Skip to main content

Consumption Incentives

Generally agree with the case against frequent flier incentives in this article. But the same is logic is applicable for just about any loyalty program - it promotes needless consumption and rewards those who are most at fault. There are few incentives if any for consuming responsibly. When it comes to clothing for instance, products are not made to last as they once were. I have a sweater from my childhood that I received as a gift from an expat relative. It was much too big for me then but intentionally so - they wanted me to get the most use out of and grown into it. And so I did. There is no telling how many times this thing has been washed over the years.

J says its a look that's quite fashionable now and she took it with her to college. This sweater does not look many decades old as it really is. I have clothes bought in the last couple of years that look more worn out than it. This idea of being built to last is no longer in vogue - because it does not promote ceaseless consumption. It was possible to have a few basic articles of clothing that lasted a person most of their adult lives. Of the clothes I have, I treasure my hand-loom sarees the most. Some I have inherited from others in the extended family. The styles may be more vintage than modern but I love wearing them for the memories they bring back. I would not trade that for a "frequent flier" relationship with buying and the incentives that it could earn me. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...