Conspicuous consumption isn't exactly new. These products aim to be affordable luxury brands while usually greenwashing or "socialwashing" (redwashing?) the pro

Conspicuous consumption isn't exactly new. These products aim to be affordable luxury brands while usually greenwashing or "socialwashing" (redwashing?) the product to appeal to consumers who either try to be more conscious (but don't or can't invest the time to see through the marketing) or who want to appear more conscious while steering clear of the perceived ickiness of the causes they support (e.g. direct contact with homeless people). I'm actually not sure whether some of the mentioned price tags aren't actually justified given the overhead of the x-washing (e.g. supplying homeless shelters with variable amounts of socks rather than simply setting up a recurring donation). The real grift are white label electronics bulk purchases from Alibaba and sold at a 10x to 100x price tag. There is an entire industry in creating brands out of whole cloth to do just that.