It's A Sick Society That Sees Frugality As A Threat, But Not Social Inequality

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was a lot more left-leaning than I am now. This was true even when I was at the capitalist bastion of B-school.

I could not bring myself to take a single elective in Marketing because I believed it was an evil profession. My classmates tried to assure me that Marketing only performed the benign function of determining people's needs and ensuring that they were met. I was convinced it was all about determining people's insecurities and exploiting them to create demand, which could then be satisfied by producing goods and services at the highest price the newly-created market would bear. I also detested the definition of "market" as including only those who could afford to pay.

Wants or needs? And can everyone afford what they want?
("The Toy Shop Window" by Timoleon Marie Lobrichon)

I often dreamt of a world where people would go to a shop and see plainly-packaged products labelled simply "soap", "toothpaste", etc. My observations were deemed amusing. My B-school classmates went on, almost without exception, to become captains of industry. I too followed, just at a more modest level in the corporate hierarchy. We all benefited from the existing world order.

Today, we're hearing it reported, entirely without irony, that the world is in danger of going into a deep recession because people are only buying essentials!

If that isn't an indictment of our society, I don't know what is. It's a bad thing when people only buy what they need? This is as jaw-dropping as banks classifying people who pay off their credit card outstandings in time as "bad customers" (true story).

We've been selling ourselves the narrative that growth at all costs is necessary for prosperity, and so staying out of recession is in itself a virtue. We've completely ignored increasing inequality as long as growth has continued in terms of aggregate numbers.

Now, elites hopefully understand that inequality threatens them too. The fact that Boris Johnson, who is as elite as they come, could find himself close to death, has no doubt shocked the entire cohort at the top of the pyramid. (At a human level, I'm glad he's out of danger now, but maybe it was a good thing someone from the elite did go through a scare in a high-profile manner.)

When we rebuild society after this pandemic (and there will be pandemics in future too, so going back to the way things were is not an option), we should pursue growth in a more equal fashion. Do what the profession of Marketing professes to do - determine the needs of *all* people (and satisfy them), not just the wants of those who can afford to pay for things. Better yet, ensure that everyone *can* afford to pay for the things they need. Then we can still have a multi-trillion dollar world economy, but not one that produces non-essentials for anyone who can afford to pay, but essentials for everyone.

If you don't like the word Socialism, let's call it something else. Rebranding is a capitalist skill, after all.

Countertrends

Two interesting items I've come across today that seem contrary to what we're used to:

1. A complaint to a competition regulator about a corporation for ... reducing prices:
http://bit.ly/ykWcUQ

On second thoughts though, it's not really that strange. Monopsonies are as bad as monopolies. It's just that we don't come across them as frequently. Monopsonies do to small suppliers what monopolies do to consumers. They're probably worse, because while a monopoly can make consumers pay more for worse products and services, a monopsony can drive suppliers out of business, set up a similar business of their own and become ... a monopoly.

2. An ad for a rather unconventional product:
http://www.tapsydney.com.au/

Again, this is not so strange if one is cynical enough to realise that Sydney Water is a corporation like any other and it has a product whose consumption it would like to promote. Still, the change from watching ads for conventionally packaged products is refreshing, as refreshing as ... tap water.

I've also just seen a full documentary on YouTube called Consuming Children: The Commercialization of Childhood. It's scary, but I suspect the trend contains the seeds of its own doom. After all, a generation moulded by corporations into becoming people who prize instant gratification as consumers can't simultaneously turn into pliant, self-sacrificing people as employees, which is why corporations are now struggling to keep their growing numbers of Gen Y employees happy.

As ye sow...