On Self-Rationalization and Justification for Moral Lapses
We usually get what we want… somehow.
Posted Sun Sep 7, 02:22 PM in business models, consumerism, economics, experiences, human nature, law, marketing, politics
Some time back, I was sharing an office with someone, and had a shelf next to my desk that I had placed a few books on. One day, I came in to find that the shelf had been moved next to the other guy’s desk, and my books had been tossed upon my desk, along with a note explaining why my officemate needed that shelf more than I did, and how I would be able to get another shelf from some other person in the office if I really needed a shelf (this, of course, invites the question of why he didn’t get the shelf himself from some other person to begin with).
The rationalization in his head followed this trajectory:
1) I want a shelf for my things.
2) There’s a shelf over there.
3) And it only has a few books on it.
4) Given that it only has a few books on it, clearly the owner doesn’t really need that shelf.
5) Given that he doesn’t really need it and I do, I really deserve that shelf more than he does.
6) It’s wrong for him to have that shelf when I need it so much more.
7) I’m just going to take the shelf since I will receive greater utility value than him.
You can see how such self-rationalizing logic has a way of subverting standard social norms such as “ownership” and “right to use.” I was somewhat bothered by this turn of events, but once I started thinking about it, I realized that such behavior happens all the time, and enters into some of our most proverbial ethical dilemmas.
The question of Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?, for example, is another similar ethical quandary that enters into our popular consciousness.
However, one of the most prevalent examples of this in recent times is the issue of music downloading through P2P networks. The tech-savvy youth of the world, on the whole, have absolutely no problem with downloading copyrighted music from the internet (full disclosure: I too have done this in the past). This is despite the fact that most of the same people probably recognize stealing items from local stores morally wrong.
But, comes the argument, this isn’t really theft. In a theft, someone is deprived of an item because someone else takes it. Here, something is being duplicated so I have a copy and the original owner still has his copy.
True. Yet, one could make the same argument about stealing cable, and I have not heard anyone argue that this is morally sound. After all, there are cable companies who have large amount of fixed assets tied up in cable lines, maintenance, and other expenses that come part and parcel of delivering cable. If everyone stole cable, clearly the cable television system would collapse. Is the same not true for the music industry?
Well yeah, but the music industry hasn’t adapted to changes in the market and the way that consumers want to shop.
Maybe, but in every other sphere of the consumer economy, if consumers don’t like the way that a company does business, they simply don’t do business with them. Why is it that you feel justified in stealing property in this case? If you really want a new Ford car, but you really hate Ford dealers, how is it that you are justified in stealing a Ford from their property so as to bypass interacting with the dealers?
Look, I’ll admit that this does hurt the record companies, but you know what? They deserve it. Those suit-and-tie business guys are all about the money; they couldn’t care less about the music, and in fact they’ve have done everything in their power to destroy music! I support the artists, and the record companies just screw them over anyway. Artists only get, like, 10 cents on every CD sale anyway. They make their real money off of touring.
But what gives you the right to decide that the artist shouldn’t have that 10 cents per CD? Sell a million albums, and that’s a lot of money. Isn’t that their decision to make?
Artists who say that are just being greedy! They’re already rich and famous and now they want even more money! Can you believe these guys?
But that’s their job. Surely you’d want to be paid for things you took time to develop and sell, right?
No way! I’m above that. If I were an artist, I’d be happy that people were listening to my music and coming to my shows. It’s all about the art, dude.
Just because it’s ‘all about the art’ for you, doesn’t mean that it’s ‘all about the art’ for everyone. Would you still feel the way you do once you were depending on that income for your livelihood, and your continuing ability to fund that livelihood?
Of course! I’m not looking to make money off records. I’d make my money of touring, and connecting with my fans, and selling merchandise and stuff.
What if you didn’t want to tour?
But that’s how you make money.
That’s one way you make money. The other part is selling records. What if you only want to sell records and that’s all? And don’t you, as the artist, have a right to choose the channels through which you distribute?
Ok, let’s stop this right here. You can see where this is going. Ultimately, the P2P downloader in this conversation is finding ways to justify his decision to download music. He gives all kinds of rationalizations for it, from blaming the companies, to blaming the artists, to giving ideological reasons, to technical explanations of why it’s not bad.
