Bred to be Buyers


Capitalism has bred a nation of buyers and sellers.  We demand a variety of wares to taste, to sample, to buy, and to discard.  It is not what we buy, but that we are able to choose from a vast array of products.  The friendly corner store disappears, swallowed by mega stores.  More products are required to satisfy the appetite of the consumer. 

          Popular art, available to the masses, is infested with sales pitches, for products, for appearances, and for lifestyles.  It is not the form of art that is celebrated, for the mania to sell every moment disfigures the artistic vision of the maker.

          As the number of jobless people increases, I wonder about the process that has resulted in a nation of people bred to be buyers.  We measure progress by the new.  For Christmas, I bought a used mp3 player for my daughter.  It’s still perfectly good. It holds over 2,000 songs.  I bought it from someone who’d upgraded to the newest version, 8 gigs rather than 2.  The new version’s big advance is that if you shake it, the songs will shuffle.  Oh wow.  But my daughter, knowing we could never afford to buy her the new version, was very excited to get the used, but still more than adequate version of the player. She quickly stated that shaking to shuffle was a stupid idea anyway.  I gave her the headphones that came with my laptop, and she was content.

          But so many lack the wisdom to accept the old, but still useful.  If it isn’t the newest, biggest, or best, it isn’t good enough.  Somehow, I think the lack of willingness to keep what is still useful, rather than buy something new, has contributed to the financial mess evident throughout the United States.  A nation built on buying what we don’t need and can’t really afford needs to learn to live within its means.  From where will the government get money to finance government promises and bailouts?  It seems like another credit-trap waiting to close its hungry jaws on the shrinking middle class and destroy the already poverty-stricken and homeless ones.