Consuming Because Others Consume

Critics have long decried the levels of material consumption andindulgence prevalent in advanced industrial societies, but over thelast several decades their voices have become more insistent. Inthe press and in the political arena, the matter came to a headduring the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when (to put it succinctly) theNorth accused the South of overpopulation, and the South accusedthe North of overconsumption.

Contemporary concerns about consumption and materialismhave three different, although not mutually exclusive, roots. Oneis increasing international interdependence and the resulting sensethat we inhabit a global community, which makes it hard to ignorethe juxtaposition of so much wealth in some places with direpoverty elsewhere. Another is growing environmental awareness,which raises the possibility that our levels of consumption areirreparably harming the planet and its inhabitants. Finally,technological progress combined with the bombardments of themedia have given us the sense that we are increasingly in the gripof having and owning—that we have more than anyone reallyneeds, and that this excess is incompatible with virtue or truehuman flourishing.

Not everyone agrees, of course, that we middle-class NorthAmericans and others similarly situated consume too much, andindeed it is not easy to say by what standards one decides howmuch is too much. But the feeling that we might be living at ahigher level of material dependence and indulgence than we oughtto is prevalent enough in our culture, even if the dictum that"Action speaks louder than words" forces us to say it is not thatprevalent. The concem has dominated moral philosophy over thelast twenty years,^ What has driven the philosophical debate, inaddition to the reigning (but practically unbearable) interpretationof utilitarianism as requiring one to maximize the good, is the

Copyright 1996 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol, 22, No, 3 (Fall 1996)

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palpable presence of millions or perhaps billions of peopleworldwide who live in serious poverty, combined with theknowledge that we (individually, and even more, collectively)could do something to alleviate that poverty if we chose. Thequestion is whether or in what sense we ought to do somethingabout it—whether, in particular, we are morally obligated to dosomething, and that therefore we are morally blameworthy ordeficient when we continue to live in relative or absolute luxurywhile others struggle to survive or subsist,

I do not want to enter into this debate here, but rather to changeits focus. This is partly because I think the debate is becomingstale, with one side arguing that we do have strong moralobligations to do more for others, even if it means lowering ourown standards of living significantly, and the other side arguingthat the threat to personal integrity, to the concept of a life withwhich one may, within certain crucial constraints, pretty much doas one chooses, would be too great if we acknowledged suchdemanding moral obligations. Each of these points of view pullshard onus. The latter has "common sense" on its side, but it arousesour suspicions just because it is altogether too convenient tobelieve. The former, even if theoretically persuasive, moves toofew people to action. This leads some, who assume ethics must bepractical and take into account "human nature," to think that themorally strenuous view cannot be right; it leads others, committedto social change, to conclude that even if right, it is ineffective andthus irrelevant. But where do we go from here?

This debate turns out to be partly otiose if the general view setforth here is correct, I think we have been missing features of thesocial and psychological landscape with important implicationsfor our moral and practical views. My aim in what follows is to gosome way toward establishing the thesis that, to a large extent,people consume because others around them do. There are avariety of reasons for this relational feature of consumption.Among them are the aim of gaining status and superiority that thenotion of "consuming because others consume" tends to evoke, anaim that has been cited almost to tedium ever since ThorsteinVeblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899, Eventhis idea, I shall argue, is more complex, and less clearly damning.

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than is usually thought. But there are other reasons for consumingbecause others do—some having to do with the pursuit of status,but with the desire for equality rather than superiority, and somehaving nothing at all to do with status. In what follows I describeand evaluate the various other-regarding reasons for consuming.

This thesis about the relativity of the desire to consume hasimplications of two kinds, which are explored below. One ispractical: to the extent that a person consumes because others do,she could consume less if others did too, without diminishing herwell-being. It follows that the handwringing about how much wecan reasonably demand that people sacrifice for the well-being ofothers is exaggerated, for reductions in consumption, wheneffected in a concerted way, need not involve deprivation in theway generally envisioned. It is not a matter of "sacrificing becauseothers sacrifice," but rather of not having to sacrifice whenmaterial consumption falls collectively.

