It makes sense to distinguish between products and fetishes. Most commodities sold today are not products in a utilitarian sense of the world but fetishes - or items that provide the buyer with some magic-like powers or sense of security.
When I got off the boat in 1981, I developed a nasty habit of compulsive shopping - I would take my kid for a "walk" and end up in a mall, shopping for stuff that almost invariably ended up in my junk storage. I later discovered that what really attracted me to the malls was not the junk that I was foolishly buying but the people - malls were the only places where one could be among people, for otherwise US settlements (except New York) were for the most part deserted.
A related discovery that I made after getting off the boat (I wish I researched the living in the US before I got on the boat!) was that cars are not means of transportation but bubbles providing a sense of personal security. US-ers tend to be afraid of almost everything, particularly strangers, and they frantically look for a sense of security from human interaction. Cars provide them with that sense. This is why they do not mind spending thousands of dollars of their personal income on them, almost as much as on housing (according to NIPA), not counting costs of gas, tickets and repairs, and would not trade them for public transit even if they could save time and money.
When I made that discovery, I got rid of the car. I take trains and buses and that way I can have a conversation with a stranger every now and then. These tend to be older folks and foreigners, as the younger US-ers completely lost the art of conversation - they tend to communicate in monosyllabic jargon and references to pop-culture icons.
However, in all honesty I must say that commodity fetishism in EE was just as bad if not worse. Perhaps not conspicuous consumption, but showing off material possessions in a really crass and tacky way. I remember a neighbor who could not get a driver license (it is much more difficult to do in most European countries) so she could not drive, but nonetheless every day she would sit in her car and read a book for while so everyone could see it was HER car. People would bring second hand stuff from the West, from used jeans to used cars, and show it off to the neighbors. Pathetic. Still makes me puke when I think about it.
Immigrants were even worse. Taking pictures in front of other people houses and cars and send them home as one's own was quite common. When I visited my old friends a few years ago the commented that I was the only person "returning from the West" who did not show "the pictures."
Commodity fetishism is almost ubiquitous. The only way to free oneself from its spell is to experience it to nausea and then reflect on all that one lost (a really long list, indeed) under its spell.
Wojtek