Creating A Culture of Thrift
There is a very interesting discussion on several conservative websites about creating a culture of thrift. From Rod Dreher:
The cultural pressure against thrift and sensible spending, and self-control, is overwhelming. I literally cannot imagine how we reverse this. I know how we in our family reverse it, or at least combat it: we teach ourselves to say no, and we practice the habit of saying no. We’re not nearly as good at it as we need to be, but we’re a lot better at it than we were. We don’t let TV run our family’s life, either, which helps.
But we still get caught up in it. And I wonder: where does the countercultural message come from? Where do people hear any message, ever, to counter the constant drumbeat from TV and media, which is: “You won’t be happy until you buy this thing or have that experience”? Who is telling people it’s a lie? The churches? Please. If the churches did tell them, would they hang around to listen?
I’ve got an idea: start by focusing on the most pernicious kind of luxury — the status symbol.
After all, some unnecessary consumer goods at least add to our enjoyment of life. My iPod is a daily pleasure as I ride the metro. Desert at a restaurant is a tasty treat. The enjoyment I derive from these items — while it can never be compared to the pleasure derived from friends, family, faith, professional achievement or other more important goods — at least don’t come at anyone’s expense. We’ve all got different tastes in life. If you’re favorite thing is fashion — if you love its aesthetics — I don’t begrudge you that new pair of high heels. But I find that same pricey pair of shoes objectionable if the primary motive for the purchase is signalling to others that you can afford them.
Friedersdorf and Dreher continue with some discussion of wedding rings, to which I can only add, I adore everything Rebecca Mead has to say in “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding,” (my review for the Washington Times is here.)
As for diminishing the power of status symbols, I think trends are already pointing that way. A lasting success of the green movement is a conception of plastic bags as disgusting. Even if you privately don’t care about the environment, you’ll feel ashamed seen in public carrying them. The inevitable looks of scorn from bystanders prevent one from acting on any impulse to litter.
One benefit to extract from the current worldwide calamity is that this generation will learn to live within their means. The dirtiest word this year is “junket.” Whether or not you can comfortably afford luxury, it is now regarded with cynicism. Celebrities are wearing the same dress twice. Canceling holiday celebrations is simply good PR strategy. The mood is status goods and status events are tacky.
This might mean a divorce from brand-as-identity as described by Rob Walker in the wonderful book Buying In. If there is no incremental gain in quality with regards to price, the product is going to fail. That’s why Apple is doing ok, but high-end hotels are slashing their prices. What is the different between a $300 hotel and a $200 hotel?
What remains to be seen is whether we can ever return to the days when we bought for quality rather than quantity. Still in Europe, you’ll see middle-income families buy Mercedes rather than say, KIA, because they’ll drive the car to the ground. The status of the brands has to do with the quality not how much your neighbors envy you. They are also more likely to buy tailor finer quality clothes or take their shoes to the cobbler when the heel wears down.
But America buys the disposable. From Ikea to Forever 21. Buying for trends rather than durability. Items are sold with implicit expiration dates. You see it at its most obscene in technology, the term is “planned obsolescence” — gadgets built to break eventually.
The trend before recession — as the recession is perversely a “trend” as much as it is a reality — was green-anything. A newly cost-conscious society, which is also an environmentally-concerned society might be the right formula for a revival in “forever” products.
Back to wedding rings — an example of the best copywriting in the history of advertising is “A diamond is forever.” Might we soon see a spin on Frances Gerety’s famous phrase in everyday goods? Attempts to heirloom-ify everything from coffee makers to swivel chairs? This is the only pen I need. I wear these shoes every day to work. I’m passing this stemware down to my grandchilden. That sort of thing.
It might be the spin a flailing luxury brand like Burberry needs to stay competitive. Louis Vuitton might start emphasizing their history of service. How if you buy anything of theirs and it breaks they will fix it — for free — in the store. That’s a service lower-cost goods can’t afford to do. Buying only one expensive bag that lasts a lifetime is a much cheaper than constantly buying, rotating, and throwing purses away.
