Part 1.. The Stewards Dilemma
To consume or not to consume, that is the question.
Do we blindly feed our consumption addiction, indifferent to how—or whether—resources can be replenished? Or do we transition from consumer to replenisher, and become responsible stewards, ensuring that what we take today will sustain life tomorrow?
Can we develop the discipline to
- Consume up to the level of our needs, and nothing beyond
- Consume only that which we deem necessary rather than frivolous
- Replenish at a pace that matches or exceeds our consumption?
Can we afford to devour resources for the pleasures that provide five seconds of joy at the cost of a lifetime of depletion? At what point will the bill be presented, and who will pay for it, and how? Can we align our rate of consumption with nature’s rhythm of renewal?
Economic life is a series of fleeting transactions. We get pleasure from a resource that we had no hand in creating, and play no significant role in its regeneration.
Consequence of Choice
Every consumption action we take will show up as a consequence in the future. Many of these actions will present themselves as minor blips. An inconvenience that can be brushed aside or overcome. But some consumption actions will be consequential and challenging.
Five thousand years of human history are filled with examples of human behavior where the ‘consequence of choice’ manifested in a bill that brought us close to bankruptcy.
History is the repository of human experience. It contains examples of every smart and dumb action that we have taken in the past and the cost of those actions. Each example bears a timeless lesson: learn from past errors, lest they repeat; and apply the insights gained to guide tomorrow’s choices.
Consuming to Live
Consuming and living go hand in hand. If you can’t consume, you cannot live. Conversely, if you want to live, you need to consume. So the issue is not whether to consume or not to consume. The question comes down to this: how much of what we need should we consume? How do we distinguish between needs and wants? Can we replenish at a rate that matches or exceeds our consumption?
Sumptuary and Consumption
Sumptuary and consumption are two words that have a common ancestor. Both descend from the Latin language, specifically the verb sumere, which expressed the idea of someone taking, using, consuming, or expending resources. While the term sumptuary referred to expense or cost, the term consumption descends from consumere, which referred to take wholly, and devour something, and was associated with the act of ‘depleting’ a resource or item. When the two were combined (con + sumere), it took on the meaning of ‘to completely take or devour’. In other words, historically, consumption referred to the wasting of a resource through its use.
While the sumptuary laws were designed to control consumption by restricting what and how much people could spend on luxuries like silk or feasts, consumption laws were created to ensure citizens did not ‘waste’ valuable and scarce resources. Both were used to curb the human urge towards excess, an impulse that has driven behavior throughout human history.
Today, we celebrate consumption. We take pride in being called consumers. We celebrate being part of the consumption society. A thousand years ago, being called a consumer was not a badge of honor.
Social Shaping
In 215 BCE, the Romans introduced sumptuary laws to limit women’s use of gold and purple dye, aiming to prevent “wasteful” consumption of these precious resources. By contrast, medieval Europe introduced laws to bar non-nobles from “consuming” certain fabrics, but in this case, it was done to visibly show and maintain class distinctions.
Attempts to control, shape, or nudge human behavior—whether by carrot and stick, democratic or autocratic means—are as old as the oceans. Societies have long relied on edicts, laws, coercion, moral persuasion, blackmail, or enforcement to dictate norms, subjecting social groups, explicitly or implicitly, to some form of behavioural shaping. Whether subtle or overt, voluntary or imposed, the goals of behavioural architecture are the same—to guide individuals toward desirable behaviors and away from those that someone or some group has determined to be undesirable.
While the impulse to steer human choice is timeless, the methods used have varied. From Hammurabi’s Code to TikTok’s algorithms, they are all designed to steer human choices in specific directions.
The ancients enforced their social shaping through Sumerian temple decrees, Roman sumptuary laws, Pharaohs’ use of grain rations, and Confucian filial codes. The moderns upped the ante by using a wide range of methods like
- Economic Incentives and Penalties: carbon taxes, subsidies for renewables or EVs, sin taxes (tobacco, alcohol, sugary drinks), deposit–return schemes.
- Regulatory and Corporate Mandates: ESG requirements, plastic bag bans, energy efficiency codes.
- Credit and reputation systems: social credit scoring, credit scores in finance, online seller ratings, platform trust scores.
- Algorithmic Nudging and Digital Influencing: TikTok / YouTube recommendation algorithms, Search engine ranking systems, Geo-targeted advertising.
- Behavioral “Nudge Units” and Public Policy Designs: Default enrollment in retirement, organ donor opt-out, traffic calming designs.
That said, social molds can be and are often broken only to be replaced by variations on the theme. Some molds are based on universal patterns of behaviour. And while some willingly conform, just as many resent and resist the attempt to be shaped or ‘nudged’.
“Social shaping,” whether through Roman silk bans or EU plastic directives, reveals a truth: all societies ration freedom to maintain order.
Towards Replenishment
While regeneration is an organic process, driven by a system’s inherent capacity to recover, replenishment requires humans to restore, refill, or replenish what was taken out—replanting trees, restocking depleted fisheries, and refilling a city’s water reservoir.
Many of the items we consume are replenished through a natural regenerative process that aligns with our consumption patterns and needs. The food we eat—can, but the petroleum and coal we burn—cannot.
