The End of the Consumer Society and the Militarization of the Economy

For everything that happens, there is a reason for it to happen.

In the consumer economy, resources are turned into consumer goods by the industry, and then into waste by consumers. In the military economy, the industry turns resources into military equipment, then the enemy takes care of turning it into waste. Apart from a small difference in the role of the agents, the mechanism is the same.

There is an old story among Italian peasants that tells how, after you die, you have to spend time as a ghost on Earth to collect all the bread crumbs you dropped on the ground by mistake. Only after you recover every single one can you finally fly to Paradise.

Think about how different our worldview is. There are still old peasants alive who look at the “consumer society” and shake their heads. In our times, wasting is a virtue, while conservation is a sin. How can that be?

For everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist, and that’s true also for the consumer society. It has been a fleeting moment of abundance, and we are going to see it disappear soon. It was already clear in 1972, from the calculations of “The Limits to Growth.” We are starting to go down the Seneca Cliff, and nobody ever said it wouldn’t be painful.

Yet, nobody could imagine that the descent would be accompanied by the burst of war madness we are seeing today. Why that? Unfortunately, it is perfectly normal. Consumer economies are rare in history; military economies are the rule. At the end of this post, I discuss the example of the Roman Empire and how it followed a path that led it to extreme militarization, just before it collapsed. It is well known that most Empires tend to collapse as a result of overspending on their military. It happened to the Soviet Union, and we are following the same path right now.

But what mechanism leads a society to beggar its citizens to build a mighty military machine that everyone knows will be useless? One point is that a militarized economy is not really different from a conventional (for us) consumer-based economy. After all, economies are machines designed to turn resources into waste. In some conditions, having the job of “consuming” (i.e., destroying) the products created by the industry can be done by enemies just as well as it can be done by citizens.

To explain how military economies evolve out of consumer societies, let’s start from the great pioneer of economics, Adam Smith. In his Wealth of Nations, he wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” This idea is still at the basis of the modern economy, supposed to be regulated by monetary exchanges in the entity called the “market.”

Like all theoretical concepts, that of the free market is an abstraction. It may work in some circumstances, but it is not universal. It is thought of as a fine regulation mechanism in conditions where both suppliers and buyers have a certain degree of leeway in their choices. But sometimes a “free market” doesn’t exist, or it doesn’t work.

Imagine that the butcher described by Adam Smith finds that the supply of meat has been reduced because of overexploitation of the pastures. The market mechanism will cause prices to rise, shutting off consumption from a large fraction of the customers. Without a sufficient consumer base, the whole meat industry could go bankrupt.

At this point, the butcher may think of a trick to keep his business going. While customers cannot be bribed (it would make no sense), government officials can. So, the butcher brings some juicy steaks to his friends in the government, and soon, the government declares a military emergency. All the meat available will be bought by the government and used to feed the soldiers. Nobody cares if the soldiers receive rotten meat paid at stellar prices. The citizens, then, will eat broccoli or carrots, if they can. The military emergency justifies everything.

It is a fancy tale, but replace “the butcher” with “the automotive industry,” and you see that it is exactly what’s happening in Europe. The European industry can’t anymore produce cars that are affordable and competitive in the world market. So, the idea is that EU citizens will walk, while the government will pay for the industry to switch to the production of tanks, planes, drones, and the like. Will European tanks be more competitive than European cars? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter so much: the role of tanks is not to be bought by private customers but to be destroyed on the battlefield. From the viewpoint of the military industry, losing a war brings more profits than winning one. Other sectors of the European industry are undergoing the same transformation.

It is the incredibly rapid U-turn of the EU Commission. In a few months, it transmogrified itself from a self-declared enlightened elite dedicated to saving the planet, to a band of warmongers engaged in beggaring the European citizens to build a huge military machine. And now everyone, suddenly, is seeing war as the only goal, the only solution, the only job that governments should have.

Is it unavoidable? Not as long as people continue believing in their government’s propaganda. But their trust in government is constantly diminishing, as it should be before the collapse.