Clearly, this argument was built backwards. The downloader started with the idea of I want to have free, unrestricted access to any music I want whenever I want. From there, he found ways to justify any behavior that led to him getting that. This involved dismissing valid counterarguments through insular and self-justifying means that, while they might apply to his own worldview, are not necessarily shared by those who he is taking from. Nevertheless, he is able to project this ideological view of “how things should be” onto the world, and then convince himself that what he’s doing is actually the valorous thing to do, bravely fighting against an archaic system that enslaves and rips off consumers— when all he really wanted was the music to begin with.
Thus, a base drive to get free music has now taken on an ideological bent and has morphed into some kind of jihadist war on record companies. The guy could just have just admitted he wanted the free music. Why bother blowing all that smoke? Well, he doesn’t realize consciously that he is blowing smoke.
Apologists have this same problem. They’ve decided that George Bush, or Hillary Clinton, or Alex Chiu, or James Dobson, or whoever is right. Now that they’ve come to this conclusion, they can no longer stop to evaluate events critically. Suddenly, they find themselves excusing all kinds of behavior that they would skewer someone else for; and not only will they overlook this behavior, they will defend it— passionately! After all, they wouldn’t want to admit that they were wrong about this person this whole time.
Strange thing, this cognitive dissonance.
Further reading:
Mistakes Were Made by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Harcourt, 2007.
The Pleasant Green Illusion of Trader Joe's
Why one of America’s fastest growing stores is not quite what it appears
Posted Tue Sep 2, 02:44 PM in branding, business, business models, consumerism, marketing, postmodernism, semiotics
I recently moved to Madison, WI, and found that my new apartment is just blocks away from the perennial grocery store of choice of the archetypal liberal, Trader Joe’s. Don’t get me wrong, I love Trader Joe’s. They have a somewhat interesting— if a bit odd— selection of food, low prices on alternative-lifestyle staples like Morningstar Farms Vegetarian Meats, Hummus, and Dr. Bronner’s Soap, and the staff usually seem engaged and friendly in a way that you rarely see in the bigger chains.
Yet despite these virtues, there’s always been something that I’ve found very curious and fascinating about the store given its primary clientele: they package the hell out of everything. I’m talking about putting often unnecessary plastic bags around nearly all their produce (which is, incidentally, prepackaged and shipped from afar), hard plastic shells around fruits and tomatoes, and things like individually wrapped biscottis inside paper bags of biscotti.
The produce sections of standard grocery stores like Kroger and Safeway aren’t much better, but you can tell that there’s a lot less waste going on, on the whole. You can buy fruits and vegetables without using a plastic bag at all, but if you choose to use one, very thin plastic bags on a roll are offered. You can stuff your plastic bag with as much salad mix as you want. The bags at Trader Joe’s are much thicker, presumably so that they can ship without incurring damage to the contents of the bag, but they are sealed so that if you want 10oz of salad mix, you’ll be forced to buy two packages of the stuff.
Now, the interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that if you talk to people about Trader Joe’s, you will see that many if not most of its clientele view the store as being ‘environmentally sound’, espousing the values prioritized by the politically and environmentally progressive consumer, words like: organic, sustainable, socially-conscious, green, fair-trade, healthy, whole-grain, eco-friendly, and so on.
Strangely, as the store is able to capitalize on those concepts, there is little in the direct customer experience that should really suggest any of those things any more than any other grocery store. Not all of Trader Joe’s produce is organic or whole-grain, not all of their coffee is fair-trade, and not all of their eggs and meat are cage-free or free-range. Few customers know anything about what Trader Joe’s has to say about labor rights, politics, or environmental issues, but if you asked, I would bet they’d place them in the top 20% of American companies in all these categories. And yeah, they sell canvas bags, but they still bag your groceries by default in paper bags.
Both Kroger and Safeway both have sections dedicated to organic and whole-grain foods. Both also sell fair-trade coffee and free-range eggs and meat.
So what exactly is going on here? Why does Trader Joe’s get a free pass on environmental concerns and get to capitalize on all the standard jargon of the socially-minded left while the other guys are left to be viewed as the mainstream guys who don’t really give a shit about anything but profits?
Part of it, I think, is that Trader Joe’s is a much smaller store than Kroger and Safeway. It’s a mere fraction of the size by volume, but they carry a similar variety of foods but certainly not the diversity of brands. And for that matter, many of the brands they do carry are not to be found in other grocery stores. They don’t, for example, carry Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Tropicana Orange Juice. Sometimes such products are on their own private label brand (whose name changes depending on what product it is; their Mexican products are stamped with “Trader Jose” and Italian products have the ridiculous name “Trader Giotto’s” on them). They also carry an unusually large percentage of imported or apparently exotic goods. These don’t by themselves convey the aforementioned concepts, but these features do set them apart in the minds of the consumers, which is important.
