Posted by
Green Faerie on Wednesday, October 18, 2006 3:08:41 PM
When most of us go to the store, we look for stuff that we need or stuff that we want. Either way, we take many things into consideration: quality, price, brand (if we have a favorite). Especially price. Americans love to save a buck or two, especially when we have bills to pay, kids to support, and taxes to pay to the Man.
However, for the limo lib crowd, it's all about feeling good about themselves. Step into any Whole Foods in America for instance. I like Whole Foods, even though I prefer its cheaper and less pretentious rival Trader Joe's. But even this conservative chickie likes exotic cheeses, soda brands you don't find elsewhere, and organic super dark chocolate. Anyway, I've noticed an awful lot of the wares there not only brag about being healthy and organic, but also about being recyclable, fair trade, and so forth. There's a tea I bought that was organic, fair trade, and there's all of this mumbo jumbo about nourishing the global tribe and stuff. It's nice the folks picking the tea get paid more than a penny an hour and get good benefits. But I was primarily concerned with a) the tea was raspberry earl grey with bergamot...yum and b) the cannister was quite pretty. The price was not too bad. I'll shell out more for quality product because now I can afford to. I know a lot of the feel goodism out there is marketing for liberals who want to pat themselves on the back for indulging in luxury goods with the excuse that it's good for society and the planet.
This is the same mentality at work behind a lot of the relatively pricey products launched by the Project Red campaign, where you can get stuff made by Apple, Converse, The Gap, etc. to help raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. On paper there's nothing wrong with selling products to raise money for disease research. Avon has done this for years to raise money for breast cancer research. But as Michael Medved pointed out on his blog and on his radio show, a lot of the items are more expensive than the companies' regular products. I think a $60 hoodie from The Gap is out of reach for a lot of college students. There's a pair of $150 jeans on sale, and while they are made of highest-quality Japanese denim, it's as pointless as selling Beluga caviar. Why not just sell $20 t-shirts or $48 jeans? You'd get more sales (and ostensibly more $ for the cause), no? How about some reassurance the money raised by this drive will actually go to help people and not end up wasted, in some dictator's pocket, or going to things buyers wouldn't agree with if they knew about it? How much was spent on advertising and promotion?
The problem I have with feel good consumerism is how it encourages an attitude that if you don't spend more for fair trade or if you aren't willing to blow $40 on a t-shirt for a politically-correct charity drive, it's because you're mean and you don't care. It's slactivism served with a big dollop of smug elitism. How about making more of this supposedly beneficial stuff affordable to those of us with thinner bank accounts? Trader Joe's has made organic stuff affordable and now WalMart is in the organic business. No wonder libs hate WalMart...they make the chic so common.