Title: potential economics: Competitive Consumption
Headings: 
April 8, 2013
Competitive Consumption

Content: Having two or three or four cars can be handy, but it can also show status. Of course, people don't go around saying "I can't believe Rupert only has one car! What a low-class person!" But your kid might hate you if you can't take him to all his after-school activities because your spouse drove the car to work, and the other parents might think you are not a good parent. Use value has its own social implications. Producers are quite good at exploiting consumers' competitive urges and are able to extract consumer value by providing various "qualities" of a different product that are available at different prices. Alcohol is a perfect example, with quality increasing almost imperceptibly as prices skyrocket. Countless brands also have clearly differentiated models (of cards, computers, headphones, suits, etc...) that are less a reflection of higher costs of production than of the nice infinite ladder of consumer prestige. No matter what your budget is, you can spend it all--and it will never be enough. Part of the reason is simply because we have an extremely wacky (and malleable) idea of what things are worth, but many expensive things have inherent value purely through their expensiveness.