if. you can. follow in on the crosstalk i'm peter lavelle one of the defining characteristics of modern life is mass consumption western lifestyles are being adopted globally but with the advent of the global recession all those who were once rich now have to live more modestly. and you can. still. discuss consumer society i'm joined by jules back in london he is the co-founder of abundance the partners in chicago we cross to david armano he is senior vice president at edelman digital and in auburn we go to lou rockwell he's

a founder and chairman of the libby gun muses institute and another member of our crosstalk team yellin the all right gentlemen crosstalk rules are in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gentlemen we live in a new age apparently we were all told that we need a structural change to our economy because of the great recession that we're still going through but will attitudes change as well because it seems to me they have to match and i'm course talking about consumption jewels if i can go to you we have we were talking about structural changes all through the eurozone in the united states but what about lifestyle choices in attitudes about consumption that they have to change as well. well i think they do and i think there's plenty of evidence that they are already changing plenty of evidence that societies in general shifting away from the hyper consumerism zeit geist to a more citizen centric zajac guys so i think this was already starting to happen

pre recession i think the was already a need for an updating of capitalism of capitalism two point north a new kind of economics which focuses more on the richer flourishing of the wellbeing of citizens and the communities in which they live rather than the short termism of the financial markets and wealth and how big my company car might be so i think the shifts are already going on i think there are there are two main reasons that we need them to happen and to speed up the first is that we're eating up the planet far too fast and hard to consumerism is what's to it and the second reason is that all that hyper consumerism isn't making us any happier anyway and there's masses of evidence to suggest that. i could go on but that's the sort of headline message for me ok what about you. i think there is evidence that there are people at least in the west are looking at different lifestyles and whatnot but how much is it being forced upon us as well i mean your paycheck is inches big maybe

you're unemployed maybe you're in a job search or that doesn't have a lot of security i mean going small in theory might be a good idea but in practice it may have to be something that people are going to have to accept and we've seen in the western world people are not happy about accepting it and i'm thinking of greece portugal i'm thing of ireland i'm thinking of britain and the united states as well lou what do you think. well what has to happen of course first of all we had a crazed consumerism stimulated by the federal reserve under alan greenspan and by the constituent central banks of the us empire whether it's the bank of england or or the european central bank overstimulated consumption massively so we have too many houses too many cars too much spending when prosperity is based on saving and investment so yes we're taking a turn back towards not consuming not spending saving and investment that's what we have to do of course we have as enemies against us the governments of the west the central banks of the west which are holding interest rates so low we need

dramatically higher interest rates stimulate saving and investment to reward the savers and investors and we need to get away from what mr bernanke and all the rest are doing to us david what do you think about all this is i mean again is this a choice or is it just something that we have to accept we have to accept living smaller we have to accept living more modestly because we still have the demonstration effect out there we do remember the top one percent top three percent of society particularly in the united states will just continue to live lavishly and actually benefit from this crisis here this recession i mean can there be a social consensus and we should just be more modest i find that hard to believe. well i think i would be the first one to cite actual data which will be interesting so in two thousand and nine. report and one of the things that. stuck out

to me was they talked about this creed of thrift you know i think that's really interesting because i think that spending is still happening but the mindset is different you know when you when you make purchases that are more thrifty and more economical that you're still purchasing things you're still consuming them but you're doing them differently and i think there's a number of reasons behind that you know in the survey it said that eight in ten adults have taken specific seps of one kind or another economize during these bad times so i do think that the consumer mentality is shifting and it's and it's actually due to a few different things not just the economy as well one things that i talked about was i kind of wrote a hypothesis on my side a couple years back that was a response to. an article in the economist about this and i talk about sort of the preconceived her the consumer and the post consumer or which i feel that we are in now and how marketers how actually have to approach consumers differently and not just make it about having an abundance of items but attaching them to greater

purposes or causes and making them more meaningful you know we're seeing that especially with the millennial generation i forgot which study i saw but in the millennium generation is not all that different money still matters to them it's related to happiness but when they make their decisions there have to be other factors involved aside from just the thing or their brand of the product they make their purchases a little bit differently based on how they feel about it. and how good it makes them feel about the company ok jools i mean that's an interesting point that we hear is this just the capital of repackaging capitalism recapped. repackaging consumerism because i think that's where david is things he's going to stay with so he would use repackage it in a different way. well no i think i've written a book about this is a wiki book online that your viewers can go to die we die we don't we don't citizen renascence dot com. my co-author interesting lee is the c.e.o. of edelman u.k.

