It all boiled down to a vision elaborated after World War II and most clearly expressed by a retail analyst of the era, Victor Lebow:
“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”
For more details and ressources on the subject, go see the very good 20 minutes cartoon by Annie Leonard.
