Every so often, one is given a gentle reminder of why hucksters, frauds, and snake-oil salesmen continue and are able to continue to ply their trade, and why the Randians not only claim to be rational in their egoism, but also claim to know why and how. As a race, we are credulous, impetuous, transparently self-serving, thoroughly forgetful, and sometimes all of the above. A while back—time and setting withheld, for everyone's protection—I found myself second in a long and impatient line. The customer in front of me, presumably a middle-aged professional of some kind, had just handed over his credit card when the clerk asked: “Are you a member of our platinum preferred program?” The customer answered proudly in the affirmative and surrendered this card, too.
“I'm sorry, sir, you're only a gold member, not a platinum one,” the clerk then said, without a trace of irony.
“Well, what's the difference?” Humiliation emerged.
“More privileges...in general,” he replied tersely.
“Um...how exactly does one enroll for such a program?” Humiliation threatened.
“You have to qualify,” he answered, more loudly.
This was the sounding of dignity's death knell; the customer tried to backpedal, mumbling “well, if only I'd sooner known about it...” reddening and glancing throughout the growing line behind him, almost apologetically, “if somebody had simply told me...” His wincing expression admitted a dual realization of both embarrassment and an embarrassment about this embarrassment, a pain everyone in line shared and understood but did not attempt to assuage. His eyes searched the crowd for validation, but no one offered it; this membership hierarchy business was clearly nothing more than a revenue-raising racket. Everyone knew this. But how many of us knew it only with our own platinum membership cards already secure in our wallets? After a few silent, awkward moments, the clerk returned the system's result: he did, indeed, qualify. Relieved, the customer upgraded his membership without the slightest hesitation or knowledge of what that actually entailed, collected his sparkling new platinum card, and hurried away.
How had they reduced this presumably distinguished man to such a gullible fool? After admitting I didn't have a card of any kind, I posed this question to the clerk, to which he responded: “After a certain amount of time, you naturally become more efficient at it. No one wants to be a second-class citizen, especially not when he thinks he's sitting in the middle of first-class.”
“And is this how you get them not to use their coupons, too?” I couldn't help but ask.
“You know, if you're really so concerned, why don't you just go start a customer's union?”
In 1899, economist and enfant terrible Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book-length critique of American-style consumerism. And although economic thought has ultimately moved beyond him, even in modernity his famous concept of “conspicuous consumption” remains a part of the lexicon. The expression describes a social phenomenon in which rational consumption habits are deliberately undermined for the purpose of displaying wealth or status, and allows for the existence of a “Veblen good,” a theoretical entity named in honor of the economist that contravenes the law of demand and whose demand actually rises alongside its price. These maneuvers, even when they're performed with hands above the table, still seem like a magic trick. The question is apparently not what we will sacrifice in the name of peer pressure, but rather, what we won't. Petty sarcasms aside, I would still never dare start a customer's union; I know I can't even count on my own support.
