I doubt more than a handful of people would trade their lives for subsistence farming, and those would likely trade back after a year or two.

No doubt. But who claimed otherwise? The closest I could find is that CalRoberts said thay theyd'd spend more time gardening and cooking if they had the time, which is hard to refute unless you know them personally, is not an overgeneralisation -- and even if it was, growing a few tomatoes is a far fetch from subsistence farming.

You're making a classic straw man argument.

> You're making a classic straw man argument.

Am I? Because that's what one winds up with if one dispenses with buying all that stuff people were induced to want by industry.

Besides, it's a mite presumptuous to claim that people are wasting their lives acquiring things they are induced to want, rather than actually wanting.

My original intent was to suggest that wealthy people consume more (after all, they have the wealth to do so) and ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs. There's the classic example of "rich nerds in SF trying to solve problems for other rich nerds" but ultimately it's a matter of who controls most of the income that can be spent on non-necessities.

> ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs.

I simply don't buy that. The market for VWs is far, far larger than the market for Ferraris/Bentleys. McDonald's made orders of magnitude more money than any luxury restaurant chain. The same for shoes, pots, pans, watches, computers, jewelry, soap, etc. The luxury yacht business is microscopic.

First, they don't have to "trade their lives" for subsistence farming. Nobody described subsistence farming above.

That said, for many "subsistence farming" would be an improvement over their current living conditions / culture / psychological issues...