Are we competing? A tale of two bicyclists.

As I've indicated before, I live about 4 1/2 miles from the office where I work as an attorney.  Because I cycle about 14 mph on average, I am about 20 minutes away from work by bicycle.  That's only ten minutes more than it takes to drive.  Riding a bike…

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How to keep customers coming back for things they don’t need.

How do you keep customers coming back? Keep them constantly dissatisfied. That is the topic of this article in Orion Magazine.  The author is Jeffrey Kaplan.  Here's are a few excerpts from this well written article.   [Note:  you might be blocked from going straight into the article.  If so, go…

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“Push capitalism” turns us into full-time consumers and non-citizens

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Benjamin Barber, a renowned political theorist and a distinguished senior fellow at Demos — a public policy think tank here in New York City. Barber's most recent book is Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (2007). What's the focus of this book?…

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Giving it all away

Huffpo published this piece on a businessman who takes anti-consumerism seriously: Travel company operator Hal Taussig buys his clothes from thrift shops, resoles his shoes and reads magazines for free at the public library. The 83-year-old founder of Untours also gives away all of his company's profits to help the…

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Social movements in the consumerist world

If I were asked to divide the world into two groups of people, I would flatly refuse. It is extremely unfair, I would argue that it would be absurd to divide humans, as ineffably complex and diverse as they are, on the basis of one quality or trait. But then again, that would just be me being politically correct. I actually believe that on some level, all of us tend of categorize people into two groups on the basis of one overarching quality. We tend to empathize with individuals who ‘have’ that quality, and believe that the world would be a better place if everyone were like them. For some this ‘vital’ quality is hard work, for others humility, and for some others, it may be looks, or a sense of style. The quality that I regard as most important is the ability to be affected by your surroundings.

I have to come to realize that I have always tended to view the world as consisting of two groups of people. The first group consists of individuals who only concern themselves with the interests of their own selves and that of the immediate circle of family and friends. These individuals do the work that is expected of them, and have no interest or concern for people who are not directly related to them. The other group, whose members I admire, consists of individuals who feel connected to and, hence, are affected by the larger environment they live in.   They take …

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