03.18.19 Consumption v. Production

The balance between consumption and production is difficult to orient. Consumption and production are opposites as well as complements, they may act in sequence as well as simultaneously, and they require each other to exist. At an individual level, the desirable balance between consumption and production must be rationalized if any form of value is to be extracted from their practices.

As an individual in his early 20’s with access to unlimited amounts of information and ideas (consumable products) via the internet, I question what the ideal level of consumption is. Economically, it would be the level at which the marginal value added by the act of consumption is zero, assuming that the consumed product displays diminishing marginal returns. This assumption is easier to hold when we’re dealing with less “significant” products, such as Instagram/Facebook posts, memes, and cat videos on Youtube. However, there are just as many products that may display increasing marginal returns, such as information on a topic you are researching, news articles, or any sort of information that you believe will benefit you the more you know about it.

Evidently, how value is to be extracted from the consumed product and whether the product is diminishing or increasing in marginal returns is determined by the individual. Under such circumstances, considering the act of consumption alone introduces complications in identifying the ideal level of consumption, and suggests that there must be an associated goal or purpose behind consumption that parametrizes the balance we want to maintain.

Like consumption, the ideal level of production also can be rationalized by value. However, unlike consumption, the value of production can extend beyond the individual. Whereas the value of consumption is mostly decided by the individual who consumes, the value of production can be assigned by external factors that consume the product as well as the individual who produces it. If an idea I come up with arbitrarily adds 10 value to my life but adds 50 to that of another person, which value of production would be considered correctly assigned? Again, the incorporation of external value into calculating the ideal level of production is up to the individual and their belief about their relationship to and perhaps responsibility toward society. Such decisions are associated to the goals and purposes of production.

Thus, we can conclude that the ideal levels of consumption and production cannot be identified by some generic formula, but can be identified at an individual level via the individual’s goals in consuming and producing. Since we function as individuals, there is now hope that we have to ability to identify our own ideal levels of consumption and production. Assuming that such parameters have been identified, the next question is how we can maintain or practice it.

As both acts of consumption and production require effort, which we can represent by time invested, we face temporal constraints on achieving the ideal balance. Even if the ideal levels of consumption and production are identified, there is a question of how efficient these levels are and whether we need to re-parametrize the balance. To begin, we need to discuss whether consumption and production can occur simultaneously at the individual level.

The idea of simultaneous consumption and production seems impossible if we are dealing with discrete products. You cannot be producing the item of consumption as you are consuming it. It may seem plausible, on a broader sense of time, such as eating something as you cook it, but in each block of time I would argue that you are either cooking or eating the finished product and not cooking while eating, as you would not be cooking if the product was finished. In the context of information and ideas, you are not producing the information as you consume, nor are you consuming the information as you produce. The latter is somewhat arguable, but assuming that a finished, complete product is a necessary characteristic for something to be consumed, the argument holds.

If we zoom out of the discrete product, however, simultaneous production and consumption may be possible. If we consume in order to meet our goal to produce, or produce in order to meet our goal to consume, we are in the general sense, reaching closer to the ideal levels of both consumption and production. If I am consuming scientific literature in order to publish a paper, I am consuming to produce. If I am cooking food so I can eat and sustain myself, I am producing to consume. Thus, perhaps a good practice of maintaining the balance between consumption and production is to align the goals and purposes of the individual acts to each other. If the act of consumption does not transition to the act of production, perhaps there are more efficient means otherwise available. Or perhaps, the act is meaningless in itself.

Of course, it is up to the individual to determine whether either acts of consumption or production is efficiently utilized in each unique context. These are, however, some simple ways through which we can remind ourselves of the value and consequence of each act. Perhaps this way, I can maximize productivity and minimize laziness or procrastination. On a final note I would argue that thinking in this way does not turn you into some mindless robot because the justification of the action is solely up to the individual, and the same circumstances can be justified differently (or not justified at all) by different people. The crux of maintaining an efficient balance between consumption and production seems to rest on how aligned the justifications are to the goals of the individual. The next question, then, is how we assess specific goals to be desirable or undesirable.