| Some years ago I stumbled across a BBC documentary called "The Century of the Self." The film attributes the explosion of mass-consumerism in the 20th century to targeted marketing efforts championed by Edward Bernays, the American nephew to Sigmund Freud. The film posits that Bernays leveraged his uncle's theory of the subconscious to design messages that exploit the psychological responses of human beings in the aggregate. Under the label of "public relations," Bernays sold these findings to American businesses hoping to sell more stuff and made a fortune in the process.
There's a particularly compelling quote in the film cited from Paul Mazer, an investment banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930s: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs."
If you look past the film's quasi-conspiratorial tone (and the mind numbing ambient music) there's a allegation of a powerful psychological manipulation in everyday economic transactions that helps to explain at least one force sustaining Veblen's conspicuous consumption.
Considering Eben's policy on posting copyrighted materials, I'll err on the side of caution and say you can find film online with a quick google search. It's worth a watch.
-- MichaelDuignan |