Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Experiencing Ourselves to Death ( reprise)

The economy, globally, is in a shambles; can't help wondering if the shakedown has to do with redefining real value.

The old way of defining and extracting value has been defined and enriched in books like the Enrichment Economy... A for instance - to give a customer a better experience on a plane, ensure their preferred beverage is available on a flight - so they don't have to substitute. As the reader is walked through several examples of this scale of ameliorization, s/he cant help feeling sick in the stomach.

Because the fulfillment of petty desires is not actually desirable, let alone noble. It seems to me that these Disneyesque experience architects have alot to answer for. The author doesn't explain why people pay to have limiting experiences - adventure holidays, family camping, religious retreats. He might want to renovate his theory to accommodate this, but perhaps it is more than a cosmetic issue - maybe it's an Achilles heel. The experience economy maximizes pleasure volume, and averts the customer from sacrifice. What about meaningful sacrifice?

The beauty of green economics is that it is about goodness.

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