The Dichotomy Of Consumer Choice
The dichotomy of free choice
The question of consumer choice is strongly linked to questions of free will, determinism and the self. To what measure does a consumer truly exercise free will as they make consumer choices? I think this question is ultimately unanswerable but different points of view are given in writings of consumer behavior, psychology, social psychology and behavioral economics.
I believe one problem of conceptualization is not only the dichotomy between free agents and corporate led zombies but one of scales. A human being might make informed decisions and exercise absolute free will doing so, but when you have a million of these agents making these choices an emergent consumer patterns are born which might not seem as …show more content…
I argue that the answer is both. Like Kahneman demonstated through numerous studies, human beings work with two sets of thinking modes: a slow one and a fast one. The fast, heuristics and rules of thumb based, thinking could be said to be robotic, or even not free willed while the more reflective, or slow, thinking method could be said to be free willed (Kahneman & Tversky 1984; Tversky & Kahneman 1981). Under this light it would be feasible that humans make both kinds of choices: the informed free and rational consumer choices as well as a top down dominated …show more content…
Recycling is one clear response households have taken to combat this. But the issue is much more complex than the presumed problem of landfills and the feel good solution of separating your plastics from metals.
It is clear that garbage is considered a problem. But pinpointing where the actual, factual and calculable problem lies is often very murky. Millennials seem to be confused or ambiguous to the problem of throw away consumption and we all hear we’re running out of planets every year in the summer. (Hume 2010; King etc. 2006)
What is the actual problem? King (2006) points out three problems, that are in my opinion, very debatable and unprecise: material loss, landfill usage and pollution. Do metals actually disappear when they are thrown to a land fill? I believe not. The problem is the price of re-extraction, but as King point out in his own paper: we’re not running out of minerals (Tilton 2003). Landfills are filling up? I do not find concrete evidence that land space is a problem. In the US for example there is much re-usage of landfill in the creation of golf courses or even housing (Beijnen & Kessels 2015). Pollution? That is a well-argued point but I do not consider it a challenge that cannot be tackled by legislation and building codes. The challenge of re-using or “mining” the landfill sites may be bettered by law and for instance unionizing
The question of consumer choice is strongly linked to questions of free will, determinism and the self. To what measure does a consumer truly exercise free will as they make consumer choices? I think this question is ultimately unanswerable but different points of view are given in writings of consumer behavior, psychology, social psychology and behavioral economics.
I believe one problem of conceptualization is not only the dichotomy between free agents and corporate led zombies but one of scales. A human being might make informed decisions and exercise absolute free will doing so, but when you have a million of these agents making these choices an emergent consumer patterns are born which might not seem as …show more content…
I argue that the answer is both. Like Kahneman demonstated through numerous studies, human beings work with two sets of thinking modes: a slow one and a fast one. The fast, heuristics and rules of thumb based, thinking could be said to be robotic, or even not free willed while the more reflective, or slow, thinking method could be said to be free willed (Kahneman & Tversky 1984; Tversky & Kahneman 1981). Under this light it would be feasible that humans make both kinds of choices: the informed free and rational consumer choices as well as a top down dominated …show more content…
Recycling is one clear response households have taken to combat this. But the issue is much more complex than the presumed problem of landfills and the feel good solution of separating your plastics from metals.
It is clear that garbage is considered a problem. But pinpointing where the actual, factual and calculable problem lies is often very murky. Millennials seem to be confused or ambiguous to the problem of throw away consumption and we all hear we’re running out of planets every year in the summer. (Hume 2010; King etc. 2006)
What is the actual problem? King (2006) points out three problems, that are in my opinion, very debatable and unprecise: material loss, landfill usage and pollution. Do metals actually disappear when they are thrown to a land fill? I believe not. The problem is the price of re-extraction, but as King point out in his own paper: we’re not running out of minerals (Tilton 2003). Landfills are filling up? I do not find concrete evidence that land space is a problem. In the US for example there is much re-usage of landfill in the creation of golf courses or even housing (Beijnen & Kessels 2015). Pollution? That is a well-argued point but I do not consider it a challenge that cannot be tackled by legislation and building codes. The challenge of re-using or “mining” the landfill sites may be bettered by law and for instance unionizing