Conspicuous Consumption Taken To Extremes

[Stella_Omega]

It's not your money, though. Why does it insult you? I'd be insulted by a system that is so conductive to these kinds of income inequalities. Not by individuals taking advantage of them.

ah, but- the individuals can choose the ways in which they take advantage.

Always had enough to eat, have you? Never had to worry about being evicted?
No kids to support? No medicines, perhaps, which you are dependent on?

I am not attacking you personally, and I am sure that in a more plentiful year, I too, might be able to take a high moral ground and laugh at these follies. But although money itself may be a game- the lack of it is not.

... I was talking about this to my daughter. We agreed that these past few years have been tough and that we will enjoy our money once it comes in, once our business gets off the ground.
It occurred to me, that my experiences these lean days are a clue as to why so many of my wealthy freinds behave the way they do. I know quite well that some poor and struggling friend of mine will be angered by my consumerism; "You spent a THOUSAND DOLLARS on CD's and I can't pay my rent!"

yes, well, I'd downloaded all that music illegally, see, and I owe the artists their royalties...

But I hope I'd never want to rub my wealth in other people's faces.

It's also almost a joke, that this family's wealth comes from textiles. If Prostitution is the second oldest profession, clothing must be the third. How many Weavers and Tailors have been cast as the buffoons or bad guys, from the Middle Ages onward?

 

[minsue]

Just cos I wanna.

Back atchya.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Originally Posted by Roxanne Appleby: "Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the buyer and seller. "

I can't wholly agree with you there, but ...

Huzzah! I knew we'd make a Marxist of you yet.

(Good to see you, Roxanne.)

Shanglan

Hiya, Shang - thanks.

Yeah, that first item you note is really the one thing in my post that in hindsight I realized one could quibble with, for a single reason: Imperialism, broadly defined. The exploitative aspects of it, to be precise. Even there, the case is not black-and-white. $24 in beads really is of greater value to those Indians than Manhattan was in their generation - and no one can predict the future. But more to the point, when Aramco, Inc. makes a corrupt deal coopting Sheik ibn Fuck-Everyone-Else, who gets a gimcrack palace and 72 "virgins" in return for establishing a police state and selling the patrimony of the native population, which is 800 gazillion barrels of oil 5,000 feet undergound, the value of which they have no conception, that is a problem for that particular statement: "Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the buyer and seller." In that case, you essentially have a theif and his "fence" though, so I don't think it disproves the principle. Thiefs and fences are a fact of life, however, and when they operate on a really big scale like in this example one cannot ignore the problem.

Aside from that example though, I think the statement really does apply, almost without exception. I think many of the "exceptions" that are frequently cited really don't hold water when you get down to cases - that they are viewed as "exploitation" is more a function of the elitist viewpoint of the condemners than reality. Example - I sit on a chair on the beach in Mexico with my feet in the ocean, and a little kid with leather sandals runs back and forth across the hot sand to bring me cold beers all day long for a buck apiece. It's worth a buck to me, and the 80-cents a bottle he makes is worth spending his day on hot sand to him, yet I have no doubt that some would say I am "exploiting" him. Not so.



If this be Marxism - long live the revolution!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Roxanne - Your clarification was very helpful. I wasn't wholly sure where the "unforced" was modifying in the original post, but am more clear now.

I think I would chiefly quibble, on the remaining point, on the question of relative power to resist; that is, I don't actually think that gasoline is worth eight dollars a gallon, and if I had a choice I wouldn't pay it, but if it's my only way to work, knowing that alternative fuels will begin to boom some time in the next few years if the prices stay at this level isn't much help in letting me feel that I'm making an unforced decision in what I'm spending now. The problem, I think, is when a person selling a single physical commodity is able to affect a wide range of other knock-on issues - your employment, your ability to obtain food, etc. If you need those other things badly enough, then you're essentially in a forced position when it comes to the commodity being sold.

I think that that ties into even the seller ideal position as well; that is, if we look at price gouging, when someone supplying a non-captive buying group at once price suddenly doubles or triples the price when other options are removed or supplies run a little low, buyers are bound to wonder why the deal that looked fine when everyone was at relative ease is suddenly not enough money for someone who is investing neither more energy nor more time in supplying a commodity. I think what most buyers resent is the fact that they're being asked to radically expand their payments simply because they are helpless - and to that degree forced.

But indeed, the relation of the worker to the means of production is the primary relation in life - or so Marx argues. It's nice to see staunch opponents find a little middle ground now and then.

Shanglan

 

[Liar]

Ok so now it wasn't real money, but money destined to be shredded anyway, but ftsoa, let's assume it was proper cash, like the townsfolk seems to have thought.

