It probably won't shock anyone to find an article called "The Gospel of Consumption" in (environmentalist) magazine Orion, but this piece by Jeffrey Kaplan is better than your average anti-consumption rant, I think.
He talks about the forces that created American consumer society in the last century. In the 1920s the abundance brought about by "labor-saving" machinery could have led to short workdays and a more active citizenship (as championed by people such as W.K. Kellogg). Instead, industrialists and politicians put economic growth at the forefront, leading to the wonders of advertising to manufacture need in consumers, thus leading to more production and even more work.
Jeffrey Kaplan is an activist and has an agenda, to be sure (see Take Back Your Time for more work along these lines). I believe his history here to be fairly accurate, though. It's an interesting contrast to Clay Shirky's story.
Link: The Gospel of Consumption (the sidebar has some interesting links to check out as well, such as the introduction to Kellogg's Six-Hour Day by Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt).
Oh, and happy May Day (Wikipedia, Britannica).
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