The other implication is moral. Critiques of consumption oftenamount to indictments of human character: the view that peopleconsume because others do seems to suggest they are conformist,greedy, preoccupied with material things, status, and one-upsmanship. Although we should not discount these traitsaltogether, an appreciation of the complexities of consumptionshows why it is ofiten reasonable and respectable for a person toconsume when others do; more generally, it illuminates certainpuzzles about human desires and well-being.

The Relativity of Absolute Well-Being

How are people's desires for and consumption of things dependenton what others have? We can best answer this question by consid-ering how their desires for and consumption of things are notdependent on what others have. It is natural to think here in termsof basic needs or minimum requirements—conditions that mustbe met if a person is to lead a minimally decent life. A person'sneed to consume some number of calories and nutrition, or to haveclothing and shelter against the elements, exists independently of

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what other people have or do. Without food one dies; what otherpeople do is irrelevant.

Even biological needs, however, are not wholly independent ofcontext or circumstance; they may depend, in particular, in part onwhat other people do. In a society in which strenuous physicalexertion is important—either because physical activity is sociallyvalued or because scarcity requires strength or speed to acquirenecessities—a greater caloric intake might be needed to functioneffectively or well.

Whether all needs are partly relative to what others do, and thusin some cases to "ways of life," is a question we need not answerhere. Two points are worth noting, however First, a great dealdepends on how we specify or describe needs. Suppose, forexample, we agree that people have a basic need for enough foodto survive or thrive. Stated in this way, the need is absolute in thesense of being invariant to circumstances, including the behaviorof others. But how much food is enough to survive or thrive willvary depending on the circumstances. Thus, although we candescribe the need absolutely, its satisfaction may depend onrelational facts. As Amartya Sen argues, "the absolute satisfactionof some . , . needs might depend on a person's relative positionvis-a-vis others."

Second, some needs are much more relative than others. Theneed for air is quite nonrelative. Think, by contrast, of the abilityto work, or, even more simply, to get around and do things (acquirefood and the like) for oneself In many contemporary com-munities, it is difficult to perform these tasks without privatetransportation. The need for a car is not "absolute" in the sense ofexisting irrespective of context. The economic system and theinfrastructure could have evolved differently so that a car wouldnot be an indispensable item of modem life, A well-functioningsystem of public transportation creates and perpetuates demand:the larger and finer the net it casts (that is, the more places you canget to using it), the more people use it; the more people use it, thegreater its economies of scale; the greater its economies of scale,the better and cheaper it gets. In such cases, people have purelyeconomic and practical reasons for doing as others do.

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In many communities today, however, a car is a virtualnecessity; indeed, for a suburban or rural family two cars are oftenrequired, A person's desire for a car, then, although dependent onwhat other people have and do, need not be rooted in greed, envy,or the desire for status. Many items once thought of as high-techluxuries—television, cable television, computers, on-line data-bases—^become nearly indispensable in a technologically sophis-ticated society. Invention is the mother of necessity.

Just how far the point illustrated by this example extends is adifficult question. The danger on one side is being led to say thatevery deprivation relative to others in one's society is thefrustration of a basic or important need. On the other side, criticsof contemporary Western culture—those who decry "conspicuousconsumption" and materialistic values—often pay insufficientattention to the significance of relative deprivation for absolutewell-being.

Even when it would be an exaggeration to say that a particularitem has moved from the status of luxury to necessity, new goodsoften become entrenched in a society—become more likeneeds— in a subtle and interesting process. We can observe thistransformation with many recent innovations: microwaves,answering machines, VCRs, electronic mail. When firstintroduced, such items may appear frivolous, at least to those notmesmerized by gadgets. Gradually—but really very quickly—even the skeptics start to notice the thing's uses. For example,while the benefits to owners of answering machines wereimmediately apparent, some callers at first found the devicesawkward or even insulting. Soon, however, even skeptical callersbegan to notice the advantages to themselves: not having to callback repeatedly when no one answered; avoiding unwanted andunnecessarily prolonged conversations. Complaints about"talking to a machine" are rarely heard anymore. Similarly, carphones, which when flrst introduced were widely viewed as merestatus symbols, are now recognized for their convenience andsafety-enhancing features (in a dangerous world of carjackingsand other crimes).

