One may think that "if you've earned your money than you can spend it however you like." I won't condemn my fellow humans for consuming goods, because I don't believe can throw the first stone; I certainly can't. (Having just ordered lots of luxurious wool clothing items from TE!) On the other hand, I definitely see that consumption is not a private matter at all. It has repercussions for everyone, but generally it's the poor that pay the price in terms of working conditions, environmental degradation, etc.

Air travel for example is something only few people on this planet can afford, yet everyone pays the environmental costs of it (huge amounts of pollution). The same is true for cars, although they are more widely distributed than air travel. To create most of the "stuff" that rich societies consume (electronics, cheap furniture, clothing, and the rest), it takes quite a bit of work performed by poor people in extremely toxic and often repressive environments in developing countries (so that we can pay low prices for them, as exemplified by the Wal-Mart trample). And that's not counting what happens to all that "stuff" when it becomes garbage in developed countries.

I don't have solutions or even suggestions at the moment, I just thought I'd share what's on my mind. Pretty depressing, uh?