{"id":12377,"date":"2011-12-04T10:09:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12377"},"modified":"2011-12-04T12:14:08","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T16:14:08","slug":"%e2%80%9cscratch-a-walmart-basher-and-you%e2%80%99ll-find-a-snotty-elitist-a-person-who-hates-capitalism-and-consumption-and-deep-down-thinks-the-wrong-people-have-too-much-stuff%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/12\/04\/%e2%80%9cscratch-a-walmart-basher-and-you%e2%80%99ll-find-a-snotty-elitist-a-person-who-hates-capitalism-and-consumption-and-deep-down-thinks-the-wrong-people-have-too-much-stuff%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cScratch a Walmart-basher and you\u2019ll find a snotty elitist, a person who hates capitalism and consumption and deep down thinks the Wrong People have Too Much Stuff\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ESR shares his thoughts about <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3993\" target=\"_blank\">WalMart bashing<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I find that, as little as I like excess and overconsumption, voicing that dislike gives power to people and political tendencies that I consider far more dangerous than overconsumption. I\u2019d rather be surrounded by fat people who buy too much stuff than concede <em>any ground at all<\/em> to busybodies and would-be social engineers.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s more than that going on here . . .<\/p>\n<p>Rich people going on about the crassness of materialism, or spouting ecological pieties, often seem to me to me to be retailing a subtle form of competitive sabotage. \u201cThere, there, little peasant . . .\u201d runs the not-so-hidden message \u201c. . .it is more virtuous to have little than much, so be content with the scraps you have.\u201d After which the speaker delivers a patronizing pat on the head and jets off to Aruba to hang with the other aristos at a conference on Sustainable Eco-Multiculturalism or something.<\/p>\n<p>I do not &mdash; <em>ever<\/em> &mdash; want to be one of those people. And just by being a white, college-educated American from an upper-middle-class SES, I\u2019m in a place where honking about overconsumption sounds even to <em>myself<\/em> altogether too much like crapping on the aspirations of poorer and browner people who have bupkis and quite reasonably want more than they have.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ESR shares his thoughts about WalMart bashing: I find that, as little as I like excess and overconsumption, voicing that dislike gives power to people and political tendencies that I consider far more dangerous than overconsumption. I\u2019d rather be surrounded by fat people who buy too much stuff than concede any ground at all to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,10,28,13],"tags":[366,86,322],"class_list":["post-12377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-consumerism","tag-criticism","tag-nannystate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3dD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12379,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions\/12379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}