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I think this is some serious Marxist agitprop. It is absolutely appalling that people think we ought to buy less as if that's what the problem is. The problem i

by ydb 7y ago

I think this is some serious Marxist agitprop. It is absolutely appalling that people think we ought to buy less as if that's what the problem is. The problem is not unethical consumption! The difficulty is not in alienating labor from capital! These posadist fools think we will be saved by aliens. Look fellas, buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it. The gal may as well looks fashionable while we descent into collapse.

lukifer 7y ago
> buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.) Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- hirundo 7y ago
  > Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Only if and while the proles glut themselves on cheap stuff. As soon as unwashed masses start to copy that, the balance will flip and reverse. To act as a status symbol an action must be hard or costly to reproduce. If everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. I think similar dynamics plays out with currency, we could all still be using sea shells otherwise.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about counter-signaling; for instance, when expensive clothes become too accessible to the middle class, the wealthy can swerve by wearing cheap clothes as a counter-signal: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectu... Signaling comes in many forms, and not all of it is bad; arguably, signaling eco-consciousness with a Prius or a Tesla can be a net win, even if it's just a proxy for socioeconomics. Rather, I would posit that extremes of Veblen goods (where cost and/or effort are abnormally high and positive social externalities are low) are more akin to market failure, or the Dutch tulip craze.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
I don't think there is any respectable belief system or religion in the world where "buying more" is a general solution to any sort of problem. (Unless you're an economist trying to optimize for a particular variable like market liquidity, or unless you're a biased market participant -- like a company selling something.) If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.
- prepend 7y ago
  Aren’t charitable donations a form of buying? Lots of religions have penance as part of their tradition and most will encourage donating to fund church building and whatnot. I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Your pastor needs a personal jet to do the gods work. So partially yes.
    - prepend 7y ago
      I drive home past a very popular church where the pastor received national fame for preaching that he needed a new jet because God wants him to. And he got it.
      - TimTheTinker 7y ago
        Wow. That’s spiritual abuse and nothing less. It boggles the mind that people pay attention to such people when scripture clearly warns against them (like 1 Timothy chapter 6).
paganel 7y ago
> your girl This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  > your female work colleagues Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It leads to nasty and stupid discussions that we neither need nor want. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - paganel 7y ago
    That’s nothing ideological about telling someone that their way of seeing other human beings as inferior is wrong, as talking about a different person as belonging to someone else (the “your” part) means seeing the other person as being inferior. Yeah, as members of this community we could maybe ignore when other users talk about such views out loud, but that won’t really solve anything, would it?, it would just mean hiding everything under the rug, even empowering said user in his/her views.
    - dang 7y ago
      That's vastly overinterpreting what the commenter wrote. Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      You used "your" in your comment to refer to women (colleagues) and clearly weren't talking about women as owned livestock. Why not grant them the same usage of possessive pronouns?
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

by ydb 7y ago

lukifer 7y ago

> buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.) Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

hirundo 7y ago
> Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  Only if and while the proles glut themselves on cheap stuff. As soon as unwashed masses start to copy that, the balance will flip and reverse. To act as a status symbol an action must be hard or costly to reproduce. If everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. I think similar dynamics plays out with currency, we could all still be using sea shells otherwise.
- lukifer 7y ago
  Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about counter-signaling; for instance, when expensive clothes become too accessible to the middle class, the wealthy can swerve by wearing cheap clothes as a counter-signal: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectu... Signaling comes in many forms, and not all of it is bad; arguably, signaling eco-consciousness with a Prius or a Tesla can be a net win, even if it's just a proxy for socioeconomics. Rather, I would posit that extremes of Veblen goods (where cost and/or effort are abnormally high and positive social externalities are low) are more akin to market failure, or the Dutch tulip craze.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

I don't think there is any respectable belief system or religion in the world where "buying more" is a general solution to any sort of problem. (Unless you're an economist trying to optimize for a particular variable like market liquidity, or unless you're a biased market participant -- like a company selling something.) If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.

prepend 7y ago
Aren’t charitable donations a form of buying? Lots of religions have penance as part of their tradition and most will encourage donating to fund church building and whatnot. I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  Your pastor needs a personal jet to do the gods work. So partially yes.
  - prepend 7y ago
    I drive home past a very popular church where the pastor received national fame for preaching that he needed a new jet because God wants him to. And he got it.
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      Wow. That’s spiritual abuse and nothing less. It boggles the mind that people pay attention to such people when scripture clearly warns against them (like 1 Timothy chapter 6).

paganel 7y ago

> your girl This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
> your female work colleagues Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?
dang 7y ago
Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It leads to nasty and stupid discussions that we neither need nor want. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- paganel 7y ago
  That’s nothing ideological about telling someone that their way of seeing other human beings as inferior is wrong, as talking about a different person as belonging to someone else (the “your” part) means seeing the other person as being inferior. Yeah, as members of this community we could maybe ignore when other users talk about such views out loud, but that won’t really solve anything, would it?, it would just mean hiding everything under the rug, even empowering said user in his/her views.
  - dang 7y ago
    That's vastly overinterpreting what the commenter wrote. Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    You used "your" in your comment to refer to women (colleagues) and clearly weren't talking about women as owned livestock. Why not grant them the same usage of possessive pronouns?

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...