More effective shopping

One of the practical approaches proposed here for more sensible and responsible living is “more effective shopping”.

‘More effective’ shopping means acquiring just right amount and type of the tools for living – that is, goods and services that you really need. These should be of the highest quality but bought at a cost that is lowest, not necessarily initially but over their useful lifetimes. Consequently, one should have to work less hours in each year to achieve the same amount of material satisfaction.

Of course there are values in life beyond material satisfaction. As Ivan Illich has written, people need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. But the time freed up by not working excessive hours to buy poor value items will help provide the additional freedom required for these higher goods.