Piranhas and guppies

By Warren Bolon

My guess is that piranhas and guppies don't share habitat in the wild. That's good for the guppies, because they would be on the losing end of the food chain. The consumer and the consumed. And this raises one of the core questions of economic life. How do we define ourselves?

It it's as consumers—and that's standard shorthand for "people who buy and use products and services"—then we're allowing ourselves to be defined as material organisms, as animals competing against one another for limited resources. We're forever somewhere between dearth and affluence. And even in affluence, when we're supposed to have all the stuff that makes one happy, we often feel suffocated. Possessed by possessions.

Good consumer behavior is by definition buying, investing in, and just plain having more things, whether they're called durables or consumables, goods or services. At certain seasons we're made to feel unpatriotic if we don't feast, buy, travel, replace, upgrade. I'm not arguing for the ascetic life of John the Baptist in the wilderness, or for exalting simplicity above all the other virtues—or for a life devoid of innovation, beauty, nourishment, wealth. I just want to find them more in ideas than in things.