consumer confused in crazy capitalism

As I await my coach for Leicester, I hear an announcement – “Welcome to Victoria Coach Station, Please be aware that many Pick Pockets, Baggage Thieves and Ticket Mongers operate in the Victoria Coach Station. If you see any such activity, please do not encourage them by providing them Money or used Travelcards”. As most of the people scramble to get to their loved ones during holiday season. The announcement leaves me wondering that so many micro-economies survive in and around any major establishment. Same holds true if you see any place where there are usual people passing by. It can be a small coffee shop at a sub-urban Railway Station to multi-storeyed shopping malls within gigantic stations like Waterloo, Kings-Cross, Paddington or Victoria. People find capital avenues in almost anything under the Sun. Customer is the king.

Read a new report yesterday which said a court had ruled that Airlines would now have pay the damages to customers in case of un-foreseen flight cancellation except catastrophic events like terrorist attack. And engine failure and failure to do maintenance tests aren’t such events. This is a good judgement unless its worked around by extremely intelligent lawyers that airlines would hire to argue against it. It always boils down to money doesn’t it. Anyone will do everything it takes; go to any extent not to shell out a few bucks. Hundreds of price-comparison sites survive promising people the best deals available in the market. All the adverts we see in the TV are targeted at selling the “we are better because we are cheaper” idea to the customer. And contrary to this, many big brands e.g. Apple always take the arrogant route and say “quality doesn’t come cheap”.

All these ads and brand toy with the Psyche of the consumer. You can’t buy things cheap as you deserve better (even though poor fellow might end up paying many instalments). The availability of cashless transactions in the form of credit cards adds to the confusion. You need this desperately – you don’t have to pay now. Its good and bad according to me and have had violent discussions with people having contrary views. Round the year “Sale” in many stores make it difficult to differentiate between the genuine and the fake ones. I’ve known people who end up buying more than they’d needed and feeling good about the amount that they’ve saved because of the sale, rather they’d have saved the whole lot instead. If we take clothes for instance, it’s funny that no matter how varied your wardrobe would be you only have 365 days in a year to wear those clothes. You end up reserving more space in your bedroom cup-board (and fight with your partner), buying bigger suit-cases for travel and so on and so forth, these are invisible costs of never thought about habits. Same goes for any other shopping that we do. My brother has ended up buying a 42” TV, even though it doesn’t fit very well in the flat that he stays currently. The only thing that you notice in the whole house is the TV coz it stares at you – no matter wherever you are.

The world has enough to satisfy people’s need but not their greed. Lot of intelligent people in the world have hinted that the solution to the world’s problems is simple living. So using only that you actually need makes a lot of difference. If you look at the shopping you do weekly, just see what we use and what we throw away. Almost 50% of the volume is plastic packaging and litter which after we throw away in the bins the government has to worry about sorting. Again a marketing problem, because if the packaging isn’t pretty no-ones going to buy it.

It’s funny at what topic you end up when you keep writing. That’s the fun of blogging I believe.

Simple Green Living