Isn't consumerism caused by capitalism?

No?

Consumerism, at the least, is dependent on capitalism's core feature, generalized commodity production. So far, that seems true - was there any consumerism in pre-capitalist societies? I'd hazard a guess and say no. If consumerism is further driven by advertising, it depends on capitalism even more. This paper[0] persausively argues that consumerism is a consequence of specifically capitalist society, considered in its historical development.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978047067059...

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Commenting on votes will only make you get downvoted more, regardless of how virtuous your comment was.

Perhaps, but does it have to be?

What force will stop it? Things are how they are because of the systems that exist. Changing how things are requires changing one or more things about those systems.

Sure but that doesn't mean entire existing systems need to be thrown out and replaced wholesale by completely different ideology-based systems

While I disagree, I never suggested that with my comment.