Creatix / August 16, 2025
Walk into a Walmart—or any big-box store—and you’ll see the modern cathedral of consumerism. Aisle after aisle, stacked high with plastic gizmos, synthetic clothing, disposable decorations, gadgets nobody asked for, and seasonal junk that will break before the next holiday. Aisles are already packed top to bottom with Halloween stuff, all made in China. It’s the cult of endless consumption, a religion of “more” with no higher purpose than filling carts, draining wallets, and harming mental health.
This isn’t prosperity—it’s pathology. Globalization made it possible. Cheap overseas labor, weak regulations, and massive container ships have turned America into a dumping ground for low-quality trinkets of all colors and sizes. These are the modern-day opium wars where the drug is a cheap product on sale. What economists call economic “growth” is, in many ways, like cancer growth or like excessive weight gain: expanding waistlines of stuff, swelling closets, garages, and landfills. We confuse motion for progress, when what’s happening is slow suffocation under mountains of meaningless goods.
Consumerism is a Disease
A healthy economy should meet needs, not create addictions. Instead, our system breeds retail zombies, people chasing sales, “deals,” and the next dopamine hit of a Prime delivery, or even worse, an Amazon Haul bulk delivery. The cost? Debt, clutter, waste, boredom, and a culture of shallow distraction with over consumption and under production. This is detrimental to mental health. It is exploiting our hunting gathering instincts where we hunt deals and gather crap. Mental health suffers under the weight of overstimulation. The planet buckles from the extraction, production, and shipping of disposable goods designed to entertain as a form of retail therapy. This is a gross mistake; a failure.
Growth Like Cancer and Obesity
Globalists crow about GDP numbers as if they were medals of honor, and retailers salivate at quarterly earnings as though profit margins were sacraments. But this kind of “growth” is no blessing; it’s a pathological and undesirable curse. It’s tumor-like, expanding for the sake of expansion, metastasizing into every corner of life. Our malls and warehouses swell like inflamed organs, bloated with plastic trinkets and disposable gadgets, feeding an economy that measures success by the tonnage of its waste.
Just as obesity weighs down the body, overconsumption weighs down society. We’re sluggish, burdened, and perpetually short of breath. The arteries of our cities clog with traffic, our landfills bulge with excess, and our collective mental health suffers under the pressure to always buy more, want more, consume more. Growth without restraint is not prosperity—it’s gluttony, and it leaves us heavier, slower, and sicker.
True health—whether of a body or a nation—comes not from unchecked expansion but from balance, discipline, and sustainability. Cancer is uncontrolled cellular growth. A body that keeps gaining weight becomes diseased. An economy that keeps expanding without purpose corrodes its people and its environment alike.
Tariffs as a Cure
Here’s a heretical thought: high tariffs might be the cure. For decades, globalists have characterized tariffs as anti-consumer and anti-growth. But maybe that is precisely what we truly need. Maybe that’s exactly the point. By making it more expensive to import endless piles of throwaway junk, tariffs would naturally force Americans to buy less, buy better, and maybe even buy local.
Not every crap that is made overseas to entice Americans into mindless consumerism will be produced domestically. Many crappy things will disappear from retail stores for good. New generations of Americans may develop better mental health by not being raised in a culture of mindless consumerism that destroys the planet and the mind.
Imagine fewer aisles of plastic nonsense. Imagine a culture where products are built to last, not just to fill shipping containers. Imagine a culture where people focus on quality rather than quantity. This could lead to an economy where preowned goods are improved and resold. Imagine the environmental relief if fewer fossil fuels were burned hauling meaningless trinkets across oceans, and if there were no so much excess junk dispose of in landfills.
Tariffs could do what consumer “self-control” has failed to do: put a brake on runaway consumerism. High tariffs could help restore balance—slowing the flood of goods, preserving resources, and nudging us toward a healthier, less international / wasteful, and more intentional / mindful, economy.
The Real Wealth
Real wealth isn’t a garage filled with junk made in China. Real wealth is a meaningful life lived with purpose, avoiding excess and vice. We don’t need more stuff. We need more self control. We shouldn't want more cheap things. We should want fewer and more precious possessions. We should strive for a revival of local production with quality and durability in mind. We can create a new economy that can save Americans and save the world. We can build an economy that serves people instead of enslaving them to clutter.
Tariffs won’t solve every problem, but they can cut off the opium drip of cheap imports feeding America’s addiction. And maybe, just maybe, they could help us slim down—not just physically, but spiritually and culturally.
Because if consumerism keeps bloating unchecked, it won’t just sink the ship and kill the planet. It will drown and kill all of us.
Now you know it.
www.creatix.one
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