Necessities count as consumption. You could survive off rice and live in an internet cafe for $15/night. I don't know what you think the traditional sense of the word "consumption" is.
At the lower levels it's mostly meeting arbitrary regulatory requirements. You can live in a shack for next to no rent just fine, but the state will steal your kids 'cuz neglect, inferior shelter' and then they'll condemn your shack and dump you on the streets where it's ~illegal to be homeless.
The person I replied to was trying to separate necessities from consumption in the "traditional sense of the word".
No doubt there's problematic regulations like exclusionary zoning laws. But you can't say that these regulations are so binding that there is no choice and no expression of preferences as opposed to needs in their choices. Lots of homes still have unmandated second floors, basements, bathrooms, and square footage.
The human brain is great at (ir)rationalizing wants as needs. If you want to live in a nice place in a high-cost of living city, that's a want, not a need.
> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more
If he wanted to say masses work, because they have to pay rent and meet basic necessities (ie. under threat of homelessness and starvation), he would have clearly said so.
The way this is worded very clearly refers to conspicuous consumption and consumerism - ie working as means to buying ever more funkopops and ever pokemon cards, ever larger houses to put ever more stuff in them, garage with ever more cars, a vacation house, a pool, a yacht and then a bigger one. And this being the primary motivator (rather than base survival)
Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.
And frankly, he certainly is right, but only to an extent, as there definitely are people that operate like this, however them being majority? I don't think so.
>Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.
No, that's not how marginalism works. There's both diminishing marginal utility from consumption, and leisure.
Yup, and there you go confirming beyond sliver of doubt that you're a genuine, certified "akshually" type redditor.
Fundamentally incapable of distilling the substance of the argument, and always latching onto any opportunity to misunderstand and nitpick some irrelevant semantics instead.