. works for edelman in the u.s. . but. i don't think i think i think this new ball miraculously and castle. and we are six degrees or five years or whatever it is and i think this new form of capitalism that i write about in citizen when i saw it's capitalism two point nor do you like it's not a repackaging it's a pretty radical updating it's a capitalism that puts people on planet before short term profits and interestingly bizarrely i'm sitting on a boat here being filmed on the bank of the thames two minutes away up on the on the thames is the head office of unilever global corporation and i've just left a meeting there with their global head of sustainability gavin nathan we've been talking about this very subject and paul polman the global c.e.o. of unilever has been very outspoken saying that he's not interested in the short term shareholder particularly he's interested in the long term interests of society

and if his consumers or i would encourage him to think of them as citizens rather than consumers you know he would just announced a new strategy for the next ten years where they want to move out of producing stuff in inverted commas to improving the well being of every life they touch that's a that's a pretty ambitious new way of looking at things some people will be cynical but i can tell you there's some really interesting thinking and targets going on behind the scenes and it's not just you know a lever there are a lot of company i work mainly with companies on these issues and there are a lot of very progressive sophisticated things going on in a lot of multinationals to rethink this space and to and to rethink how we can encourage a shift. consumerism values to citizen centric values which are the ones i talk about in this book well what do you think about that i mean it's interesting that jules is bringing up more of a corporate approach to this and of course the bottom line is important to them but if they make society a better place and i guess who can complain but what is the i think of in terms of

election cycles to things like this and then and you know the economy is always at the very very center here and we have so many demands coming from like the tea partiers and things like that about what the government should do and what you shouldn't do and a lot of people blame just the government for wrecking their consumerism the you know the you and i i think the rest of the panel can agree is that the fed you know was very reckless in its policies but still people said you know i want those houses i want to keep those houses and i want to maintain the lifestyle that i had i i guess maybe i'm the only person here that doesn't think that people so willingly change their attitudes they're forced to change their attitudes. well you know what we have to look at that we have to look at the state as you mention we only live in a semi capitalist society in the west today we have all our time preferences warped by the welfare state by the central banks by all the actions of government take us away from long term thinking and generate and and promote short term thinking so

that's a very bad thing we have to do something about dramatically cutting back the state the state is the enemy of the market it's the enemy of humankind on earth i would i would argue and it's growing it's metastasizing whether we see it at the airports in the u.s. or all the various interventions that are wrecking the american economy making us all poorer so we have to if we want to change people's attitude companies attitudes towards the long term i would argue towards that natural long term view in a free market have to do something about the government and the central bank there recognize ok david how do how do we look and more in the long term because again you know if i look at the states here a lot of it over nine percent a lot of economists will tell you twenty percent unemployment it's very hard for a lot of people to think long term now i mean when things are good i guess it's a little we have the luxury of thinking the long term but a lot of people in western europe and united states can't think the long term

because the then here and now is so desperate. you know i don't i think you have to look at you have to look at we're talking about consumerism which is tied to people consuming things and buying things. that they perceive that they need and certainly you know not if you look at the data it does show changes you know it shows that people are switching brands for example levi's which disclaimer as a client is actually doing well in this economy because people are changing their they're changing their behavioral. choices you know but also i think that that trust is a factor as well so we put out at all and puts out a report every year called the trust barometer and you know one of the sectors that's doing increasingly well and earning a lot of trust in the process is technology and the data supports that you know technology purchase are high especially with gen y. so you know we have to ask ourselves a lot you know is there a correlation there is does a did it does gen y.

trust technology companies like google apple etc for a specific reason and are they rewarding them with their behavior as well. you know i think a lot of the points that are being made are really interesting i believe that there is a minute let me just be real quick we're going to tell you that we're going to do a short break we'll go back to you after the break right after the break we'll continue our discussion on post consumers stay with us. and. if you want to. see official. pulled from the dumpster.

on the t.v. dot com. we'll . bring you the latest in science and technology from around russia.