What then? It's their money, right? True. And also not. In a technical sense, the actual bills are France's money. And they (it looked like) took it out of the system, instead of using it as it was intended, to buy stuff with.

If they had bought a big-ass cake for the cash, some baker could have fed his family for a year. If they had hired a circus, some clown would get new shoes. Money is made for circulation, not for destruction. That's why I don't get upset when rich people spend their money on luxury. That wedding seems to have been a giant luxury spend-fest even without the confetti, and yet, that's the part that people got upset about. Because somebody made the luxury items, and are getting the rich peoples' money for their efforts.

When rich people hoard money Scrooge style, or like people thought those folks did, actually destroy it, that's something else. To spend is tacky but accepted, because it benefits those you buy from. To waste benefits nobody.

 

[SummerMorning]

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. Those pieces of paper are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men and women who produce. Money is made by the effort of every honest man and woman, each to the extent of his ability. An honest person is one who knows that he or she can't consume more than he or she has produced. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the person who buys them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the buyer and seller. Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

Money is paper. Money has no value. Well, life isn't paper - but I agree. Life is often quite ridiculous.

I disagree with you a bit on your definition of money ... but that's a minor quibble.

 

[SummerMorning]

I don't see how we could have one without the other.

A system is only a group of individuals each deciding to behave in a particular way. The most grievous injustices of any system are only the sum total of the number of individuals in it willing to sacrifice the welfare of other people for their own ends. A system can make it easier or harder to exploit others, but each act of exploitation is an individual choice. Surely we must expect more of individuals than to absolve them of responsibility for any actions they are not forcibly prevented from taking.

Shanglan

Oh, I agree ... individuals must also be responsible. But often exploitation is not an *act* of exploitation. It's a whole system within it is impossible to act without exploiting.

For example, you can't legally earn money without being "exploited" by the state which then uses that money on various projects many of which are legally "exploited" by unscrupulous individuals for their own ends. (The quoths are because I don't look at it *quite* so harshly)

 

[SummerMorning]

Just cos I wanna.

Oya. Good to see you.

 

[SummerMorning]

Seems that sometimes the people with the most money have the least class.

Or they're just the most visible ... I dunno. I sometimes think most people have mostly no class.

 

[SummerMorning]

ah, but- the individuals can choose the ways in which they take advantage.

Always had enough to eat, have you? Never had to worry about being evicted?
No kids to support? No medicines, perhaps, which you are dependent on?

I am not attacking you personally, and I am sure that in a more plentiful year, I too, might be able to take a high moral ground and laugh at these follies. But although money itself may be a game- the lack of it is not.

...

But I hope I'd never want to rub my wealth in other people's faces.

...

I agree ... mostly I'm just playing his --> --> advocate. I think people who have to boast about their wealth are seriously insecure and unsatisfied with themselves. I also don't want that kind of person as my friend.

But yes ... generally my life has always been good. No problems worth complaining about. Although, I'm sure there are people in my situation who'd have a lot to bitch about, I seriously think I have no problems at all.

Or maybe I'm just an optimist.

 

[SummerMorning]

Aside from that example though, I think the statement really does apply, almost without exception. I think many of the "exceptions" that are frequently cited really don't hold water when you get down to cases - that they are viewed as "exploitation" is more a function of the elitist viewpoint of the condemners than reality. Example - I sit on a chair on the beach in Mexico with my feet in the ocean, and a little kid with leather sandals runs back and forth across the hot sand to bring me cold beers all day long for a buck apiece. It's worth a buck to me, and the 80-cents a bottle he makes is worth spending his day on hot sand to him, yet I have no doubt that some would say I am "exploiting" him. Not so.

If this be Marxism - long live the revolution!

No, that kid isn't really being exploited ... what *is* exploitation is somebody working for you, netting you an income of, say 10.000 USD per month and you paying him 1.000 USD per month. That might smell of exploitation. But it's always a value statement.

And I'm a Marxist Capitalist now.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Roxanne - Your clarification was very helpful. I wasn't wholly sure where the "unforced" was modifying in the original post, but am more clear now.

I think I would chiefly quibble, on the remaining point, on the question of relative power to resist; that is, I don't actually think that gasoline is worth eight dollars a gallon, and if I had a choice I wouldn't pay it, but if it's my only way to work, knowing that alternative fuels will begin to boom some time in the next few years if the prices stay at this level isn't much help in letting me feel that I'm making an unforced decision in what I'm spending now. The problem, I think, is when a person selling a single physical commodity is able to affect a wide range of other knock-on issues - your employment, your ability to obtain food, etc. If you need those other things badly enough, then you're essentially in a forced position when it comes to the commodity being sold.

