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I guess I should clarify what I mean by capitalism: A combination of relatively free markets (e.g. present day markets) and private ownership of the capital wh
by drdeca 2y ago
I guess I should clarify what I mean by capitalism: A combination of relatively free markets (e.g. present day markets) and private ownership of the capital which is used to make goods and services that are then sold. I think this is a relatively standard definition, but I still think it good to say it explicitly.
Now that that has been said:
What, like lower classes have zero agency regarding their desires? Are advertisements mind control or something? I acknowledge that cultural influences can be strong, and can influence desires like this, but I don’t see why it would be necessary within capitalism that those that hold substantial capital must collectively have a stranglehold on the cultural values of the population.
Now, if people with power want to make it so that people in lower classes practically need to buy more things, by making them required for their jobs, that may well be feasible. Like, in a sense this has been nearly done with cell phones, and internet connection. But I don’t think “people buying things because they are needed for their job (or similar)” really counts as the kind of consumerism under discussion.
- immibis 2y agoIf current forms of advertising stop working, the elite class will find other ways to make you buy things.
- immibis 2y agoThis is "make" in the sense that print(1+1) makes the computer display 2. Nobody is holding a gun to the computer and threatening to destroy it if it doesn't print 2, but it still prints 2.
- drdeca 2y agoHow??? I mean, I personally don’t buy things much. And I don’t even block ads (a deliberate choice), so it isn’t like I’m preventing myself from being influenced by ads by limiting my exposure to them. (I guess mostly it is just that I dislike having to think about whether a clearly-unnecessary purchase would be excessive, so I just strongly default to not getting things? (Of course, it would be possible for me to be more frugal than I am, in that I buy fast food not that infrequently, when it would be cheaper to prepare food from ingredients from the grocery store, but I am too impatient for that.)) But like, how would they make me want stuff?
- immibis 2y agoThey don't have to make every outlier buy stuff. Just the majority is already enough.