Consumption & production

The market defines the consumption decision as well as the production decision in terms of a trade-off. In a market-based society, therefore, all decisions are couched in terms of prices. 

When we deviate from the market we can go in one of two directions: consumption as production, or production as consumption. 

Consumption as production is plunder. I simulate production by taking what is already there. Yes, the act of taking is by itself a costly act that entails exertion and the expenditure of resources and energy, although sometimes plunder can be mere extraction of natural resources, but in the end the actual productive act is not being performed by the agent who claims it as his own. That claim to what someone else has produced is the essence of what the market denominates as the consumption decision: hence consumption as production. 

Production as consumption, on the other hand, is caring and contentment. The caretaker enjoys the consumption of the cared-for, and takes pride in having produced that which benefits the cared-for. Yes, the caretaker is getting something for what he produced but the satisfaction is inalienable, it comes out of the act of production and out of the sharing of the product with others. In the end, the pleasure comes not from the consumption of something someone else has made but from the consumption by someone else of something the agent has made. That pleasure – not from the consumption of the product but from the making of the product and from the delivering of the product to another – is the essence of what the market calls the production decision: hence production as consumption.