I think that that ties into even the seller ideal position as well; that is, if we look at price gouging, when someone supplying a non-captive buying group at once price suddenly doubles or triples the price when other options are removed or supplies run a little low, buyers are bound to wonder why the deal that looked fine when everyone was at relative ease is suddenly not enough money for someone who is investing neither more energy nor more time in supplying a commodity. I think what most buyers resent is the fact that they're being asked to radically expand their payments simply because they are helpless - and to that degree forced.

But indeed, the relation of the worker to the means of production is the primary relation in life - or so Marx argues. It's nice to see staunch opponents find a little middle ground now and then.

Shanglan

Marx was not a dummy, he was just very wrong about some very important things. His materialist theory of history is one thing that has stood up well. As usual he pushes it a little too hard in places, but we can't imagine how one could understand history without that "lens."

Shang, I will set aside the price gouging thing - you and I and some others here BTDT - and focus on the other thing, which is your characterization of "forced" exchanges. Although you don't say so, and try to narrow it to just certain commodities, in your version, any exchange for any non-luxury product is "forced," because one cannot exist without those things (like food, for example.) But, if you take that view, you've walked right back into Herr Marx's camp, because the logic of that view is that it is immoral to withhold these things ("to each according to his need") and we know that economic theories based on that don't work out very well in the real world.

The "force" in the exchanges is really imposed by reality - there is only so much stuff out there. Scarcity is an "existential reality." Economics is all about how will we distribute the stuff, and provide proper incentives to make more stuff. As long as we live we can never stop making more stuff, because we consume stuff to live. So you can call these exchanges "forced," but it is essentially a meaningless statement in terms of understanding and organizing human action.

You have tried to set aside a special case markets where "a person selling a single physical commodity is able to affect a wide range of other knock-on issues," but I don't think that changes anything in a way that makes it any different from any other market. To cite your example of the $8 gasoline, the reality is there is a limited supply of gas, and nearly unlimited demand. Somehow the product must be rationed. In our system we do this through prices. We accept that some inequality results, but for many reasons this turns out to be the method that is most efficient, gives the most people the most choice, and automatically brings about the economic shifts needed to adjust to changes in the supply/demand equation, without any omniscient philosopher king ("central committee") having to act.

If the consequences include inequality that we perceive is too extreme, nothing prevents giving the most disadvantaged an indirect subsidy. Not a direct subsidy, like gas discount vouchers for the poor, because that screws up the rationing that must happen, and that prices accomplish. An indirect subsidy in this example would just be cash. The recipient can buy gas with it, or use a little less gas and pocket the difference - the same conservation incentive is poking at him just like everyone else, then.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Ok so now it wasn't real money, but money destined to be shredded anyway, but ftsoa, let's assume it was proper cash, like the townsfolk seems to have thought.

What then? It's their money, right? True. And also not. In a technical sense, the actual bills are France's money. And they (it looked like) took it out of the system, instead of using it as it was intended, to buy stuff with.

If they had bought a big-ass cake for the cash, some baker could have fed his family for a year. If they had hired a circus, some clown would get new shoes. Money is made for circulation, not for destruction. That's why I don't get upset when rich people spend their money on luxury. That wedding seems to have been a giant luxury spend-fest even without the confetti, and yet, that's the part that people got upset about. Because somebody made the luxury items, and are getting the rich peoples' money for their efforts.

When rich people hoard money Scrooge style, or like people thought those folks did, actually destroy it, that's something else. To spend is tacky but accepted, because it benefits those you buy from. To waste benefits nobody.

I agree with this completely.

When someone detroys bank notes in the way we thought this person had done, they increase the value of everyone else's bank notes, so they have not literally wasted the money. BUT - the increase in the value is so incredibly miniscule - like .000000000001 percent - that it is meaningless, and so is in effect identical to literally wasting it. Nobody benefits, unlike your examples.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

No, that kid isn't really being exploited ... what *is* exploitation is somebody working for you, netting you an income of, say 10,000 USD per month and you paying him 1000 USD per month. That might smell of exploitation. But it's always a value statement.

And I'm a Marxist Capitalist now.

And awaaaay we go -

Your example is not exploitation. The $1000 a month is worth more to this worker than the time he spent to earn it. It is a voluntary exchange.

You may say that a situation in which such an imbalance exists is implicitly exploitative. It is not. There might be circumstances in which exploitative exchanges do occur - my example in a previous post of the corrupt sheik selling his people's patrimony for a bribe is an example of one variety - and in those cases this could be one of the exploitations. But just because the arithmetic of the exchange you cited violates some arbitrary aesthetic personal preference you hold does not make it exploitative.

