The prices were going up like crazy

Prices went up due to consumption, people were buying houses, whether or not for investment, most of those houses were not generating rent, it was easier to buy than to rent, therefore, people who had 3, 4 or a dozen houses, they were only leveraging on the basis of the increase in prices that they themselves were helping to raise. The production of these houses was the result of people buying with money that they did not have, that is, credit. We can not separate the culture of credit from the culture of consumption, one can not exist without the other. And all that process only served to make the houses more expensive to the rest of the people.

Bitcoin, in part, arose to change that, but look how speculation has tarnished all the ideals that drove Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the first place, people have invested fortunes in Ripple and centralized cryptocurrencies, not counting the hundreds of cryptocurrencies that they were created and they will never meet their goal. Vitalik himself has made his criticisms about it.

The problem in the 2008 crisis, rather than the consumer culture, was de credit card and debt culture.

Like I said, you can not separate one thing from the other. Credit and consumption are part of the same culture. Do you know why during the Bush administration in 2001 the interest rate was lowered? it was to make private banks increase their credits and stimulate the nation's consumption, this started what would be the crisis of 2008.

Most people aren't. That, added to the fact that governments love to create economic cycles to fuck up everything, made a crisis. But I don't see how that is a consequence of consumerism.

No, we just can not wash our hands in that way, the government makes part of the deal and people do the other part, they are all part of the collective delirium to acquire more and more material goods. People went to the bank and asked for their loans, paid with their credit cards and bought more than their income could afford.

With consumerism, we need to produce like crazy, not just because we need the money to buy things —we have credit cards after all—, but because we need products to equal the demand. And that, how I see it, makes a great room for innovation.

It is Keynesianism, the consumption stimulating the demand, and the demand stimulating the production, all that consumption comes from the credit and therefore generates inflation, the societies of Europe have been doing that for decades, ask a Spanish, French, Italian citizen the economic conditions they had in their countries before and now, their quality of life has descended, and will continue to do so.

For its part, Tesla is not even a profitable company, it owes more than it produces. Innovation does not arise from consumption, "industrial" innovation arises from investment, innovation occurs when they inject money into a project, and this can afford to pay both brilliant minds and the entire innovation process. But pay to finance these projects, there are only two ways to do it, the first is to save to invest, and the second is through the corrupt fiduciary credit that we currently have, and precisely supporting this type of system is what makes society more unequal , and that the quality of real life is going down.

On the other hand, there is also the moral and ideal issue. If a person does not move under any moral, spiritual, or ideal parameter, it is almost inevitable that he behaves under utilitarian parameters, and under the current culture model, utilitarianism is accompanied by material gain, using money as a means of measurement . The problem is that both the environment, values, ideals, and everything else is subordinated to capital. Are we humans made to subordinate ourselves to the material?

If you ask me, my answer will be no, I can give my life for an ideal, for a set of values, but I will not give my life to obtain greater material wealth.