Another part of it, while subtle, is the décor. Contrast the feeling you get while walking in the close, friendly quarters of the Trader Joe’s store with one you get when walking the cold, labyrinthine halls of Kroger. Contrast the warm wood paneling and comparatively low ceilings of Trader Joe’s with the stony white floors and high ceilings of Safeway. Notice the prevalence of baskets in the Trader Joe’s store, and the gargantuan supermarket carts elsewhere.
Also, and this is important, notice the clientele. There is a very obvious difference in who the typical shopper in each of these stores is. It’s impossible to tell without some form of surveying, but I would be extremely surprised if the average Trader Joe’s shopper wasn’t more educated, of a higher socio-economic status, with a higher disposable income, and a more liberal bent. But is it the store’s ostensibly progressive values that attracts this clientele, or does the store get its progressive image from the people who shop there? Certainly, there’s a feedback loop happening here, but it’s also true that there wouldn’t be such an attraction to these sorts of people without some compelling cause.
One possible cause could be that progressives are attracted to each other and teem into places where there are people like themselves, even in the absence of any gastronomical reason. Possible, but I don’t find it very likely to be the root cause in the case of Trader Joe’s; after all, why would this trend begin in the first place? A more convincing reason for the progressive psychographic’s descent onto this store is its decidedly eclectic selection of food, where exotic foods like shitake mushrooms and shelled edamame are placed fashionably next to staples like baby carrots, and exotic Hollandic stroopwaffels oh-so-nonchalantly next to chocolate chip cookies. This post-modern melting pot of food is likely the central point of resonance at Trader Joe’s. After all, if we are to cull the messages from all the progressive radio stations, left-wing talking points, bumper stickers, and Bay Area street fairs, it is this very quality of “diversity” that presents itself as some kind guiding principle of progressive thought and which shapes the idealistic visions of progressive society. It is in this world that “diversity” in itself is considered a virtue, even in the absence of any dialectic.
Of course, diversity of foodstuffs is one thing, but where does the image of social consciousness come from? The household cleaners aisle, which is right next to where you’d buy “natural” toothpaste (though I don’t think I’ve even once come across such ingredients as Poloxamer 335 and Propylene Glycol during my Sunday morning jaunts in the woods), doesn’t feature the usual allotment of chemicals like Ajax and Windex, but instead has products like all-purpose ‘natural’ orange cleaner made from degreasing compounds apparently found in citrus fruits, and mouthwashes with tell-tale signs of products that are trying to market themselves as ‘natural,’ muted brownish packages.
And speaking of muted packaging, it just might be that as a whole, Trader Joe’s packaging is of a more muted health-food store color than their mainstream rivals. With the notable exception of the produce section where colors like brown and white are not typically indicators of quality, the remainder of the store makes use of these earth tones in a manner not consistent of mainstream stores, where bright colors and fluorescence are used in packaging the same way that circus carnies shout and prod passers-by with their staccato brayings.
In short, Trader Joe’s expertly weaves a tapestry that references all the signals that progressives look for and can relate to in their political identity, but much of the “follow-through” is only implied. But the store has called out so many of these reference points, that it creates the illusion that it’s all there—an illusion that many of the store’s patrons seem to appreciate as much as if it were really there.
How to Reduce the Complexities of Life to a Formula
and lose all meaning in the process
Posted Mon Aug 25, 06:31 PM in economics, experiences, improvements
The following are some thoughts on an interesting discussion going on over here about “everyday utilitarianism.”
The idea described is that one could apply mathematical formulas involving marginal utility value and such to arrive at solutions for interpersonal problems of everyday life. In the given example, the author describes how you could use a formula he derived to determine whether you should be allowed to watch American Idol or whether your roommate should be allowed to use the television to play video games. By determining the utility value that each of you might receive from having your way, you can figure out what would be the solution that maximizes total enjoyment levels.
As dumb as it sounds, I have to admit that I’ve tried to use these sorts of formulas for real-world decision making in the past. For example, at a time when I was trying to choose between two job opportunities, I employed what I later discovered was a Pugh Matrix (AKA Quality Decision Matrix) to determine the optimal choice based on my own somewhat obscure sets of criteria and conflicting interests.