we've got the huge earth covered. story. one. welcome to cross town time here about to remind you we're speaking about the future of consumerism. but before let's see what is important to russians when they're making a purchase. consumerism is often called the home market most the best economies the concept stipulates purchasing new goods and services well a little attention to their true need and do ability consumerism in fact is a common phenomenon in the west but in two thousand and eight and economic crisis

holland over the world and now consumer society is all learning to live differently recently the russian public opinion research center asks citizens what is most important to them while buying goods sixty percent opt for low prices while only twenty seven percent see a wide selection of goods as a priority now that people are learning to live with less money i wonder if there could be a return to pre-crisis levels. ok david before we went to the break you were talking about how different segments of society younger people they're making their choices about what kind of things they buy based on their conditions but i can broaden this out a little bit here i live in russia and twenty years ago this was a communist country ok china is still technically a communist country but it's the biggest consumer market or one of them in the in the world biggest in the world right now look at india look at brazil i can go on and on a lot of those folks there are not tired of consumerism at all they're just getting

used to it ok in a country that where i live russia people embrace consumerism in a big way i mean they decide they got out of the cage twenty years ago and they're still enjoying the benefits of a of a market economy it's a kind of reflecting upon what jewel said in the beginning of the program i mean can the world sustain western attitudes or changing western attitudes about consumerism because now a whole lot more people just sat at the table david. well you know well ok i mean i think that's a that's a really great point so for example in the u.s. there's a backlash against things like mansions obviously the housing market has collapsed you know it's really interesting we haven't talked about this yet status and one of the things that's changing in the u.s. are for example if you have a hybrid vehicle or or a car you know or one of these one of these vehicles they're actually more expensive so in a way it's trendy and there's a status to to make you know purchase the sessions like that that's sort of where

the culture has evolved now to your point yes other countries are different and in asia for example you know it's very common to have your your mobile phone or a number of mobile phones show your status or you know to actually bring them out you know that's a different mentality i think one common denominator in both those scenarios is how we are being influenced you know in our choices and i think that there is there's a there's a technology component to this as well based on the kinds of things you know this kind of goes back to marketing right where you know a mass message may tell you that you want or need something but we're looking to our peer groups and we're looking to what our friends do we can see our status updates online and facebook and things like that and see how our friends have x. and we may either want that or maybe want to make that choice if it's if it's you know more of a you know you know. i conscious choice to scale back pull back or move forward in consumerism so there's a lot of different dynamics at play you know jules i mean it's interesting and i

don't even think it is truly much to do with marketing and i think i think david's on to something your peers we all talk about the country i know best the one i live in russia and russia look at their western peers and they pick up on a lot of their attitudes in lifestyles now even though we know they're changing in the in the in the west because of necessity but that's not filtered through it least not yet they still see the cars the watches the jewelry the trips go on and on and on and people really embrace it but as you said there's there's so many resources to go around. well i mean for a start. it's not everybody in these countries is getting the opportunity to drive s.u.v.s in russia or china it's actually very few and the vast inequalities in those countries there are terrible inequalities in our own developed countries but there are terrible ones in these other countries as well i think you know noam chomsky talks about the manufactured consent right and the advertising and

marketing world of course are very much part of this on the on the continuum that i describe of the perfect citizen at one end of the perfect consumer to another and there's a journey we all need to go on in that society needs to go on and i think it's beholden on us all to try and be responsible about not spreading hype or consumerist values to the developing world because they've reduced our well being and they they're actually killing our one and only planet at the same at the same time this is the end of the day is about values there's a difference between consuming and consumerism hyper consumerism reduces my wellbeing it reduces the well being of those around me and also if i'm hyper consumerist have a higher environmental footprint if i'm if i have a if i have a more citizen centric less hyper consumerist lifestyle i'm still going to be consuming stuff but i'm going to have higher levels of wellbeing those around me are going to have a harder levels of wellbeing and i'm going to have an environmental footprint so that's a win win for everybody and it's a part about whether we spread the right kind of values around the world or we we

encourage our advertising and marketing zite guys to in the west to spread around and what i would say is pollute the the brain print of the of the rest of the world in the way that it's polluted also locked us into they're going to bring i don't think it's inevitable you bring up a very good point and maybe i exaggerated my point is i see where you're going here but just having a basic middle class life let's stay away from the elites ok i agree i agree with you there and i do go to lou on that i mean if you look at however we define in this moment in time the average citizen consumer in the us in the eurozone i mean still having the average chinese the average brazilian in russian to have that kind of lifestyle that's still enormous resources to sustain that kind of lifestyle lou . well i hope they get this is standard after all we peoples of eastern europe and russia and china india only the nomen called tora got to consume and everybody else

