up on another day...

Plus the day after American Thanksgiving is the biggest commercial retail day of the year. Corporations really push to get people out and shopping, if you watch American channels, you will see this. Some store, I think it's Sears, opens at 5:00 am on Friday.

Who the hell wants to go shopping at 5 in the morning?!??!

So, this one day symbolizes something, rather than the gas boycotts.

[BlackArcher101]

Perhaps you are correct. In the states it's insane how the shopping is on Black Friday. Don't see that up here until Boxing Day. Or Christmas Eve, but that consists of all males instead of females like the other days

[JiriHrdina]

I actually used to really enjoy Adbusters and read it regularly for a different point of view. But some time ago I found they just became too preachy and out of touch with how the world works.

[CrusaderPi]

Not only is the message poorly executed, it's poorly thought out.

Consumerisn is what keeps our society going. People have to work, and other people have to buy.

[Incinerator]

silly initiatives like these are only poorly thought out excuses for the liberal-minded yuppies - *cough* RMS *cough* - to feel better about themselves for a day or two out of the year.

[Looger]

yeah - stuff like this reminds me of the che guevera t-shirts i saw my first, last, and only foray into the gap.

total ****ing joke. and to those in touch of cause and effect and actual REAL issues, sad sad stuff.

[Devils'Advocate]

(1) I have participated in buy-nothing day in the past, but the number of people participating is so small it has no effect on retailers, so if you are doing it you are doing it for yourself. It was eye opening... you don't realize just how many times you open your wallet in the run of a day.
(2) As for "Consumerisn is what keeps our society going", that has to be the saddest truth that kinda makes you feel helpless. We humans have not found any economic system in which to survive beyond consuming as many natural resources as we possibly can. North America, Europe, Japan all consume far, far, far, far more resources than we really need to survive. And far more than we can afford given that each Canadian owes $171,000 in average debt. But if we ever were to stop and say "woah, this is going to far... I have a bunch of useless "stuff" that I don't need and I'm so far in debt I can't get out" then the bottom falls out of the economy and the situation gets worse.
(3) My grandparents had one second hand car, a 13 inch b/w television set, a small house and yet they were happy because their possessions didn't define them. Somehow that's all changed. It's like that old saying: "Whoever has the most stuff when they die wins".

Consuming resources at an unsustainable pace means less to me than the distribution of wealth. In third world countries there are whole villages built up around dumps such that the poor and spend their days picking though the stuff the rich have thrown away, hoping to find some food that is only partially spoiled. While we North Americans line up for days for PS3s.

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When it comes to Christmas, the holiday sickens me. Supposedly, in the name of their Lord, Christians buy unneeded **** for people they feel obligated to waste their money on. I have told friends and family NOT to buy anthing for me for Christmas; I far more than I need. If they feel put off by not spending any money at all, then give the money to a charity I support and give me the receipt. When I was a kid my Dad used to tease us by saying "I think you kids have enough toys. How about we cancel Christmas this year and give the money to the kids that don't have any toys?" To this day I feel ashamed that I didn't take my dad up on that offer. Maybe you need to be a bit older to realize you don't need a big screen HDTV nearly as much as kids in Bangladesh need a good meal.

Of course, this puts it far, far, far better than anything I could write:
http://www.worldonfire.ca/

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So this year, I have decided *NOT* to participate in "Buy Nothing Day", but rather in "World AIDS Day". Next Friday, we are being asked to donate whatever money we earn that day to fighting the spread of AIDS here and abroad. I think that *might* have more of an effect.

I dunno sometimes. I give more than what I can afford to Oxfam, Canada Foster Parents Plan, Sierra Club, Amnesty, etc knowing that 999 out of 1000 people are going to pick the HDTV over helping AIDS orphans fend off starvation. I often wonder why I am throwing my hard earned money at problems that the vast majority of people don't give two ****s about and thus are never going to be properly addressed. For whatever reason, somehow I was wired such that I couldn't live with myself if I didn't contribute to those worthwhile causes. It might well be that I'm a stupid ignoramous. Probably is.

[The Goon]

I have particularly liked this advertisement for "Buy Nothing Christmas".

[DementedReality]

Originally Posted by The Goon

I have particularly liked this advertisement for "Buy Nothing Christmas".

thats great ... i like it

[GrrlGoalie33]

Wow DA...to say that people who have HDTV's don't care for other people in this world has got to be one of the most far fetched ideas I have ever heard of.

I for one just bought an HDTV. Every year I donate hundreds of dollars to a little charity called the Shriners Hospital for Children, I support my community by buying all of the things the neighborhood children are selling to be able to be in band, have a new playground etc., and probably most importantly...every 56 days I donate blood so soapbox people like you get to live after a serious accident.

Everyone has their own causes, but to say that people who like material goods don't have social conscious is one of the most ignorant statements I have ever read on this board.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by Red Mile Style

Howdy CPers.

Tomorrow (November 24 for North America) and Saturday (November 25 Internationally) is Buy Nothing Day!

I will not cowtow to your blatant attempt to influence my spending patterns!!!

Cowperson

[MarchHare]

When I was a university student, one year the ultra-left hippies which seemingly made up half the student body (believe it or not, at my small liberal arts school, I had the reputation of being super right-wing!) put up a poster for Buy Nothing Day in the meal hall. A few days later, immediately next to that poster, someone put up an even BIGGER poster that said, "Nov 24: SHOP 'TIL YA DROP! SCREW THE TREES, PAVE THE PLANET!" I laughed and lauged and laughed.

[Rhettzky]

This sounds like a good day to go shopping. Seeing how the malls should be less busy than usual.

[Phaneuf3]

feel free to participate this year too!!

[Knut]

Can I buy a "buy nothing day T-shirt" on the 24th... that would be sweet.