on the dangers of price thresholds
Dec. 22nd, 2012 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateThere's been an intermittent and ongoing discussion in this household for a while now, about the ethics of carnivory in a world where meat production mostly involves huge scale and cross-country shipping. My usual method is to limit consumption of meat-proteins; grauwulf keeps talking about ordering locally-sourced in bulk, but it's on the long list of things nobody's gotten around to yet. The other logical answer is to combine this with the serious wildlife management problem and help cull the deer hordes for table. (Personally, I have no interest in hunting; the idea of getting up before severed-head-o'clock in the morning to drive out to the middle of nowhere & sit about in the cold waiting for a crepuscular species to show up so you can shoot it and then have to bleed the thing is not my idea of fun. Also, guns annoy me. It's the sudden loud noise part. But grauwulf is more convinceable.) There are logistical challenges to hunting around here; MD and most of its neighbors appear to have about a week and a half of regular hunting season, mostly long before what we've been seeing as first frost dates recently, and we don't know (that we know of) anyone local who's up on good places to go, or has a good vehicle for hauling carcasses about in.
Despite all that, grauwulf-- who had not been listening to the news that morning-- went out and got a rifle last friday with hopes of it actually being useful for next year. And thus, besides all the news-report craziness from the last week, and a few of his gun-collecting co-workers, he's also been wandering about collecting various safety equipment and packs of range targets and things from various stores and overhearing what random people at the mall or wherever have to say about guns. And one of the things he keeps hearing is, "hey! [store] still has [giant crazy weapon] for only [several thousand dollars]! I should go get one while I still can!"
Leaving aside that my first question is why the heck would you want [giant crazy weapon] in the first place, there's a worse logic flaw here, and it's not specific to guns. People develop an idea of what's a reasonable price to pay for things-- how much you're willing to spend on a cup of coffee, or a car, or a vacation. Whatever. Advertisers do a lot of trying to tweak your idea of what's a reasonable price-point upwards, and the insidious concepts of sales and discounts try to convince you that whatever you're spending is ok because it could have been higher. You've probably seen all this before. But there's also the psychological bit you do to yourself-- once you pay a high price for something you consider a luxury or a one-time event, you've just primed yourself to do it again, and next time just a little bit more (or a little less after which you feel good about yourself because it was less expensive than last time), and if you're not careful you may have just started yourself down the path to spending huge amounts of money on high-ticket items. (guns, resin dolls, spa treatments: things you like, but don't actually need.) Or just for going out to lunch every day, which can be equally cash-draining over the long haul.
This is bad enough. But when you add in the limited-time element, you're a whole lot more likely to get yourself into trouble buying things you can't afford because you might not be able to get them later. And maybe it would be helpful to stop and think about whether, if you know you could get [thing] anytime in the next twenty years, it's actually something you want RIGHT NOW. Or if maybe you don't really need it and can't actually afford to spend several thousand dollars on top of all your holiday shopping. Or your rent, depending.
Xposty from dreamwidth.
Despite all that, grauwulf-- who had not been listening to the news that morning-- went out and got a rifle last friday with hopes of it actually being useful for next year. And thus, besides all the news-report craziness from the last week, and a few of his gun-collecting co-workers, he's also been wandering about collecting various safety equipment and packs of range targets and things from various stores and overhearing what random people at the mall or wherever have to say about guns. And one of the things he keeps hearing is, "hey! [store] still has [giant crazy weapon] for only [several thousand dollars]! I should go get one while I still can!"
Leaving aside that my first question is why the heck would you want [giant crazy weapon] in the first place, there's a worse logic flaw here, and it's not specific to guns. People develop an idea of what's a reasonable price to pay for things-- how much you're willing to spend on a cup of coffee, or a car, or a vacation. Whatever. Advertisers do a lot of trying to tweak your idea of what's a reasonable price-point upwards, and the insidious concepts of sales and discounts try to convince you that whatever you're spending is ok because it could have been higher. You've probably seen all this before. But there's also the psychological bit you do to yourself-- once you pay a high price for something you consider a luxury or a one-time event, you've just primed yourself to do it again, and next time just a little bit more (or a little less after which you feel good about yourself because it was less expensive than last time), and if you're not careful you may have just started yourself down the path to spending huge amounts of money on high-ticket items. (guns, resin dolls, spa treatments: things you like, but don't actually need.) Or just for going out to lunch every day, which can be equally cash-draining over the long haul.
This is bad enough. But when you add in the limited-time element, you're a whole lot more likely to get yourself into trouble buying things you can't afford because you might not be able to get them later. And maybe it would be helpful to stop and think about whether, if you know you could get [thing] anytime in the next twenty years, it's actually something you want RIGHT NOW. Or if maybe you don't really need it and can't actually afford to spend several thousand dollars on top of all your holiday shopping. Or your rent, depending.
Xposty from dreamwidth.