How does this phenomenon of the entrenchment of newproducts bear on the relational aspects of consumption?

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Acquisition of a good by many people can render it more necessaryin an absolute sense, even if not always a "necessity." In somecases—public versus private transportation—^this is a question ofinfrastructure: where others take buses, there will be buses,available to all, and I will have less need for a car In other cases,such as electronic mail and on-line databases, we have whateconomists call networking effects: one lacking the service ismade worse off by being cut off from the flow of infonnation. Eventhe humdrum answering machine can affect how people conductbusiness, so that those lacking them may both suffer disadvantagesthemselves and also inconvenience others. So, for example, whereit is assumed that most people have answering machines, it mightbe reasonable to ask someone to make a dozen phone calls, on theassumption that messages can be left if no one answers. The personwithout an answering machine forces the messenger to workharder by calling repeatedly, and is more likely not to be reachedat all. This may be more than an inconvenience: it may cost abusinessperson her livelihood if the caller is a customer withalternative providers.

Salient Things

The process by which new goods get entrenched in a culture bearsin a second way on the relational aspects of consumption: theacquisition of goods by others serves as a crucial form of publicity.Leaving aside for the moment questions about status and the needto "keep up with the Joneses," the fact that one's friends andneighbors have something new acts as a stimulus if the good hasintrinsic appeal of any kind. Advertisers have always been fullyaware of iJie phenomenon, which can be understood in terms ofwhat cognitive psychologists call "salience": the physical pres-ence of an item makes it more available to consciousness. Theeconomist James Duesenberry describes this process in terms ofwhat he calls "the demonstration effect":

In given circumstances,... individuals... come into contact with goods superiorto the ones they use with a certain frequency. Each such contact is a demonstra-tion of the superiority of those goods and is a threat to the existence of the current

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consumption pattern. It is a threat because it makes active the latent preferencefor these goods . . . . For any particular family the frequency of contact withsuperior goods will increase primarily as the consumption expenditures ofothers increase.

In our zeal to find sophisticated or deep explanations for people'sdesires to raise their level of material well-being, we have ne-glected the simple yet powerful effect of firsthand experience onwanting. It stands to reason that a person is more likely to wantsomething if he sees it than if it exists for him merely as an abstractpossibility. (Indeed, an abstract possibility is usually an uncon-ceived possibility, which moves us not at all.) Familiarity breedsdesire more often than contempt.

This desire-stimulating process seems perfectly respectable, asplausibly attributable to human curiosity, to being alive to one'ssurroundings, as to greed or envy or status-seeking—the expla-nations more commonly offered by critics of consumption. Somemight argue that, on the contrary, this fact about human beings isprecisely what terms like "greed" and "envy" are meant todenote—^wanting things when you see them, being moved by theconsumption habits of others. How should we resolve this dispute,where both sides agree on the evidence but disagree about what itshows? It seems wrong to say the disagreement is merelyterminological (how you defme greed or envy), since the two sidesmake very different moral judgments about the human qualities inquestion. One solution is to have it both ways: to acknowledge anelement that is morally neutral or even praiseworthy (curiosity,aliveness to one's surroundings), but also an element worthy ofcriticism (lack of self-sufEiciency, overdependence on materialthings). Yet whether moral criticism is appropriate depends partlyon other issues that await resolution. Under what circumstances,and for what reasons, does attraction to material things constitutea vice? Some issues relevant to answering this question arediscussed briefly below.

However we resolve these questions, it is clear that as a matterof fact, salience—here constituted by the possessions of myneighbors —acts as a powerful stimulus to the desire to consume.Now that the world's poorest people have instant and constantaccess, through television and other mass media, to the style of

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life of their affluent "neighbors," the significance of the demon-stration effect can hardly be exaggerated.

This is not to beg the question whether, all things considered,having more things necessarily makes a person happier or betteroff. We may acknowledge that getting what one's neighbors haveenhances one's welfare, without denying that everyone might behappier living more simply. The explanation for these seeminglyconflicting facts rests on the interaction of three phenomena:salience, opportunity costs, and collective action problems. Thus,if we assume (what the true ascetic presumably would not) thatthe life of things enhances one's well-being in certain respects,then, beginning from the status quo of a consumption-orientedculture and acquaintance with some new thing, having it mayimprove one's welfare, even though a different bundle ofexperiences inconsistent with having it (that is, beginning from adifferent baseline) might improve one's well-being even more.Given that my neighbors have it, and that the thing possesses atleast some small utility or aesthetic virtue, I may be better offhaving it. It is hard to explain the pull that material things exert onmost people's desires without acknowledging their intrinsicattractions, however shallow or transitory these might be.

Other things being equal, then, more is often more. But thequalification is crucial. I could admit that I would be better offhaving an item my neighbors have, and still maintain that a worldin which we both had fewer things would be better still—^that insuch a world we would all be better off. This claim involves a viewabout the overall worth of alternative ways of life—about howhigh-consumption "life-packages" compare with others empha-sizing nonmaterial goods instead. The present discussion of thebenefits of consumption, however, is about micro, not macro,partial, not complete, compliance, the world of second-best: aboutthe reasons for consuming when others around you do.

Consumption and Self-Respect

I tum now to the reasons for consuming that probably loom largestwhen people think about consumption in modern society—and

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certainly if they hear of "consuming because others consume." Wethink of conspicuous consumption, keeping up with the Joneses,the ostentatious display of wealth and the excessive reliance onmaterial goods as a way of attaining status. But the contemptuousattitude revealed in these descriptions depends partly, I believe, ona misunderstanding of other-regarding consumption, I have al-ready given two reasons for thinking so. First, because of asociety's way of life or infrastructure, or because of networkingeffects, the satisfaction of needs and interests that most peoplewould agree are basic depends in part on other people's consump-tion practices. Second, acquaintance breeds desire: it is not neces-sarily a sign of greed or envy to want things when you see them.

None of this is to deny that the desire to improve one's positionvis-a-vis others plays an important part in the urge to consume. Wewant to have things, and to have others know we have them, inpart in order to sc^ something about ourselves to others. It is thisexpressive function that we now need to analyze more carefully.

First, we should note that not all expressive consumption needinvolve the desire to say something about one's worth, A personwho wears one earring or long hair, or drives a Jeep Cherokee ora battered bicycle, is expressing himself—^we might even say heis making a statement about himself and his values—but he neednot be attempting to secure a place in a hierarchy. It may evenbe questioned whether his behavior is communicative. Terms like"self-expression" and "making a statement" can be understood toimply communication to others, but they can also be understoodin a more private way—perhaps as an outpouring of inner feeling.Let us assume, however, that for most people such forms ofself-expression as fashion do include a crucial communicativecomponent. In part, this communicative component is rooted inpractical aims: it is useful to tell others what one is like, in orderto fmd those with similar interests, (This function is discussedfurther below in terms of ability-signaling,)

But acts of consumption are sometimes designed to com-municate to others something about one's own worth, and it is thisexpressive function in which we are interested. Such statusseeking has a bad reputation. A long tradition of moralists advisesthat what other people think of us is not important, that one should

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not base one's actions on the opinions of others, and so forth. Ifthis were true, then all consumption aimed at sending a message,especially a message about one's worth, would be less thanreputable as a motive. But although it is easy to describe situationswhere one shouldn't care what others think (for instance, wherethere is a right thing to do, and one must brave public opinion anddo it), it seems too sweeping a judgment to say that it is alwaysdisreputable to care. The person wholly unconcerned with howothers see her seems at best too saintly to serve as a model for theordinary person; at worst, she may be pathological, or con-temptuous of other people.

At least in part, consumption designed to send a message aboutone's worth has a bad reputation because it masks a morallysignificant ambiguity. We imagine a world in which everyone istrying to outdo everyone else—trying not merely to keep up withthe Joneses but to surpass them. Veblen certainly did much topromote this interpretation:

, , , the end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the restof the community inpoint of pecuniary strength.,,. However widely, orequally,or "fairly," it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealtiican make atty approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desireof eveiy one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.

But although a person may consume to show that he is better thanothers, he may also consume simply to show that he is as good asothers. Veblen fails to draw this distinction, which I believe is bothmorally significant and psychologically real. Let us first ask whyit is acceptable and important for people to attain some measureof perceived equality with their fellows, then ask to what extentpeople want not merely equality but superiority.

For all but the most extraordinarily self-sufficient individuals,self-respect requires respect from one's fellows; it requires thatone not be shamed before them, I take this kind of self-respect andthe respect from others it implies to be fundamental human needs;a person cannot have a decent life without them. As Veblenhimself puts it: "Only individuals with an aberrant temperamentcan in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of thedisesteem of their fellows," The satisfaction of these needs calls

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for a certain kind of equality, not superiority; it means havingcertain things that others have, not more than others have.

Adam Smith articulated this point—and its connection withconsumption practices—two centuries ago, and his formulationhas not been surpassed:

By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensablynecessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country rendersit indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linenshirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessaiy of life. The Greeks andRomans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linea But in thepresent times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourerwould be ashamed to appear in public without a hnen shirt, the want of whichwould be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it ispresumed, no body can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, inthe same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. Thepoorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in publicwithout them.

Extrapolating from Smith's analysis, we might say that the needfor self-respect—or, put negatively, the need to avoid shame—isbasic and universal. But what it takes to satisfy that need varieswidely from time to time and from place to place. This point couldhave far-reaching implications. In Smith's society, self-respectmeant leather shoes; in some circles in the 1990s it means Nikes,

Why some goods—such as shoes, of all things!—should havethe kind of significance that Smith describes is an interestingquestion, but one I shall not pursue here. We can see at least thatgoods functioning as markers of self-respect or other status mustbe "conspicuous"—visible and public—which explains the prom-inence of clothing and cars. What the inside of a person's houselooks like matters less, since most others will not see it.

At the same time, it is plausible to think that in mass societiesthe opinions and respect of subgroups, rather than the generalpublic, assume greater importance. Two reasons might be offeredin support of this claim. First, beyond the crudest indicatorsindividuals are not noticed by the "general public," Second, it ispsychologically difficult for individuals themselves to care aboutwhat "everybody" thinks; instead they focus on achieving respectfrom particular reference groups to whom they comparethemselves.

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The path by which certain goods become "necessaries" mustinvolve the processes of entrenchment discussed in the lastsection. It would seem that wherever there is material ortechnological progress, new goods will gradually assume the roleof "signifying decency"—and others will assume the role ofsignifying superiority—that Smith describes, (This is not to saythat in less dynamic societies no goods play this role, only thatthey are less often superseded,) This is important, for it suggeststhat technological progress combined with the need forself-respect tend to up the consumption ante.

Equality and Superiority

Two questions cast shadows over the foregoing account. First, howmuch equality does self-respect require? One might argue that allsignificant material inequalities are damaging to the self-respectof those who have less. The improbability of radical egalitarianismcould render this point a reductio adabsurdum of the self-respectargument. But it would have to be shown that material inequalitiesgenerally do undermine self-respect. No doubt this is a matter ofdegree, and reasonable people will disagree about how damaginginequalities are. My point has been only that the absence ofcertain—circumscribed—goods undermines self-respect, and thatit is therefore reasonable for people to want those things whenothers have them. How far-reaching the implications of this argu-ment are remains to be seen.

