Can’t Buy Me Love… Happiness, Belonging
November 22nd, 2005
nmw said:
Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn said:
price does not have to be the ultimate driver of markets.
I am also trained as an economist (I have several documents with letters on them) and I am also inspired by the work of Schumacher — but the statement above is very difficult to swallow (especially for an economist).
Give me a buck and I’ll tell you some more.
;D nmw
Indeed nmw. It is that very training that ties you to a mindset that is only as real as we accept it to be. Our collective Industrial Era experience is but a blink of the human experience eye. The laws of economics are not so fixed, relatively (or locally relativity-wise) speaking, as those of physics or the other so-called ‘hard’ sciences.
As a human/social science, economics invites experimentation as much as it provides a growing fount of information to guide our thinking. But we cannot let that fount flood our thinking and blind us to alternatives.
We simply would never have breakthrough scientific innovation if one or more inquirers did not ask, “Does it have to be this way?”
The Big Is Good World works best when its consumers are blindly herded by a Siren song telling them that price is king. It simply does not have to be so. And your brother’s sandal story above is a case in point.
Imagine if as many smart, highly motivated economic, behavioral, social, and marketing management scientists suspended disbelief and put as much energy into exploring the multitude of other dimensions of consumer purchase decision dynamics as have been put into honing our skills at single-minded focus on price. We simply have turned a blind eye to the possibilities beyond the obvious.
If money buys stuff, and if happiness is achieved by having enough of all the right stuff — isn’t that the drumbeat of modern marketing? — then why are so many people in affluent societies so unhappy?
The answer is simple. The widely shared misbelief that the acquisition of stuff at the expense of the active and ongoing participation in community is broken. The Big Is Good World’s path to happiness leads to perpetually unsatisfied consumers. This is no accident, it is by design. The Big Is Good World would put itself out of business if stuff-consumption led to satiated customers.
We’re not saying to abandon the Big Is Good World of stuff, only to moderate it with an exciting and engaging alternative. The world desperately needs alternative markets that address the myriad of other behavioral motivators that contribute to health and happiness. And paradoxically, these other market dynamics are not likely to be based on appeals to altruistic benevolence.
When we have a well-tuned economic engine that runs on the twin cylinders of the Big Is Good World and Small Is Good World, charity as we know it will fall into a marginalized role of a tactic of last resort.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
Entry Filed under: Inprosumerism, NED - Philanthropic Franchise, Post-Autistic Economics
Can’t Buy Me Love… Happiness, Belonging
November 22nd, 2005
nmw said:
Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn said:
price does not have to be the ultimate driver of markets.
I am also trained as an economist (I have several documents with letters on them) and I am also inspired by the work of Schumacher — but the statement above is very difficult to swallow (especially for an economist).
Give me a buck and I’ll tell you some more.
;D nmw
Indeed nmw. It is that very training that ties you to a mindset that is only as real as we accept it to be. Our collective Industrial Era experience is but a blink of the human experience eye. The laws of economics are not so fixed, relatively (or locally relativity-wise) speaking, as those of physics or the other so-called ‘hard’ sciences.
As a human/social science, economics invites experimentation as much as it provides a growing fount of information to guide our thinking. But we cannot let that fount flood our thinking and blind us to alternatives.
We simply would never have breakthrough scientific innovation if one or more inquirers did not ask, “Does it have to be this way?”
The Big Is Good World works best when its consumers are blindly herded by a Siren song telling them that price is king. It simply does not have to be so. And your brother’s sandal story above is a case in point.
Imagine if as many smart, highly motivated economic, behavioral, social, and marketing management scientists suspended disbelief and put as much energy into exploring the multitude of other dimensions of consumer purchase decision dynamics as have been put into honing our skills at single-minded focus on price. We simply have turned a blind eye to the possibilities beyond the obvious.
If money buys stuff, and if happiness is achieved by having enough of all the right stuff — isn’t that the drumbeat of modern marketing? — then why are so many people in affluent societies so unhappy?
The answer is simple. The widely shared misbelief that the acquisition of stuff at the expense of the active and ongoing participation in community is broken. The Big Is Good World’s path to happiness leads to perpetually unsatisfied consumers. This is no accident, it is by design. The Big Is Good World would put itself out of business if stuff-consumption led to satiated customers.
We’re not saying to abandon the Big Is Good World of stuff, only to moderate it with an exciting and engaging alternative. The world desperately needs alternative markets that address the myriad of other behavioral motivators that contribute to health and happiness. And paradoxically, these other market dynamics are not likely to be based on appeals to altruistic benevolence.
When we have a well-tuned economic engine that runs on the twin cylinders of the Big Is Good World and Small Is Good World, charity as we know it will fall into a marginalized role of a tactic of last resort.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
Entry Filed under: Inprosumerism, NED - Philanthropic Franchise, Post-Autistic Economics
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