Sure, it gave me an answer, but in real life there are just too many factors to allow a major life decision to be made by a mathematical formula. For one thing, there simply is not room for all the possible inputs; you will miss important variables, and you’ll put in unimportant ones. You’re also likely to misjudge the marginal utility of all these inputs to you, and further, as Jonathan Haidt wrote in his excellent book “The Happiness Hypothesis,” we are often terrible judges of what our future selves would want. All this has a way of forcing you to second-guess the end answer that you’re given in a situation like this.
As humans, we’ve been thrown into this giant unpredictable chamber of life, and we desperately want to control it, optimize it, and best wrangle it to suit our needs. But we’re no good at it ourselves; no, there’s just too much variability for us to be accomplished at always making the right decisions. It’s for this reason that we look to things like computer dating websites, horoscopes, fortune tellers, and other such purveyors of “real answers” for assistance in making the “right” choices.
From our vantage point, we simply don’t have answers— but we desperately want them. The problem is that once we get the answers from these sources, we don’t typically have much confidence in them.
And why should we? When we are forced to make decisions, we typically have conflicting emotions, a battery of information that we need to make sense of, an understanding that we may be establishing some kind of precedent by our choice, and even the unsettling idea that our choices may be ones we have to live with down the road. Though for some it’s not as laborious as it is for others, serious decision-making is never easy.
So that brings us back to this website, where we are supposed to be using a utilitarian formula to arrive at the optimal quality of life situation for you and your roommate. It’s a great idea, to have a simple solution that would eliminate bickering and establish right-to-power heirarchies in a coherent, non-arbitrary fashion, but you’re not going to get it from this.
As I wrote in the discussion:
…[Unfortunately,] this methodology [requires] individuals to assess their enjoyment levels honestly, and with complete loyalty to the outcome as decided by the equation. In real life, we might expect persons to lie or misrepresent the level of enjoyment they claim they would get by having their way. In other words, this method assumes that individuals are committed to doing the ‘right thing’ as it applies to the goal of creating maximum enjoyment in the world, and having all participants enjoy the maximum enjoyment that they could receive in the long term. Realistically, I would tend to think that most people would try to maximize their own enjoyment instead of trying to maximize the pleasure of all, a motivation which subverts the ability for us to use a formula, since the formula depends on participants to act in a manner that does not necessarily secure their own interests before those of others.
As other voices chimed in, they brought in a number of other good points. Reader Mikey argued,
“How, exactly are you to measure how much utility you get from watching American Idol (at any time) versus how much utility he gets from playing videogames? …Intersubjective utility comparisons are epistemologically impossible.”
In other words, it’s not even possible in theory for you and your roommate to establish standardized values for your emotional responses to you each having your way. You might say that on a scale of 1-10, you want to watch your TV show, say, 7. Your roommate might want to play Halo 3 the same amount, but might give your his utility value an 8. It’s not possible to reconcile this because you can’t get into each others’ heads to do it.
He continues:
If there ever were some way to measure utility and your roommate actually was a utility monster [a person who derives much more pleasure from getting his way than you do], the proper utilitarian decision would look morally questionable (sacrificing all of your utility (and everyone else’s) for his proportionally greater benefit).
Another reader writes:
I find utilitarianism hard to defend. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the world would be a much happier place if you ate George Bush. Straight utilitarianism would tell you to go right ahead. Most people who subscribe to utilitarianism therefore have additional principles they throw into the mix when rating different actions, but once you start to do that, you lose what I always thought was the main selling point – a less-arbitrary way to rate actions.
Well, back to the old method: sleepless nights tossing and turning.
For the Love of Money
Why is wanting money a bad thing?
Posted Sun Aug 24, 09:41 PM in business, economics, human nature
Having lived in now three liberal college towns (Berkeley, CA; Bloomington, IN; and Madison, WI), it becomes increasingly apparent to me that political liberals (of which I consider myself one, though definitely not one of the knee-jerk variety, and one who is very open to conservative ideology) have a very bad attitude towards money.
I hate to stereotype, but it’s a mindset that I’ve seen innumerable times in those who consider themselves on the political left, and one that no one is apologetic about. It’s considered crass and scummy to have a desire for money. I’m not denying that I myself carry the weight of this burden to some degree, but I’ve certainly loosened myself, particularly after having studied the role of business and commerce in the fundamental operations of the world.
Some people feel like it’s virtuous to not want money, and in fact to actively push it away. To such people, it’s at best selling out to go after money, at worst, it’s the most ugly possible stain on your very character. But let’s face it; we would all like to have a nice house, great vacations, health care, and good food. It’s hard to deny that we all want such things. The part that some people resist is the money part of the equation. Money of course, is the currency that we use to gain those things.