The second question concerns the distinction between the desirefor equality and the desire for superiority. There are at least tworeasons for thinking these differ in ways that matter One is moral:to want to be (and to seem) as good as others seems clearlyrespectable; to want to be better than or to outdo others arousesour suspicions. In Kantian terms, it is possible to will everyone tosucceed in their striving for equality, but not in their striving forsuperiority (or more simply, it is possible to will that everyone beequal but not that everyone be superior). Some critics ofegalitarianism would insist that to eradicate the desire forsuperiority would be to discourage excellence and individuality.

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Egalitarians can respond by distinguishing the desire to excel fromthe desire to outdo others: one can aim to do as well as one can orachieve a goal defined by the activity at hand rather than by theachievements of others.

Whether this argument can succeed in throwing out thebathwater (the desire to surpass others) without the baby(excellence and individuality), and, more generally, whether thedesire to surpass others is morally objectionable, are questions wecannot settle here. But there is another difference between thedesire for superiority and the desire for equality. The first can leadto prisoner's dilemma situations, which are among the primaryreasons for thinking consumption in the contemporary worldproblematic, (It need not always lead to them, however; whetherit does or not will depend partly on the rate of technological changeand changes in fashion,) We envision the ever-escalating spiral ofacquisition among consumers all intent on proving their superiorstatus. The desire for equal status does not appear to generate suchvicious spirals.

Do people want merely to be equal to others, or do they want tobe better? No doubt there is wide variation in this matter, bothamong people within a society, and between cultures moregenerally. Variation exists also within individuals: we arecontent to be merely as good as others in many respects, even ifwe want to excel in some. It would be foolish to deny the existenceof the desire for superiority, but it is also a mistake to exaggerateits extent,

A classic social-psychological study conducted during and afterWorld War II, The American Soldier, sheds light on these issues.It was found that in the Military Police, opportunities forpromotion were poor, yet satisfaction was higher than in the AirCorps, where opportunities for promotion were much better Theexplanation is nicely summarized by W,G, Runciman:

Those who were not promoted in the Military Police tended to comparethemselves with the large number of their fellows who were also not promoted,while those few who had been promoted were likely to appear to themselves tohave done relatively better. In tiie Air Corps, by contrast, the man who was notpromoted would be likely to compare himself with the large number of hisfellows who had been promoted, while these, though successful, would appearto themselves to have done relatively less well,'

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This conclusion is intuitively plausible and borne out by casualobservation. In a professional school with one endowed chair, theunendowed will be relatively content; if half the members of thedepartment have endowed chairs, the situation of the unendowedwill rankle. A person's position can seem tolerable and evensatisfactory to her as long as most other members of her referencegroup—those to whom she compares herself—are in the sameboat. The sense of deprivation is largely relative to one's expec-tations, and these in tum depend on what others around one have.

This claim supports the view that equality is a satisfactoryoutcome for many people in many situations. Interestingly, thesame line of reasoning suggests that even the desire for superioritycan often be satisfied by superiority relative to one's referencegroup. This emphasis on relative endowment contrasts with a viewof human beings as craving more and more, period. Even wherepeople desire superiority and not just equality, the relativized viewimplies that consumption can be constrained. For to the extent thata person's aim is relative rather than absolute endowment, havingmore than others—rather than more and more and more—^willsuffice.

Both the moral concern about the desire for superiority (that itis reprehensible) and the practical concem (that it may escalatewithout surcease) will be more serious if there are reasons fordoubting the stability of the distinction between the desire forequality and the desire for superiority. We turn now to thisquestion. The discussion leads to more general questions about theextent to which the quest for status informs decisions aboutconsumption.

