>As above. Beware left criticism of mass consumption
>preferences, say I.
Neither Naomi Klein nor I am guilty of such. Or, more specifically, I - and I think she agrees with me - have nothing against wanting nice things. What I think is wacky is paying $150 for shoes that cost $2 to make. In the economic sense, the hallucinatory markup is a pure loss, since it's money that could have been spent elsewhere. I suppose you could argue that the $148 (less "normal" profit) is enjoyed by the consumer as a consumption of style and positional good services, but that seems a bit of a stretch.
I'm no fan of hair shirts, though, no matter how cheap they are.
Doug