Photography by Jean Luc Mylayne
Previously:
Rules for an American Fantasy Road Trip
Social Consequences of a Poor Economy
Suburban Ruins and The Ethics of House Flipping
Rip Mix Stitch: Free Fashion Culture
“Feeling powerless can trigger strong desires to purchase products that convey high status,” says a new study from the Journal on Consumer Research. Rob Walker wonders whether this will hold true this season. Everyone is cutting spending habits, but “if you asked consumers whether they’d pay more for a status-object if they felt ‘powerless,’ obviously they’d say no.”
The best line about Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild came from Mickey Kaus, in response to “Democrats Need to Shake The “Elitist’ Tag,” her obtuse Wall Street Journal op-ed — “You lost me at ‘de’.” Yesterday, she announced she’s the Lockness monster-equivalency of a demographic: a former Hillary supporter now backing McCain. About Obama, she said, “I feel like he is an elitist.” Nevermind that last year, in an interview with Portfolio, (who called her “the flashiest hostess in London”) she said, “I think if history is our guide, we’ve had stronger economies, more wealth creation, under Democratic presidents than we have under Republican presidents.” Obama is just too elite for the “CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world… married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild…[who] splits her time living in London and New York.” She’s planning a party for McCain right now, in which case I hope Vanity Fair is there to estimate the cost of her outfit. Since this election isn’t lacking in absurdity, I really hope “the only baroness in the DNC” steps in as a surrogate with this message. Her thoughts on “elitism” should go over well on the Sunday talkshow circuit.
It Was Never About Experience. This Election Is About Elitism
On NRO’s the Corner, Victor Davis Hanson’s answer to the question “Why Do We Like Palin?” pretty much nails exactly why Sarah Palin is the most polarizing candidate we’ve seen in the election so far (Yes, more so than HRC.)
Various reasons, but one I think is that millions of Americans are simply tired of being lectured at by smug elites. Jetting Al Gore made tens of millions finger-pointing at us about our global warming. Obama’s America, apparently unlike Rev. Wright’s Trinity Church, is a cruel, downright mean and dysfunctional place. John Kerry’s United States is one of the half-educated in need of Ivy-League enlightenment and tutorials.
So along comes someone (unlike Biden’s vastly inflated middle-class biography) who really is from the working class. She likes it—and finds snowmobiling, hunting, fishing and living in small-town America not as a wasteful use of carbon-emitting fuels, cruelty to animals, gratuitous depletion of our resources, or proof of parochial yokelism. Instead it is a life of action in an often harsh natural landscape, where physical strength is married to intelligence to bring us food, fuel, and progress.
Palin’s symbolism is the antithesis of the metrosexual wind- or body- surfing politican, and hair-plugged, neurotic TV pundit So at this time, right now, millions apparently like Palin’s atypical 19th-century profile. Again, it’s a pleasant change of pace from Harvard Law School, DC politics, “community organizing” and the can’t-do, ‘they raised the bar on me’ collective complaint.
If she can beat off the frothing Newsweek/MSNBC/New York Times inbred rabid wolves, and do it with the grace she has shown so far, she will fill a deep yearning among Americans for someone like her. A lot of Americans, if they watch reality shows, prefer truckers on ice or Bering Sea crab fishing to endless psychodramas of thirty-something suburban whiners.
So apparently they are eager to see a rare politican who is unapologetic about America’s past achievements (cf. Obama’s “tragic history” and need for more “oppression studies”), and who reminds us with pride that a muscular world of action, not community organizing, creates the bounty that others use and take for granted but so often sneer at the methods of its acquisition.
Right now, there are millions rooting for her in a way not true of Biden—and many who are criticizing her don’t have a clue why that it is so.