was trapped in a socialist penury so that's changing it has changed one of the magnificent events of modern times but i think we also have to remember this is entirely a subjective concept i mean i may think the guy next door is a hyper consumer because i don't think he's got a car that's too big but that's his decision and my decision is what kind of car i get and whether it's possible to make sort of societal value judgments of the sort i i don't know i do know that the central bank the governments of the of the whole world are encouraging too much consumption by the way that they're intervening in the economy so if we want to balance between production and consumption and obviously we can't consume unless we produce and we only produce in order to consume there's nothing wrong with consumption we have to consume to live. we can't have people like bernanke be stimulating over consumption and depressing production which is what's happening here i hope china and russia brazil eastern europe don't

follow the american path guys i certainly hope that the guese if i go back to david here i mean chomsky was mentioned in chomsky is one of my my favorite writers manufactured consent and we may somehow get a social can consensus about what quality of life can be which we can be respected on a global basis because that's a huge challenge as i mentioned the different trajectories are out there will be maturing consumers in the in the post communist world and i can see some signs of it but can we find a kind of a global equilibrium where everyone can look at this is a certain value that all of us should embrace and still be consumers we have to eat and clothe ourselves eccentric sacha i think that's a good choir think who are we to tell kind of nails it on the head because that's what i think is becoming less well of. and you know when i when i talked about this sort of how you how to market to people in a post consumer error the point that i'm making is that you know prior to that i believe that there is a link between you know mass advertising and mass consumerism and before that

basically your peers through word of mouth told you what you should get and the people tended to be more frugal because at least looking at western culture because this was before the explosion of advertising and advertising was very successful and they used mass method messaging methodologies to say you know you need to buy this and there was a definitely a period where all of that happened you now have a number of things you've got the economic conditions as one factor you also have smarter more empowered in it don't forget consumers are in this a probably more so than in just the west they are smarter more empowered than ever before more connected than ever before so there's almost a barrier now to mass messaging saying you know i don't really believe that or i don't need that because i know better but what are you know what again what are my peers saying or what are you know someone who i trust you know who what is that person saying so now that i can relate to we have direct access to these people now so you know i don't see it as black and white as sort of you know the consumerism

goes away but i see it as a different you know more empowered you know. more connected type of consumers and i don't even call consumerism in some ways it's participating and you know making the choices differently and again you do see some of these trends where people are you know they're making purchase but purchases but they're looking for more they are actually thinking about the way a company practices and you know in order to want to buy from that you see did you seen that more than ever i think it's really it's very interesting when you go back to the jewels because we're kind of going full circle to what you started out with so i won't repeat your words go ahead. well i just want to make this distinction between consumerism and consuming because you know there are two billion people around you know at least two billion people on the planet depends who you listen to who are living in the most dire circumstances for whom the idea of consumerism is so far out there while they're interested in is a very basic needs of nutrition of health care of cleanliness and civil liberties

and so forth so i'm not for a moment suggesting that that there isn't a vast need for a spreading of of equitable access to the earth was also is for most of the world's population it is the very few of us who have control of those resources right now but i think. it's a difference in values between these citizen centric values that i mean talk about consumerist values that i've been talking about and martin sorrell who in my book citizen when i saw it's i call the hyper the high priest of materialism. he's the head of the world is he's the world's head advertising man he's actually given several speeches where he talks about the need to move away from hyper consumerism. i'm going to have to jump in here is a fascinating discussion we could do a lot more with a bit we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in london chicago in auburn and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember cross talk.

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oil tycoon. who is serving time for tax evasion is set to begin hearing the judge's verdict in his second trial. merry christmas you're fired. no job and no joy for millions of americans this festive season while the bankers rake in benefits and splash out on lavish parties. and why tourists are the latest one to be gauged by israel in lebanon as a bitter rivals launch a competing war zone scene parts to get their point across.

am of the russian capital you're watching our joshua welcome to the program a moscow court is expected to start delivering its verdict in the second trial of kosky the former had of the oil giant's yukos is in prison for tax evasion and money laundering he faces further charges of twenty seven billion dollars worth of well if convicted he could stay behind bars for another seven years but if the court clears how the cops think he could walk free next year forty seven year old made his fortune during the turbulent ninety's for the privatization of state assets which made him russia's richest man well we can now cross live to our correspondent humans are following the case for us today because.