I just finished reading it. The start is promising, discussing consumer behavior from the signaling/status perspective. There’s some discussion of the Big Five personality traits + general intelligence, which was interesting (and I’ll need to look into a bit deeper). It shows how these traits influence our buying habits, and the crazy things people do for a few status points...
The end of the book proposes some solutions to hyper-consumerism, and this part I did not particularly like—in a few pages the writer comes up with some far-far-reaching plans (consumption tax etc.) to influence consumers; all highly speculative, not likely to ever be realized.
Apart from the end, liked it, writer is quick & witty, and provides food for thought.
Thanks, Grognor!
I just finished reading it. The start is promising, discussing consumer behavior from the signaling/status perspective. There’s some discussion of the Big Five personality traits + general intelligence, which was interesting (and I’ll need to look into a bit deeper). It shows how these traits influence our buying habits, and the crazy things people do for a few status points...
The end of the book proposes some solutions to hyper-consumerism, and this part I did not particularly like—in a few pages the writer comes up with some far-far-reaching plans (consumption tax etc.) to influence consumers; all highly speculative, not likely to ever be realized.
Apart from the end, liked it, writer is quick & witty, and provides food for thought.