Capitalism is a Con

So, after much anticipation you've just stood in a line for hours on end to lay out hundreds of dollars for the latest techno gadget. A revolutionary masterpiece that can do what no other device does, it'll change your world, save you time, make you happier and most of all make you look cool!

Or, did you just buy another piece of plastic that in a month won't really display any real life value. Perhaps you just fell into the sticky web of a marketing masterplan.

We are being exploited as consumers by the people who make profits from persuading us to buy things we don't need.

The aim of the companies that sell us goods and services is to make profits. And a lot of those goods are perfectly useless, or are much more expensive than they need to be because you are paying extra for a brand name, a picture of a film or television character or for a slogan. Brand names and royalties on film characters and slogans are all that some companies actually own. Product sales are sometimes totally driven by hype or marketing driven hysteria creating desire and want or a must have item.

Look in any discount gift store. There are lots of totally useless things that people buy just because they are cheap and attractive. And these gismos are self-proliferating. Instead of one action character toy, there are 150 to collect, and a book listing them so you know you haven't missed any out. Instead of one teddy, you buy 50 different colored ones. Collect them all. And when you have collected them all, new ones will be released.

Fashion clothing is another area where we tend to spend much more than we need. We throw out our jeans with zippers because this year we are supposed to wear jeans with buttons. Maybe next year jeans with zippers will be back but we can't use our old ones because the new ones will be flares.

A lot of the things that we spend money on are really of no earthly use to anybody. Entrepreneurs want us to buy heaps of things we don't need so the profits keep coming in. Manufacturers keep inventing more and more things because entrepreneurs know that consumers will keep buying until they run out of money, get into debt and then still spend more. The rich make profits and the poor are kept that way.

Money is finite. The things available for you to spend it on are more or less infinite. However much you have, you could spend more. When you spend money you are making a choice to buy one thing and not another, and to spend rather than to save. Make the choice to spend consciously, knowing that you are doing without something else, that you are reducing your available funds.

But think about this. Do the rich spend all their money? They may spend a lot, but if they spent it all they wouldn't be rich.

Keep at least some sort of global perspective when you spend money. We are better off than most of the world's people and we tend to see the value of money only in the context of our own society. We pay $30 for a haircut or a restaurant meal without thinking twice about it. If we give $30 to a third world charity we think of ourselves as being generous. Yet the $30 will go a lot further than a haircut or a single meal in a third world country. It could improve the lives of people who live on subsistence incomes and don't always have even the basic needs of life. It could make life a lot easier for someone, somewhere.
I am not suggesting that you don't have haircuts or eat out, only that you think of the value of the money when you spend it and the opportunity cost of your spending choices.

Originally submitted by: Jack Sampson