Our planet has a finite amount of non-renewable resources, and those limits will be reached at some point in time. There may be uncertainty about when the last drop of oil, the final lump of coal, and the last cubic meter of natural gas will be extracted, but there is certainty that they have an end-of-life date.
Given this reality, do we need to shift towards regenerative practices? Do we need to balance our consumption with active replenishment to ensure long-term survivability?
For items that can organically regenerate, if the rate of consumption occurs faster than the rate of replenishment, then what do we do? Find alternatives? If we use artificial means to accelerate the replenishment process, what will it cost us to intervene? When will the bill be presented, and who will pay it down?
We can steward natural resources like food, timber, and water wisely to ensure they last as long as we need them to. But others—like oil, gas, coal, and rare earth metals—are one-time geologic gifts that get burned or mined into oblivion. For these, our only option so far has been the desperate and continuous search for alternatives.
Depletion
In the era when timber was the primary building material for homes, population growth drove its demand at a rate that exceeded its replenishment rate, leading to deforestation. Although alternative methods were found, the damage and impact from depletion were felt.
When we consumed fish at a rate faster than marine populations could regenerate themselves, we drove many species toward near extinction. Aquaculture and the quota system were among the solutions introduced, but the damage from depletion was felt.
When the demand for chicken outstripped the ability to raise them using natural methods, we turned to industrial processing, farming them in shanty towns without understanding the outcome and its costs, and again the damage was felt.
These examples reveal both a historical pattern and its underlying principle:
- The pattern: When consumption outpaces natural regeneration, resources decline, and depletion follows. When a system’s outputs continuously exceed its inputs, it contracts and eventually collapses.
- The principle: No system—natural, economic, or social—can endure if it consistently consumes more than it restores. Alternatives may be found, but their long-term costs are often deferred, denied, or ignored until they become impossible to overlook.
Evolution of Consumption
In a pre-industrial world, the raw materials needed for production were difficult to extract, transport, and shape. In addition, products were not easy to produce, manufacture, promote, or deliver. In such a world, scarcity was the norm, defining daily life.
As industrial methods for extracting, manufacturing, and promoting evolved, matured, and scaled, three trends converged to create the modern consumer:
- A New Consumer Class: A surge in factory employment created a new class of wage-earners with disposable income.
- The Affordability Effect: With mechanization and early assembly-line innovation, the cost of goods plummeted, making it more affordable for a wider market. Unmet demand could now be satisfied.
- A Population Boom: Mortality rates declined and life expectancies rose, causing populations to grow exponentially. This created an expanding base of fundamental human needs for food, clothing, and shelter.
Instead of owning one pair of shoes that served all occasions and endured for years—repaired as needed—people acquired specialized footwear for every season, activity, and fashion whim.
Instead of a modest wardrobe with a few durable garments mended over time, closets overflowed with outfits for all seasons that were rapidly replaced by the latest fashion trend.
Instead, one quality cooking pot passed down through generations, kitchens were filled with an array of specialized appliances and gadgets, and single-use tools.
As consumption rose, the newly minted industrial methods were able to keep pace with the increased demands. Where pre-industrial methods were limited in the variety and quantity of goods that could be designed and produced, industrial methods broke that constraint, providing greater variety and serving the increased demand.
Commodities once reserved for the elite became available to a broader community. And while the absolute gap between those who could consume and those who could not began to close, the relative gap—elastic as ever—has endured.
While the goalposts of status continually shift, they remain enshrined.
The Great Disconnect
In the pre-industrial world, production of food and other essentials was immediate and visible. People understood nature’s constraints because they were directly tied to the land and the seasons, creating a natural awareness of the balance between consumption and replenishment that was readily observable. People lived attuned to the cycles of growth, harvest, and renewal, with frugal habits rooted in scarcity.
The Industrial Revolution severed this connection. As populations urbanized and production shifted to factories, consumers were increasingly disconnected from the source and means of production. With farm, forest, factory, and mine out of sight, and under the assumption of abundance, consumption became the story. Replenishment, once the daily concern of many, receded from public consciousness.
By the 18th century, “consumption” was no longer a term used to reproach. A new tension arose between the economic desire to stimulate consumption and the counterimpulse to restrain its excesses. The act of consuming, once a vice, was being reframed as an economic virtue.
End of Part 1
The Steward’s Soliloquy
To consume, or not to consume—that is the question.
Is it nobler to suffer the pangs of want by denying one’s appetite for consumption?
Or should we take up arms against our sea of excess and, by opposing, end it?
To buy—to spend— No more
To end the cycle of unnecessary consumption
To buy, to feast, perhaps to waste. And there’s the dilemma
Do we fight to prevent the flood of waste
And by restraint, redeem ourselves.
To hoard—to squander no more; and by our thrift end
The gluttony and the thousand fleeting thrills
That greed is heir to.
Is it wiser to hold back our wants,
And by replenishing, preserve what sustains us?
Or to charge ahead, taking all we can,
And by our excess, exhaust the very source of life?
Or should we embrace replenishment and turn our backs on depletion
For in the wake of excess, barren fields will come,
Tragedy will follow indulgence
And a wasteland will be born if no harvest is reaped.
Let us take pause
And in that pause lies our choice
To shape the world we leave behind
And by our conscience make stewards of us all.
