Do you think there's a way to reach an equilibrium in the realm of consumerism? There's need being incessantly created and fulfilled. There's constant production and consumption. There's never ending harvesting of resources and waste. And yet, the reuse and recycling of creative work is seen as an economic detriment, an injustice to the creators of a product. You don't buy a product new, and the creators of the product don't profit. You buy a product used and you conserve the energy and resources use to make it new, but you take away an opportunity from the creators to benefit.
It would seem a compromise might be to fashion a system in which intellectual work is paid for without the consequential manufacture, consumption and accumulation of resources. Though I'm not going to pretend like such a system would be simple, it seems possible with our increasing reliance upon computers and consolidation facilitated by the Internet.
