Buy Nothing Day. The title itself is quite self explanatory. This day is designed to create awareness about over consumption. But I think it is a stupid waste of time. Sure it creates awareness, but what is it really solving? By not purchasing anything we are stopping our economy which will only hurt businesses and leaves the municipal government without any tax revenue. Our economy is already not in the best shape. Perhaps we should change it to buy local or Canadian day instead. By buying local or Canadian products you will be helping out the Canadian economy. By not buying anything it will mostly hurt the smaller businesses, whom already don’t make enough money to begin with. By boycotting, you will put these stores out of business. These stores could be one of the unique stores in the neighbourhood. If we are left with only big named stores, there will be nothing original about what we will purchase and once again live in a herd-like society.
I know by buying nothing for one day will not DRASTICALLY hurt these businesses, but the whole concept of reducing the amount of consumption to stop us from living in a materialistic society is ridiculous. What is really the harm in living in a world like that? Some may say it creates terrible values, but those can be changed based on a person. Someone can be a person who spends a lot of money or material goods, but have moral values at the same time. It has to be the individual who has to distinguish the good from the bad; products are not the ones that have the power over us, they are just objects; they are just there for pleasure.
