Maybe I should talk about Consumerism

It occurred to me that I set out to write a post about Consumerism yesterday which ended up being something else, widely irrelevant and contained more youtube embedded clips than, frankly, I would be willing to actually watch if I logged onto someone else's web log. Infact even the scarce youtube posts by Harvard that contain Malay humor that is frankly impenetrable to my mind take a moment of extreme boredom to actually watch.
What is consumerism? I think Clive Hamilton put it nicely with this passage:

For people without wealth in pre-industrial society [western], personal identity was derived from their daily activites, from their occupations. Family names such as SMith, Fletcher, Farmer and Cutler remind us of this. Today this is no longer true: in consumer society people attempt to create an identity not from what they produce but from what they consume...We do not expect that people will take to naming themselves 'John Sports Utility' or 'Barbara Georgian Mansion', yet in consumer society we behave in ways that are only marginally less obtuse.

Wikipedia's open source definition is more succinct - equating personal happiness with the pursuit of material possessions.
But if it were that simple Pfizer would have had it classified as a disorder and have a pill to cure it by now.
There is large bodies of research none of which I'll reference that demonstrate that after basic necessities are met one's happiness (which I assume is the key performance indicator of wellbeing) does not improve. I'm sitting in a room full of stuff right now and I have to admit, the cumulative value of the stuff doesn't add much more than the simple fact I have food & shelter, it does 90% of the work.
In the DVD 'the corporation' this arguement was put as 'a truth and a lie' as the basis of modern society. The truth - if you take someone who is standing outside in the rain and hungry, and give them shelter, warmth and food they will quickly go from being very miserable to very happy.
The lie is: that if that much stuff makes them x happy. and that is denoted as y amount of stuff, then it follows that 2y of stuff = 2x of happy.
That is the foundation of the economic system by which progress is measured.
How does it manifest?
Well you go to work, and you view the daily sales report to which it tracks the YTD (year to date) sales result as a percentage of last years YTD sales result. if it is above 100% you feel good, the company is growing. If it is below you feel bad, the company is clearly dying.
That is what business is all about. Makes sense for a medicine that cures denghy fever, more sales mean more lives are being saved around the world.
It does not make as much sense for say golf putters. More golf putters mean more people are putting little white plastic balls into holes.
I mean it does make sense on the surface that that is good for business, you may even say that more golf means more relaxation for people around the world. To be fair the way it is most often interpreted is that it means more putters from your company means less putters sold by a competitor.
But it doesn't make sense when you carry it to a logical extreme. At some point putter sales will mean that A) everybody is playing golf all the time in the world. or B) someone is building skyscrapers out of golf putters.
You see growth if pursued forever will mean that eventually there will be a natural constraint. People will start consuming things for which there is no use for or even counterproductive. However if you look at businesses that have a plan for getting out of a business when it provides no value to society anymore (which is true even of medicine, if a disease is eradicated people don't keep buying the drug) you will find almost none.
The few you do find will be the best companies in the world. Ones that don't insist that a market be provided for their product.
Like perfume epitomizes marketing, diamonds epitomize consumerism.
Take a guess how old the tradition of diamond engagement rings are? well surely it goes back to medieval times where princes gave princesses diamond rings to cement the union of two royal houses?
you would be wrong:

The diamond engagement ring did not become the standard it is considered today until after an extensive marketing campaign by De Beers in the middle of the 20th century, which came to include one of the most famous advertising slogans of the 20th century: “A Diamond is Forever”.

In the early 20th century, the United States jewellery industry attempted to start a trend of male engagement rings, going so far as to create a supposed "historical precedent" dating back to medieval times. The attempt failed, although the industry applied lessons learned from this venture in its more successful bid to encourage the use of male wedding rings.

These 'traditions' are barely over 50 years old. Do you know how many generations have gotten married in that time? about 6. A 'tradition' that is now 6 generations old.
Furthermore if you read Freakonomics, or watch Blood Diamond, you may be surprised to learn that Diamonds aren't even all that rare. The supply is restricted to keep prices artificially high. The Diamond mines sell their diamonds once a year to traders who can 'take it or leave it' so to speak which is why it costs an idiot couple 3 months salary to get a non-functional piece of metal on a finger.

So these are the kind of forces that have set up an economy that whilst we may be perfectly aware of the fallacy of consumerism's underpinning logic, we all need our income because of the need for food & shelter so really we have to increase sales in order to keep up with inflationary pressures.
Inflation can't be too high though otherwise consumer confidence drops, if consumers don't consume then you are in big trouble, because the vast majority of jobs depend on selling something.
Once luxury items go, and people only consume necessities then imagine roughly the same proportion of jobs as the ratio between necessity purchases and luxury purchases (that in a good year I would put as 1:8 at least) disappearing overnight.
So we must consume to help eachother out. This is where economic terms like 'psychic income' and 'imaginary profits' come from interestingly largely associated now with the property market.
Psychic income interests me the most, it isn't income generated by fortune telling activities but it is strangely related. It is the notion that a purchase is rational so long as the purchaser believes they are getting value out of it.
One part of me agrees, say you buy a sweater hoping it will make you look good. The value you are pursuing is an increase in your attractiveness. The problem is that how attractive you are differs from person to person. In which case for purchase satisfaction maybe your opinion that is if you believe it makes you look better and thus enjoy the benefits of feeling more attractive, then this is psychic income.
Bad psychic income is when you buy a house on an adjustable mortgage rate that turns out to only ever adjust up. You purchased it on the belief that it will always go up in value, you believe you have made a good investment. However you timed your investment to coincide with 'period 1' of when the real estate industry makes the most noise, boom times where you hear stories of houses that were worth $300k 6 years ago suddenly worth $700k now. So you want some of this action and buy a house worth $300k now, then you enter 'period 2' of real estate industry making the most noise and find the house you bought for $300k 1 year ago is worth half that much now but you still have to pay the higher adjustable interest rate because the market collapsed because the reserve bank wanted to cap consumer spending by lifting interest rates. And whilst it is true that the property will once again be worth more than $300k you have to wait another ten years for that to happen. But you feel good because you've invested in Bricks & Mortar, not realizing that your investment would still go up in value if there wasn't a house on the land at all (a house is actually a depreciating asset, it is the land that appreciates). That's bad psychic income.
So time for a quote from Abe Lincoln:

I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

In which case I am guilty of falsehood all the time. But how this relates to the danger of psychic income is that if a purchase is rational purely because you believe it to be valuable with out any comprehension of whether it is of benefit or not is fundamentally flawed. You aren't making a rational purchase, you are gambling, and the fact that you might buy something that you believe will improve your life and it actually does, doesn't change the fact that your purchase was not based on a reason.
An example, a girl believes that flashy, glittery, long nails will make her more attractive. She goes to a nightclub where she runs into a guy who thinks 'wow how glamorous! this girl can dress, I want to bang her bad.' then she was right her nails paid off (or contributed to this overall image) or she runs into a different guy who thinks 'wow, that's impractical, how are we going to go bowling?' in which case her purchase didn't pay off.
I guess in that scenario it all depends on what type of guy you want to attract. Their are 4 Jungian personality quadrants of which most of us have a dominant preference for one and can be two of the others by choice though we might consider that behavior more 'professional' than 'natural'.
Hence in society [western] you have brand conscious individuals that may be perceived by some (probably 1/4 to 1/2 of the population) as 'having it all' and by the rest as complete tools.
What is funny though is the notion that beyond Jungian personality archetypes that consumerism might become all pervasive, that someone could believe, nay worship at the alter of buying shit for psychic income, evaluating everything on face value and not ever be concerned about reality.
Could such a mind exist? My travels through Asia suggest that someway, somehow the behavior of consumerism may be an inherant part of the culture. Which I find Ironic because generally the Western World (Europe and US) have enjoyed far more affluence than Asian cultures.
Now when I say they, I use it in the sense of 'I have noted specific examples of individuals that affiliate with certain societies behaving in this manner' and not 'they are somehow different from us glorious white people' at anyrate consumerism has been taught by the west to the east, but like some say Japan never invented anything just improved what already existed so to have they (in the first sense) made consumerism something new.
Example one - Andy asked me if I could tell that his dad and associates were the bosses at their factories, it was a social setting and I honestly could not. Andy then said 'their clothing looks cool' or somethng to that effect. To me their clothing looked black, and possibly impracticle for the sub zero temperatures we were enduring. Apparantly I didn't know what to look for, it was the brands of their particular black skivvies and pants and shoes I somehow should have recognised AND associated with them holding high office in a factory. This gave me the impression that the consumerist mindset holds faith that certain articles of clothing are unquestionable testament to ones professional/personal merit.
Example twix - I was cruising around Melbourne CBD looking for a present for Misaki, I seem to have this curse that every time I start dating a girl it is their birthday very soon, obliging me to buy a present even before they have demonstrated a long term commitment to my birthday. (to be fair Miki tried to buy me a birthday present even though she met me the day after my birthday, which if it had been me I would have called unusually perfect timing) but she texted me to ask what I was doing, and I told her I was looking for a present possibly including a racist jibe to boot, I don't know. She then responded 'Plada [prada], Lv, Gucci all these brands are good I don't mind' which she later testified that she was joking. I did not panic and then go buy these expensive brands for her though, I'm not a pussywhipped bitch despite what my father calls me. I bought her some different bits of crap that conveyed personality and she was most heinously pleased with her birthday. This lead me to believe that brands though in Japan may be equated with a measure of someone's love and fidelity. Cash for love.
Example thrix - Madoka responded to my statement that 'Nagoya hasn't really changed' by insisting that Nagoya was much better now because a new skyscraper had been built filled with 'many good brands' then repielled the question seeing how I was dressed and recalling brands seem to have no meaning to this strange foreigner, and madoka is geniunly cool if a little patriarchal she has never been brand obsessed by Japanese standards. This gave me the impression though that in Japan progress is regarded as access to designer brands in the face of every single other economic indicator.

And I could go on about 'skin whitening' products in thailand, poor kids saving up for Nikes in China, Jerry lamenting how 'practical' his girlfriend was (calculating how much money he earned), Damo reevaluating his relationship as he had to wait outside while his girlfriend looked at pricey handbags in Crown (she was from south east asia)

But I believe I have found a specific social phenomena I never thought I'd find, something so consumerist it astounded me: apparently this is Singapore's most popular blog. And I feel I have to draw conclusions about the general state of mind in that country. It is horribly fascinating, note the paid advertorial content and particularly when consumer desires clash in an explosion of iphone vs pedicures.
I mean the absolute horror this inspires me (as I'm sure foreigners listening to Rush Limbaugh feel about the US or the picture that comes to mind when foreign readers stumble across Andrew Bolt) is possibly worthy of a blog post of its own.