Consumer Values Are Formed by External Pressures
A commenter remarked recently that consumers can’t be forced to adopt eco-sensitive values. He goes on to say that his neighbor recently offered him a ride in his new Rolls-Royce Phantom, and says, “This huge automobile with its 12 cylinder, 6.8 liter engine and luxurious appointments costs nearly $1 million.”
I agree that it is great when consumers, on their own volition, turn their tastes away from things that damage the environment, and towards things that improve it. There is no doubt that it’s best when these things happen naturally, without forcing them in a certain direction.
But let’s examine that idea, because it contains a fallacy. Consumer behavior is never entirely self-initiated, regardless of how impervious we think we are to external forces that are shaping our sensibilities.
To take the trivial case, direct force is sometimes applied from the body politic. Even if we wanted to, we can’t buy leaded gasoline, aerosol cans with CFCs, DTD, or cars without catalytic converters–and (virtually) no one’s complaining about that.
But more interesting examples lie in fashion, and what drives consumers to follow trends set by their peers. Most guys had long hair in the 1970s, but few of us do now. Some people today still have flip-phones, but not too many.
Even more to the point, like it or not, we’re heavily influenced by marketers whose very job is to lead consumers around by the nose by establishing and promoting brands that appeal to our sense of who we are and who we aspire to become.
Let me express my own personal consumer values (recognizing, again, that they’re not formed solely by my self-determinism). My take on your neighbor’s Rolls Royce is that it’s obscene to drive a $1 million car in a world where 1.5 billion people can’t get a clean glass of water to drink.
I feel similarly about Hummer drivers. What they’re screaming to the world is “I don’t care a damn about anyone but myself.” Note that nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see someone “flip off” a Hummer driver. Why? Lots of people are starting to share my feeling as I expressed it above. It’s a sign that it’s becoming socially unacceptable to live without regard for the well-being of those around you.
Consumer tastes are formed by pressures coming from several different directions. Fortunately, one of those vectors is environmentalism.
Craig,
You are perfectly entitled to your opinion (I also dislike Hummers, ‘especially stretched limo versions) but arguing these vehicle are ‘obscene’ and that entitles you to be rude and offensive to their owners, simply because they may not share your philosophy or aesthetic taste, is just old fashioned puritanical hatred of other’s enjoying themselves.
As I explained, my neighbor’s Rolls Royce is a work of art. It’s manufacture employs thousands of highly skilled engineers,craftspeople,and supports enormous economic enterprise and activity with far reaching benefits.
If tomorrow morning, Rolls Royce ceased to be in existence, it wouldn’t enable one more person to have clean water, but would impoverish a great many.
Civilizations are all built on adding “aesthetic value’ as a means of wealth redistribution. Your “Puritan/socialist’ values only reduce everyone to drab poverty.
The economic model you profess was put into practice and resulted in massive pollution, shoddy inferior goods, and a depressed repressive society.
Fortunately, the repressive era of the old USSR and Warsaw pact countries is over. (we’re still trying to clean up the decay and pollution).
A happy, progressive socialist nirvana, never existed, and never will ! All you wind up with is no Rolls Royces, but Trabant’s !
As I said previously, the day the first ancient potter accidentally noticed one pot had a stripe on it’s side and started getting requests for more striped pots, he realized he could charge more for a pot that was rarer, or just a little prettier, from then on, civilization accelerated in development and the consumer society was born !
But no doubt there was some puritanical, teeth sucking, grim faced curmudgeon decrying the production of better looking pots, complaining they were vain,wasting resources, inefficient, or unfair to those who could only afford plain pots.
Thus was born the concept of ‘sinful opulence”. Born out of envy and spite, and the fear that some people might have different values and enjoy themselves more.
“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.”
“In regards to the price of commodities. the rise of wages operates as simple interest does; the rise of profits operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much if the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only about those of other people.”
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations