> it didn’t just happen. It was designed.
> Shortly after the World War 2, these guys were figuring out how to ramp up the [U.S.] economy. Retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated the solution that has become the norm for the whole system. He said: “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life.."
...
> Vance Packard calls perceived obsolescence, “planned obsoles-
cence of desirability.”...
https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/
https://www.storyofstuff.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/StoryofStuff_AnnotatedScript.pdf
#StoryOfStuff #AnnieLeonard
#TheWasteMakers #VancePackard

.> An exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals," The Waste Makers is Vance Packard's pioneering 1960 work on how the rapid growth of disposable consumer goods was degrading the environmental, financial, and spiritual character of American society. The Waste Makers was the first book to probe the increasing commercialization of American life—the development of consumption for consumption's sake. Packard outlines the ways manufacturers and advertisers persuade consumers to buy things they don't need and didn't know they wanted, including the two-of-a-kind of everything syndrome
...
.> By manipulating the public into mindless consumerism, Packard believed that business was making us "more wasteful, imprudent, and carefree in our consuming habits," which was using up our natural resources at an alarming rate. A prescient book that predicted the rise of American consumer culture, this all new edition of The Waste Makers features an introduction by best-selling author Bill McKibben. Vance Packard (1914-1996) was an American journalist, social critic, and best-selling author. Among his other books were The Hidden Persuaders, about how advertisers use psychological methods to get people to buy the products they sell; The Status Seekers, which describes American social stratification and behavior; and The Naked Society, about the threats to privacy posed by new technologies.


#^https://www.igpub.com/the-waste-makers/

#VancePackard #TheWasteMakers on #MindlessConsumerism via #TheHiddenPersuaders and #TheStatusSeekers

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. [The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies. These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well.] We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.

it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L…

#VictorLebow on #Consumerism quoted by #VancePackard in #TheWasteMakers with an introduction by #BillMcKibben

> For us the legendary strongholds of snobbery are the Hollywood studios, where two thousand dollars a week dare not talk to three hundred dollars a week for fear he be taken for nothing more than fifteen hundred dollars a week.
In an essay, #MannersMorals and The Novel, #LionelTrilling on #Snobbery in #Hollywood reminded me of similar obsevations by #DouglasRushkoff in the book #LifeInc. I wonder how much of this was covered in #VancePackard's The #StatusSeekers?