Also, I ackowledge in my post No. 62 that we may as a society decide that the inequality resulting from wide open free markets (labor included) is too extreme because it generates real suffering at the bottom, and choose to subsidize those at the bottom. You won't get an argument from me, so long as we do so in ways that don't create perverse incentives (like you get more money if you have more babies, and it doesn't matter if you work or not), and don't screw up the supply/demand balancing act that free markets automatically accomplish (also per my post No. 62 above). (Including screw up that supply/demand balancing act in the labor market, but that is the topic of a different thread.)

You may say I'm contradicting myself here, but I don't think I am. I won't subscribe to mandates and redistributions imposed because of arbitrary aesthetic preferences, but that does not mean I must also oppose redistribution done to relieve real suffering that is not the fault of the individual.

 

[SummerMorning]

And awaaaay we go -

Your example is not exploitation. The $1000 a month is worth more to this worker than the time he spent to earn it. It is a voluntary exchange.

You may say that a situation in which such an imbalance exists is implicitly exploitative. It is not. There might be circumstances in which exploitative exchanges do occur - my example in a previous post of the corrupt sheik selling his people's patrimony for a bribe is an example of one variety - and in those cases this could be one of the exploitations. But just because the arithmetic of the exchange you cited violates some arbitrary aesthetic personal preference you hold does not make it exploitative.

Also, I ackowledge in my post No. 62 that we may as a society decide that the inequality resulting from wide open free markets (labor included) is too extreme because it generates real suffering at the bottom, and choose to subsidize those at the bottom. You won't get an argument from me, so long as we do so in ways that don't create perverse incentives (like you get more money if you have more babies, and it doesn't matter if you work or not), and don't screw up the supply/demand balancing act that free markets automatically accomplish (also per my post No. 62 above). (Including screw up that supply/demand balancing act in the labor market, but that is the topic of a different thread.)

You may say I'm contradicting myself here, but I don't think I am. I won't subscribe to mandates and redistributions imposed because of arbitrary aesthetic preferences, but that does not mean I must also oppose redistribution done to relieve real suffering that is not the fault of the individual.

(place holder removed)

Well, no, Roxanne ... away we do not go. I told you - in my example, whether it is exploitation or not is a value judgement. If neither person is feeling exploited, how can it be exploitation?

In Africa we had a local housekeeper who cleaned and helped around the house. My ex-girlfriend was appalled that I saw nothing wrong with this. She was also shocked at the low wage we were paying her. In point of fact, we were paying her a wage 3x higher than average, were also paying for her children's schooling and for her to take afternoon classes to become a seamstress. We also bought her a sewing machine when we left. Obviously, none of the involved were feeling very much exploited in the circumstances - but my ex saw a dreadful inequality being perpetrated. Pointing out that NOT hiring the housekeeper would have meant WORSE living conditions for her didn't matter - all she could think of was the "poor woman you were degrading by nearly making her your slave."

The whole point is, that I actually pretty much agree with you. Subsiding people for the sake of subsidies is obscene. I could give you actual examples from my country that truly are obscene. Oh, the tax burden is ridiculous as well. But that's just if you're interested.

So, you see, Roxy: we agree.

 

[yui]

Hey yui!

Nice to see you back. Been wondering where you were.

Hey Rob!

Good to see you. Hope all is right in your world.

Back atchya.

http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/japan/75827.gif

Oya. Good to see you.

Thanks, Summer. Good to see you, too.

Oh! And I've been lurking on your blog.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

So, you see, Roxy: we agree.

Thud. . .

 

[BlackShanglan]

Shang, I will set aside the price gouging thing - you and I and some others here BTDT - and focus on the other thing, which is your characterization of "forced" exchanges. Although you don't say so, and try to narrow it to just certain commodities, in your version, any exchange for any non-luxury product is "forced," because one cannot exist without those things (like food, for example.) But, if you take that view, you've walked right back into Herr Marx's camp, because the logic of that view is that it is immoral to withhold these things ("to each according to his need") and we know that economic theories based on that don't work out very well in the real world.

