Shopping as a civic duty

Madison Avenue has persuaded us to make superfluous comforts and conveniences higher priorities than the basic needs of other human beings. Its success in manipulating us into irrational behavior is testified by the consumer’s neglect even of human beings closely related to him. In fact, he has learned even to neglect his future self. The channels of communication owned by capitalists are filled with their messages of prodigality and gluttony. In private we must counter them with messages of thrift and charity. We cannot silence those who would mislead us. But we can argue with them. Seductive marketers tell us money spent accelerates the economy, while money saved retards it. They attempt to transform prodigality and gluttony into civic virtues, and thrift and charity into antisocial vices. Their arguments are patently false. A dollar I spend to help the less fortunate goes into the economy just as surely as a dollar I spend on frivolous luxury. When I buy shares of agricultural enterprises, farmers spend it on tractors, warehouses, and other durable infrastructure of production. We are fond of ridiculing miserliness as a vice. But how it is a vice to spend money on productive assets, rather than assets with no purpose other than to display our wealth? The idea that there is a civic duty to consume rather than to save and give is merely a thin and flimsy rationalization for our prodigality and gluttony.