Ubiquitous conspicuousity

At a park to weeks ago, a musician started singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I was talking with an acquaintance, who immediately pulled out his smart phone, clicked on a few buttons and brought up the movie “The Wizard of Oz” to play on his 1 ½” screen. He explained that he loved the movie and that he could watch it wherever he wanted. Impressive technology? Of course, but watching “The Wizard of Oz” (or any movie) is never such an important thing that I'd need to carry it in my pocket. Was my acquaintance really trying to tell me about his love of "The Wizard of Oz," or was he subconsciously trying to communicate something else to me?img_8221 For many years we’ve been trying to convince ourselves that electronics manufacturers were right that we HAD to have their gadgets, including 50" screen HD TVs. For decades, we’ve been convincing ourselves that electronic audio manufacturers were correct that we “needed” to plunk down $2,000 for high-end audio components with thick copper cables lest the sound degradation would piss us off too much to enjoy our music. But here we are in an age where small is cool, and we’re somehow able to enjoy full length movies on tiny lo-res phone and iPod screens. And people are somehow surviving with small low-res youtube videos. And consider that the music almost everyone is enjoying on their mp3 players is sampled at a noticeably lower rate than CD-quality. And consider that CD quality sample rates are severely degraded compared to live music. But somehow we’re now OK with far less than perfect because small and convenient and high tech are cool. I’m in the process of reading Geoffrey Miller’s riveting new book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. We’ve all heard of conspicuous consumption (originally coined by Veblen). Miller refines and extends Veblen's concept, setting out the differences between conspicuous waste, conspicuous precision and conspicuous reputation as signaling principles. Cars exemplifying these three principles would be the Hummer (waste), Lexus (precision) and BMW (reputation). Conspicuous precision “can be achieved only through time, attention, and diligence, while conspicuous reputation (brand names) reflects a “vulnerability to social sanctions.” Most products exhibit each of these three forms of “signal reliability.” Other signaling principles including conspicuous rarity (exotic pets or pink diamonds) and conspicuous antiquity (ancient coins). I find it interesting how much we fool ourselves about how much we “need” products based on these qualities. We “needed” large high-quality electronic audio and visual players until it became a much more impressive display to have extremely small portable electronics. It turns out that our “need” for things isn’t ultimately about need for the product’s qualities. It’s about trying to impress others with our ability to differentiate and afford various types of products. A few years ago, I was looking at stunning images of a coral reef on the big new HD TV sets at Costco. I asked my wife whether we should think about “moving up” to a HD TV set. She asked me: “How often have you been watching a movie on our 25-year old TV set when it occurred to you that you weren’t enjoying the show because the screen was not huge or high definition? I answered truthfully: never. We still have our quarter-century old TV set and I’ve never again been tempted to “move up.” But I also admit that if I were trying to impress people today, I wouldn't be able to do it by showing off my TV. I wouldn’t be signaling that I can notice and afford fine engineering tolerances. I might show off my TV nonetheless, to signal my frugality, but my old TV wouldn’t be impressive to modern-day Americans, given that it is not (today) an expensive signal in any sense—I could buy a TV like mine very cheaply indeed at a garage sale. Miller's book is a powerful reminder that our "need" to buy SO many things is often not about the things themselves, but about the need to tell the world something about ourselves in order to increase our social status or to attract mates. Miller has a lot to say about the differences among the types of conspicuosity. For instance, Aristocrats eschew conspicuous waste. They tend to hone in on conspicuous precision and reputation. For more on Miller’s theory, see this book review at the NYT.

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Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

I've repeatedly written about Geoffrey Miller based on the many provocative ideas presented in his earlier book, The Mating Mind. (e.g., see my earlier post, "Killer High Heels"). A gifted and entertaining writer, Miller is also an evolutionary psychologist. His forte is hauling his scientific theories out into the real world in order to persuade us that we didn't really understand some of the things that seemed most familiar to us. In his new book, Spent, Miller asks why we continuously buy all that stuff that we don't really need? Miller's answer is twofold. Yes, human animals have been physically and psychologically honed over the eons this to crave certain types of things over others to further their chances at survival and reproduction. That's only half the answer, however. We must also consider "marketing," which is

The most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. . . . it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.

Is the modern version of marketing a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes.

On the upside it promises a golden age in which social institutions and markets are systematically organized on the basis of strong purple research to maximize human happiness. What science did for perception, marketing promises to do for production: it tests intuition and insight against empirical fact area market research uses mostly the same empirical tools as experimental psychology, but with larger research budgets, better-defined questions, more representative samples of people, and more social impact.

Here is a July 2009 interview of Geoffrey Miller by Geraldyne Doogue of the Australian Broadcast Network: Most of us are quite familiar with the downside of marketing. It encourages us to buy things we don't really need. But marketing doesn't merely clutter up our houses and garages; it corrupts our souls:

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What we buy versus what makes us happy

Geoffrey Miller has just published a new book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. I haven't read it yet, but I am now ordering it, based on Miller's terrific prior work (see here, for example). In the meantime, I did enjoy this NYT blog review of Spent, which includes this provocative question:

List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.

If you're looking for simplistic answers, you won't get them from Miller. I won't spoil the answers he obtained or his analysis of those answers, but you'll find them here. [addendum] I found this one item refreshingly honest. Refreshingly, because I know a lot of parents, I see their faces, I hear their complaints (and their exhultations). I know that it's PC to say that having children is a continuous wonderful joy and that all parents are glad they did had children. Miller's research suggests that the answer is not this simple:

[Here's an answer that appears [much more on the ‘expensive’ than on the ‘happy’ lists [includes] Children, including child care, school fees, child support, fertility treatments. Costly, often disappointing, usually ungrateful. Yet, the whole point of life, from a Darwinian perspective. Parental instincts trump consumer pleasure-seeking.

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The extent of the remedy for our financial ailments

How much public money is at stake in the attempt to fix our financial woes? Bloomberg adds it up:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

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