We all know that history tends to rhyme, and it seems to be a rule that it is not sufficient for a government to lose the trust of the people to disappear to the dustbin of history. All empires seem to need to beggar themselves for good before collapsing. It is not a conspiracy theory; it is the result of economic forces generated by people who act to maximize their profits. No surprise that it is happening to us right now.

Below, let’s see some details of the historical case of the Roman Empire. If we are lucky, we’ll follow the same trajectory, surviving (at least some of us) the crisis and emerging into a new Middle Age period. But don’t forget that, no matter how cruel Roman Emperors could be, they didn’t have nuclear weapons. We do.

The Militarization of the Economy. The case of the Roman Empire

The Roman Army reached its largest size ever under Emperor Diocletian (above), around 300 AD. Nevertheless, it couldn’t save the Empire from collapse.

One of the few examples in history that we can see as similar to our consumer economy is the Roman society of the late Republic and early Empire. Of course, the Roman Middle class couldn’t import cheap trinkets from China, build McMansions, or take their vacations overseas, as we do. But they enjoyed a certain prosperity that led to a society where people expected to be fed and entertained at the state’s expense. The state encouraged them to consume, at least within the limits of the economy of the time.

Let’s recap the story a little. The secret of the Roman success was that they found a way to turn gold into legions. With the gold they mined from their Spanish mines, they could put together a mighty military machine and embark on the conquest of large swaths of land in Western Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea. That brought them wealth in the form of more gold and energy in the form of slaves.

For a few centuries during the golden years of the Republic and then the Empire, the Romans lived on a predatory economy based on military power, but it was not in itself a militarized economy. Only a small fraction of the population was enlisted in the legions, while the economic system was mainly powered by slaves and controlled by a rich élite. Those in between, the free Roman Citizens, could survive without working by getting their food by becoming clientes of wealthy patrons who would provide them with a daily sportula, a bag containing food, maybe a few copper coins, and some more stuff. Rich men in search of political power would treat citizens with panem et circenses, free food and entertainment. Not that the Roman citizens couldn’t find useful jobs if they wanted. But for most of them, life was not very different from that of modern paper shufflers; people who produce nothing useful but receive their sportula in the form of a monthly salary. University professors, for instance.

Why did the rich feed the poor? Not that they cared very much for them. Although the Roman political system was theoretically a democracy, as it happens for us nowadays, the people could only elect candidates who were liked by the Powers That Be, exactly as it is in our times. It was a competition among the rich: see how I can feed more poor people than you? Not unlike modern populist politicians.

In time, the Roman Empire went through its cycle of growth and decline. With the unavoidable depletion of the Spanish gold mines, the Roman Legions ceased to be the wondrous machines they used to be. They were staffed with foreigners and anyone who would accept to be paid a pittance for the risk of being disemboweled on a remote battlefield. The late Roman troops were called Bucellarii, biscuit eaters, to indicate how they would fight for food. The supply of food for ordinary citizens declined, and with it the population. It was a slow process, taking a few centuries, but the final result was obvious. The last Gladiator Games in Rome were held in 404 AD. The shipments of grain to Rome from Africa ceased when the Vandals sacked the city in 455 AD. And then, it was darkness.

But, despite the decline that started in the 3rd century AD, the size of the Roman army kept increasing for at least one full century, peaking at the beginning of the 4th century. At the same time, the Roman government also kept spending enormous sums to build fortifications along its borders, supposed to keep the Barbarians out. The Empire became a huge military machine that turned taxes into legions. (Plot made by Grok3 from various sources.)

The late empire had no more literature, no more art, no more large buildings. It only had huge border fortifications, which were nevertheless abandoned during the 3rd century. Then, it was a slide down the Seneca Cliff.

The Empire’s solution to keep itself alive, making its military bigger, had turned out to be an even worse problem. The Empire could solve it only by destroying itself and moving into the Middle Ages, which was as far from a “consumer society” as we may imagine. Is the same destiny in store for us?