Well I know why I’m criticizing her, and that is because I’m a libertarian and I remember the election of 2000. Her “reforming” political views and “down-to-earth” “symbolism” only remind me of George W. Bush in his first run for president. Naturally, it wasn’t the huntin’ and fishin’ that won over independents/libertarians, but his platform on limited government, free trade, and non-interventionist foreign policy. When you think about it, Bush in 2000 sounded a lot more like Ron Paul than John McCain today. From a libertarian’s perspective now, the worst thing Democrats can do is raise taxes. But I can’t even conceive of the worst possible Republican actions because the party has consistently gone beyond my most cynical expectations.
Foreign policy is the president’s direct responsibility, the economy is mostly out of his hands (Not that they’re unrelated: a hugely expensive war doesn’t help things.) Andrew Sullivan wrote, “Do you really believe that Sarah Palin understands the distinctions between Shia and Sunni, has an opinion about the future of Pakistan, has a view of how to exploit rifts within Tehran’s leadership, knows about the tricky task of securing loose nuclear weapons? Does anyone even know if she has ever expressed a view on these matters?”
I don’t fear Palin is the female Quayle but potentially the female GWB: a weak leader nevertheless capable of getting elected for the likability factor, falling under the influence of the people surrounding her while moving up the ranks. Remember, Bush had “executive experience” as a governor of Texas before the presidency. And they share a speechwriter.
From the Washington Post: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis “suggest Palin would be able to handle foreign policy matters by leaning heavily on McCain’s staff.” You aren’t electing a person, you’re electing a party.
While much is made about her lack of “experience” canceling out Obama’s, now the Palin pick finally makes sense: this election is about “elitism.” As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “The entire Sarah Palin pick comes down to one thing–the hope that George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, or (God forbid) Will.I.Am. will make a joke about moose-burgers.”
Class in our country isn’t well examined or understood, mostly as the division has much to do with race relations. And that makes Obama’s “elite” status so bizarre given his race and upbringing.
To the GOP, “elite” has nothing to do with money or race. It has to do with “values.” “Elite” is any social liberal. Which is why the left badly needs to reframe this debate and claim its side of the culture war as reasoned, principled, logical, honorable, any word other than something suggesting the result of a college education.
It all comes back to Karl Rove’s remark, “Even if you never met him, you know this guy… He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”
As Jon Stewart put it, “Doesn’t elite mean good?…This job you’re applying for — if you get it, and it goes well, they might carve your head in a mountain. If you don’t actually think you’re better than us than what the fuck are you doing?”
(BTW, if I had Photoshop on this computer I’d impose Palin and McCain’s faces on Grant Wood’s painting. And oh, maybe mash-up Cindy McCain and Marie-Antoinette.)
Update 9/4/08: More Sarah Palin 2008 = George W. Bush 2000 articles now. Sarah Palin’s real soul mate in Salon and George W. Palin in Huffington Post
Previously:
Boris Johnson isn’t London’s New Bicycle
How to Frame the Internet: Attention and the New News Cycle
Related links:
- It’s an Election, Not a Revolution, Tyler Cowen in NYT
- Book: The Bush Betrayal, James Bovard
- Don’t LOL. Palin Pick Is About Taking On Washington — Not About Gender, Joe Trippi
- Liberty Island, The American Prospect
- President Camacho Speech from Idiocracy
- The View on Palin from an Alaskan Anti-Real ID Activist and Democrat, Reason
NYT reports on another “self-contained island” in India: Hamilton Court. Although it’s not quite as strange as Auroville, it’s a powerful example of the gulf between the country’s rich and poor. “’Women and children are not encouraged to go outside,’ said Madan Mohan Bhalla, president of the Hamilton Court Resident Welfare Association. ‘If they want to have a walk, they can walk inside. It’s a different world outside the gate.’” More here, “Gurgaon itself is a miserable cancer of construction dust, gleaming shopping malls, and failed infrastructure….The flipside of the equation is this: look how many more people can now afford to live in comfort!”
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