Live more, buy less

By Michael Baillie

Our sense of value — of what things are worth — is completely warped. Not that it’s surprising if you consider the huge resources that are poured into the juggernauts of marketing and advertising. It’s money spent on convincing you to spend more, work more, consume more — and live your life less.

I think what gets me most is how easily, almost willingly, we fall for the lies and hype that advertisers and marketers cleverly feed us. We buy into the lifestyles they conjure up, and we long to have the products they peddle. And having bought into their fairy tales we work away the best years of our lives so that we can buy whatever it is they are pushing.

A famous trick is to market something in terms of necessity: you really need this product; it’ll make your life so much easier (which is a relief because working so hard, you could really do with a little relaxation when you get home). Or they tell you that product X will really show your wife how much you love her (which is just what you need with all the overtime you’ve put in lately). Then there is my favourite: buy this product because you are worth it (and having this product, others will now how special you are too).

Intrinsically these products are worth very little. The price tag on a Nike T-shirt, for example, has absolutely nothing to do with what the cotton costs. Nor does the price have anything to do with how much Ms Vietnam was paid to stitch the shirt. No, in reality the price of that shirt boils down to how much you are willing to pay for it. And that’s where the marketers and advertisers come in: their job is to dupe us into paying a ridiculous sum for a T-shirt that actually has very little intrinsic value. They quite literally manufacture value.

I think that’s why our sense of value is so warped — why for example some people are willing to spend fortunes on cars which cost even more to maintain. Why else would you choose to sacrifice time with family and friends for more time at the office? Why else would we consume at the rate we do knowing the effect it’s having on our environment? It’s because time and again we fall into the trap of thinking that an iPhone, a sound system, or a flashy suit are all worth the trade-off: work-time, ecological destruction, climate change, work stress etc.

I’m not saying that the only reason we work is to buy Nike products and flashy cars. Of course we also work to pay rent, medical expenses, school fees. I get that. What I’m saying is that over and above the time we spend working to pay for these aspects of life, we spend a lot of time slaving away for products and things that have very little actual value, and add very little to our lives. In fact often they have the opposite effect.

The car you just bought needs insurance, the TV needs a new piece of furniture to stand on, and your precious Wii is already obsolete. So now you’re stressed that the car might get stolen, you work a few more hours to pay for more furniture, and you have even less time to play on the blessed Wii you just spent more cash upgrading.

At the end of the day the products we are convinced into buying can’t really fulfil the gaps they are supposed to fill. They won’t make you happy — well not the happiness that lasts, anyway. And because you never actually needed the product as much as you thought you did, having it brings very little satisfaction. Advertisers know this, and it’s why as soon as you’ve bought into their latest lie, they can quite confidently start pushing the next thing in your face. They know the gap you’re trying to fill is still theirs to exploit.

The solution? You realise that the most valuable things in your life are the very things you trade every time you purchase “marketed necessities”. You begin to understand that the industries which created your latest indulgence, are the industries that necessitated the axing of another forest. You realise that life is a lot simpler without clutter. It’s a whole lot cheaper too, requires less work, and is infinitely more enjoyable. And that’s worth a whole lot.

Michael Baillie, 25, is a recent graduate working his first job in the media industry. He believes that political action is a personal responsibility, and that waiting around for government to bring change is futile.