Two little quibbles here. First, the gouging, in my examples, was intended as connected to the vital commodities, and I would like to keep them together because I'm not arguing either of them as a thing in itself. That is, I perceive exchange of money for vital goods as suitably regulated by capitalism in most non-crisis situations. When, however, gouging or hoarding occur in periods of temporary shortage, capitalism itself shows its ugly side. While the broad theory of capitalism works well - more goods get produced when the cost of goods both stimulates supply and communicates to the demand end just how much effort they're asking for - none of that useful stuff gets done in a situation of gouging on basic commodities in a shortage not created by market forces - i.e., a hurricane or what have you. What happens then is that the buyers get no greater value for the item and tend to perceive no greater specific value, as they've been trading for it at roughly the same value for some time. Price rises occur, in that circumstance, based only on scarcity - but in a system in which the price rises will not increase the supply of the item through investment or production, thereby eliminating the chief gain capitalism normally can claim from rising prices. Under those specific circumstances - when rising prices cannot stimulate further production or supply and can only lead to hoarding and restriction of vital goods to the most wealthy, then yes, I think that there is a severe breakdown. How severe is normally only noticed by the wealthy when that inherent "might makes right" principle starts getting picked up by persons whose "might" consists of small arms rather than cash.

The "force" in the exchanges is really imposed by reality - there is only so much stuff out there. Scarcity is an "existential reality." Economics is all about how will we distribute the stuff, and provide proper incentives to make more stuff. As long as we live we can never stop making more stuff, because we consume stuff to live. So you can call these exchanges "forced," but it is essentially a meaningless statement in terms of understanding and organizing human action.

I disagree. My point was not that people shouldn't have to continue to supply their needs, but that claiming that capitalism can only result in trades agreeable and beneficial to both parties is, in some cases, pressing the definition of "beneficial" toward that of "muggings are beneficial to both parties once completed, as one has money and the other has ceased to suffer." If disparities in income and possessions at the beginning of the trade offer a very substantial advantage to one party, such that he can afford to sit on a supply of vital goods desperately needed by another party until desperation forces the second party to submit to any terms he chooses to apply to the trade, I'd call that force, and force well beyond the normal "need to buy milk today" variety.

You have tried to set aside a special case markets where "a person selling a single physical commodity is able to affect a wide range of other knock-on issues," but I don't think that changes anything in a way that makes it any different from any other market. To cite your example of the $8 gasoline, the reality is there is a limited supply of gas, and nearly unlimited demand. Somehow the product must be rationed. In our system we do this through prices. We accept that some inequality results, but for many reasons this turns out to be the method that is most efficient, gives the most people the most choice, and automatically brings about the economic shifts needed to adjust to changes in the supply/demand equation, without any omniscient philosopher king ("central committee") having to act.

Here, alas, I have a great deal less faith in money than you do. Generally, history suggests to me not only that scarce commodities will be monopolized in order to allow greater leverage in price-gouging (therefore not efficiently distributing the goods but very inefficiently leaving most of them unused or unavailable, as in the international diamond cartels), but that commodities rather less scarce will be subject to determined attempts to make them more so for the benefit of those holding the main supplies. I can't buy into the theory that capitalism is inherently the most efficient way of distributing goods; very often, historical example shows us that it's only efficient at centralizing them, which is not the same thing. It contains in its structure many incentives to use, marshall, and distribute goods in very inefficient and ineffective ways.

If the consequences include inequality that we perceive is too extreme, nothing prevents giving the most disadvantaged an indirect subsidy. Not a direct subsidy, like gas discount vouchers for the poor, because that screws up the rationing that must happen, and that prices accomplish. An indirect subsidy in this example would just be cash. The recipient can buy gas with it, or use a little less gas and pocket the difference - the same conservation incentive is poking at him just like everyone else, then.

Again, I think what's missing here, and what always seems to be missing to me in free-market visions of how capitalism helps ration scarce goods, is that the scarcer the goods become, the higher the profit there is to be made in selling them. Someone's getting rich at the top. This may seem to be a happy coincidence, but ultimately it is not. Calling sky-rocketing prices "rationing" I think disingenous; it attempts to tie the process, metaphorically, to the old rationing booklets used in the wars. But those booklets achieved, or were meant to achieve, quite the opposite effect. Capitalism, at heart, proposes that the richest people should consume the most scarce commodities; rationing was meant to help spread the burden over all classes, so that the richest were restricted from taking everything for themselves by dint of greater economic force. The problem with unbridled capitalism as a form of rationing is that it forms an active disincentive to resupply; it makes shortages profitable things, as any of us living in California a few years ago could have verified. While it's true that high profits can lead to restriction of goods, restriction of goods can also lead to high profits, and that's the part that I don't see many free-market advocates addressing. The incidental fact that the person in control of a commodity in short supply makes a fortune if allowed to gouge as he likes cannot be simply ignored; anything that makes someone a fortune is going to become a very popular behavior, and while in some cases that can be good - people might lay in more supplies of the product in case of another shortage - it can also be bad: people might realize that the easiest way to increase their profits on the supplies they currently have is to cut back access and create a shortage. And at that point, we're very far from efficient distribution of anything.

Shanglan