Alas, after having met greedy people, hearing about countless business scandals, and in general knowing about the ways in which money corrupts people, the indictment has come not upon the character of individuals and their personal responses to money, but the money itself. Money has become conflated with greed, confused with a lack of compassion, seen as the equivalent of misplaced priorities and the absence of decent character. To want such a thing is nothing more than a horrible scar on your name.
There’s good reason for this attitude; however, there’s also great reason why this attitude should no longer exist. Money in itself is a neutral force. It can do amazing things, it can do harmful things; but one thing is undeniable— it is the way to make things happen.
Sure, you could be a jerk like Ken Lay or Donald Trump, but you could also do something amazing like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. Some people would even argue that Bill Gates has done more for humanity than Mother Teresa (this refers to his endowment of billions of dollars in charity, and does not take into account the Windows operating system, which has caused untold damage towards humanity).
If you want to make the world a better place on a large scale, you’d better believe you’re going to need money. And, as a wise person once said, money won’t buy happiness, but a lack of money will definitely cause it. And in my opinion, it’s time money got the credit and respect it deserves. Even if that sounds crass.
Progressives often direct their political anger largely towards those who put “profits before people.” I don’t necessarily find fault with this logic, but the more the left continues to cultivate a negative attitude towards money and reject the idea that having it is anything more than a necessary evil, the more I believe it will actually shift power into the hands of those who have it, and know how to use it.
I’m certainly not saying that it’s okay to be greedy or that anyone should place money at the very apex of their priorities list, but to use an SAT-style metaphor:
“gasoline::car” as “money::life in the modern world.”
Something to think about.
When in Doubt...
Human beings are creatures that doubt themselves a lot. And when they’re not doubting themselves, they are blindly following others
Posted Fri Aug 22, 05:25 PM in branding, business, consumerism, experiences, human nature, marketing
Here’s an experiment that I’ve personally conducted dozens of times, and it never ceases to give me a brief moment of insane pleasure. Next time you’re standing at a crosswalk and there’s traffic coming, just take a step into the street. Chances are, even if there are cars zooming by at a hundred miles an hour, all the other people at the crosswalk will follow you, lemming-like, to their deaths. Of course, the proper thing to do is to stop before anyone dies, but my point is that people will instinctively follow your lead no matter how foolish you are, whether it is because they chose to discard any evidence of danger that may have presented itself, or because they were just too ignorant to notice the conditions of the road themselves.
This happens all the time.
Human beings are creatures that doubt themselves a lot. And when they’re not doubting themselves, they are blindly following others. That’s why it seems like persons of mediocre intelligence can market their horrible ideas so effectively with their presence and apparent conviction, while people with really good ideas and poor presentation can’t get anyone to listen to them. Politics is an excellent example of this.
A politician who constantly repeats his assertions, even in the presence of strongly contradictory empirical evidence, can manufacture ‘truth.’
Here’s a phrase that might sound familiar:
Iraq possesses of weapons of mass destruction.
Politics aside, we now know this assertion to be false. Nevertheless polls still show that a statistically staggering number of Americans still believe that an invasion of Iraq was necessary. Why? Is it because these people have not read the news? No, it’s because the assertion made by the Bush administration recreated reality in such a way that it effectively supplanted and destroyed any evidence that violated its argument. Any incoming facts that may have called into question the assertion were discarded.
A recent roast of comedian Bob Saget featured a great routine by Gilbert Gottfried in which he repeats a phrase about how Bob Saget “raped and killed a girl in 1990” about 4 times with an increasingly dramatic air. Despite the fact that, in the context of the full sentences, Gottfried is actually saying that this incident didn’t happen at all, this shocking phrase is the one that really makes its mark on you.
Though this was in the context of a joke, it’s not unthinkable that such vivid repetitions of phrases actually hurt people in real life. People are routinely tarred with accusations of being rapists and murderers in the absence of evidence or despite their innocence, and are unable to revert to their former selves in the eyes of others. They will always be psychopaths to those who learned of them in a context that branded them with those epithets through infinite repetition.
An age-old adage from the advertising industry suggested that if you can’t make an argument through logic, use song. That’s one method, but if you ask me, the more effective way is to just repeat something ad nauseum. The public’s internal BS detector will eventually shut off. Tragic and sad, but alas, true.
