Dear Claire,Just because you do not see glory in the equation does not mean that it is not valid. You speak of a public that is manipulated solely on the whims of an advertising guru....a populist opinion that beleives that this entire mass of consumerism was created and build by producers to create and then reinforce a market for products to sell us that we do not in fact need. Yet when you live in a democracy such as ours you lose control to a certain extent over what any one individual decides that they need or want. What you are talking about has nothing to do with capitalism as an economic system, but what you see as a degradation in certain values that you feel are important; yet that is all. The market that is created does to a certain extent reinforce itself, yet we as consumers to have a choice to buy a product, or a service, we vote with our dollar. I feel like you do in many ways that what I beleive this may ultimately represent is not something I personally would choose to do, yet I respect that in general people are content to make decisions that impact their own lives....If I want to speak up, I will.
I guess I just get tired of listening to the argument that big business is solely in charge of manipulating the masses into purchasing things they do not need.....this is in part the crisis of the american culture.., yet does not necessarily have anything to do with the system of capitalism......it is merely an economic system that produces the most wealth, in terms of morality, or good or bad, it is irrelevant to the system....it is up to all of us to help define what the market will bear.....it is hard in our society, as we are often overwhelmed and feel powerless by this large corporate vacuum, but if you really beleive in something and try to make a difference, you will be surprised how many people will agree....I just think that arguing otherwise is not doing justice to the size of the task at hand....namely trying to deal with peoples general selfish nature.....
In closing, you may be correct that there is no american pie glory in that, but the world is changing, the US and its role that it played after the second world war and it attack against communism is to blame. It is no secret that the marshall plan was created after the war to help the allies get rich and powerful and create a wealthy group of nations that would be rich enough to defend the spread of communism...The only sizeable economy that was left intact was Canada and the USA....that in a nutshell is why the US rose to be such a great super power, by intelligently using access to its large market, as a base for other countries to export their goods to such a large consumer base.....now that the world is changing, and germany, japan, china etc...are all viable economic superpowers, or developing, the effects of this transition are appearing in a feeling of the youth of an ambigious lifestyle that only leads to consumerism....yet this is only one part of an emerging puzzle that we all must be part of....it is important to understand the history and relevant context before we can understand the problem and begin to work out a solution.
Kev
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