morality and the globalized consumer landscape

ok, i'm onside there at least

I think the hardest ethical problem for me is what seems like a paradox of a consumer-driven economy, i.e. that everyone consuming more is a kind of vehicle for distributing prosperity to more people. Like the same tools that create tons of waste also lead to abundant cheap food, and the same economic machinery that creates lots of new health problems for people also seems overall to extend life expectancy and offer more of a chance at survival. Also the fact that buying stuff we don't need 'creates jobs', although then we get caught in a kind of cycle of needing/wanting more and needing more income to buy it.

Also there's just the problem that a "sustainable" standard of living for the whole world might mean a much, much lower standard of living than we've come to expect.

I mean, I have fucking bananas and coffee on my counter right now. I just ate a yogurt from california, and it was flavored with maple syrup that probably came from at least a couple hundred miles north of there. I have stuff probably only a nobleman would have had several hundred years ago.

Whatever we expect today will eventually be trumped by whatever reality delivers us.

Yeah but the level of efficiency involved in getting those things to you today isn't comparable. In much the same way it's difficult to set a 'sustainable' standard of living that wouldn't be outdated with the next large scale technological advance