Reply to Ted and Brad

Brad DeLong delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Tue Jul 3 10:23:09 PDT 2001



>Sez Brad:
>
>>So here in the--enormously wealthy by all previous
>>standards--industrial core we *should* have broken through into the
>>realm of freedom. But then we take our culture and turn around and
>>reenslave ourselves: we reenter the realm of necessity by deciding
>>that what we "need" is not to live our lives but to acquire the cash
>>to buy a Ford Expedition and a projection TV?
>
>Dunno what others reckon, Brad, but that'll do me nicely (insofar as we're
>taking the point of view of the relatively few for whom, unlike yours
>truly, Expeditions and projection TVs are realistic propositions, anyway).

Ah. But one of the big points is that they are *not* realistic propositions even for the middle class in the industrial core--but the cultural engine tries to convince everyone that they are. Or, as my wife began to rant while watching "Stigmata": "She's a hairdresser! Hairdressers in Manhattan do not live along in 1200 square-foot lofts with designer furniture! Hollywood is teaching a generation of teenagers that if they drop out of high school and become hairdressers they will live in 1200 square foot lofts in Manhattan--and that there is something wrong with them if they don't!"

So that the gap between what the culture teaches you about the material prerequisites for daily life and what you can actually afford is larger today than it has ever been before, and so--although richer than ever before--we are more enslaved to necessity than ever before.

I'm not sure I buy this argument completely. But it is a powerful one. Pursuit of profit creates an extremely strong incentive to display images that magnify people's beliefs about their material "needs," and they then warp their lives to achieve them. As if an invisible hand is dealing to the world from a deck full of jokers...

Brad Delong



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