The consumerism is strong with a lot of people but it’s because a lot of them try to keep up with the Jones’ instead of trying to do their own thing.

I think a lot of this is engineered into us, conditioning to outdo each other - no matter the debt it incurs.

Same thing with housing. It’s so expensive but people are always trying to get a bigger one, get one in the best location close to something. We don’t need most of that.

Yep. We did go bigger, but we didn't go more expensive with ours - we decided on putting in sweat equity instead.

Stop buying their junk and the companies will be desperate and actually do things that benefit us

This is what they will have to do eventually, especially when "bailouts" are approved by the consumer, not the government..

The technology for that phone to become waterproof is all of a sudden rolled out that same month.

We have seen this with Covid, suddenly all the companies can do a lot more for their customers than previously.