There is nothing contradicting aboutbit. They were not consumers as a means of sustenance. They bought things but they we're basicly self sufficient as a culture and as I dividual households.

You can buy things and not be dependent on that for your sustenance, but this country except for a few odd cases has more and more taken up the attitude and mindset that you have espoused which is to become a sharpened stone, good for one thing and to become completely reliant on others for just about anything. As a country we do not really produce much of anything. The US is not known for manufacturing anything. Even American made automobiles only have their corporate headquarters here while other countries actually make the products. Clothing is all made over seas but they so the buttons on here and say it was made in the USA. Almost everything is from China and the reason that is so is precisely because of what you said when you outlined how the system worked when explaining why you would pick a fight with the cashier when your dependency on corporations and consumerism inevitably bites you in the ass in the near future. .

Again, the founding fathers and the rest of the culture here produced all the food they needed. They fed themselves and also sold things so they were independent, but also had money to buy extras. That does not make them consumers or qualify them as a consumer society.

Consumerism really started taking over in the early mid 1900s. Prior to that people would at least grow SOME of their own food even in places with fairly dense population and often times had chickens