Status and Other Goods

To think that by having or owning or showing certain things aperson can demonstrate his status is to acknowledge that suchthings constitute the outward signs of some nonvisible condi-tion. This idea is so fundamental to the way material goods areviewed in our society that it is difficult to imagine not viewingthem in this way. The economist Robert Frank calls this crucial

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function of consumption "ability signaling." It is worth quotinghim at some length:

In societies in which economic and social interactions between people arepervasive and important—that is, in every known human society—informationabout people with whom we might interact has obvious value Many of themost important decisions ever made about us depend on how strangers see ourtalents, abilities, and other characteristics.

. , . People's various talents and abilities are not like numbers tattooed on theirforeheads, there for all the world to observe at a glance. Their assessment is asubtle and complicated task, which to accomplish with reasonable accuracyrequires a heavy investment of time and effort. Time and effort, however, arevaluable for other purposes as well, and so we are led to seek ways ofeconomizing on the evaluation process.

. , , The importance of consumption goods as signals of ability willbe differentfor different occupations. Earnings and the abilities that count most amongresearch professors are not very strongly correlated, and professors thinknothing of continuing to drive a 10-year-old automobile if it still serves themreliably. But only in a very small town, where people know one another well,might it not be a mistake for an aspiring young attorney to drive such a car irithe presence of his potential clients. Good lawyers generally earn a lot of money,and people with a lot of money generally drive fashionable new cars. Thepotential client who doesn't know better will assume that a lawyer with abattered car is not much sought after.

If it is true that we need information about each other that wouldordinarily be impossible or inefficient to acquire directly, we mustread it off from more visible signs. We can, of course, argue aboutthe reliability of different signs, but that is another matter Indi-viduals do not decide what the signs are or should be; they mustpretty much take them as given. If you want to convey infonnation,you have to speak the language. One decides to drive an AcuraLegend or to wear Guess jeans, but not what information isconveyed by these choices. Sometimes, of course, the informationwill be misinformation. So if one cares what other people think,one must be sure to learn what different consumption choices aretaken to signify.

The purely informational aspect of ability-signaling obviouslyperforms a useful function. Reading surfaces is a shortcut, andespecially in mass societies where typically we are strangers toone another, we need shortcuts. ^ This function of consumptionextends to its purely expressive aspects, unconnected with statusconsiderations. How you dress, what kind of car you drive, what

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you eat—these choices tell people about your tastes, interests, andvalues. It is not necessarily amatter of status-seeking to want otherpeople to know such things.

Yet when consumption serves to signal abilities, the distinctionbetween consuming to demonstrate one is as good as others andconsuming to show one is better, and between either of these andconsuming simply to convey information, begins to blur Insofaras a person is attempting to convey information about his abilities,he is saying "I have these traits, these talents, I am this good ( ,, ,so hire me, or let me into your university)," He is serving the usefulfunction of providing information about himself, but he is alsotrying, in a competitive world, to obtain a scarce commodity.

The consumption of education provides illuminating examplesof these complexities, (It also shows that the consumption ofnonmaterial goods like education is in important ways just like theconsumption of material goods.) What is the good that we desire,and that we hope to obtain for ourselves or our children by enrichededucational programs, private schools, prestigious colleges,advanced degrees? There are three kinds of possibilities. First, Imay want my child to acquire the intellectual resources toappreciate Shakespeare or Einstein, What I seek here is anonrelative good. To attain it, my child will need a certain qualityof education. Theoretically, at least, everyone could have such aneducation; there is plenty of Shakespeare to go round, and her gainneed be no one else's loss.

Perhaps, though—instead or in addition—the good I seekthrough education is a chance at one of society's better jobs. Betterj obs are scarce, and we can assume that those with more and bettereducation have an advantage in obtaining them. But better jobscan be scarce in two quite different ways, A job can be betterbecause it is more interesting or rewarding (defined however onechooses), so that a person with a better job will have a better orricher life. Here again, what is wanted is a nonrelative good; it isa good that happens to be scarce, however, because of certainunfortunate accidents of the world we inhabit, and so one person'shaving the good excludes others from having it. There is nonecessity that a person who wants a better job in this sense wantsstatus—certainly not superiority, not necessarily even equality;

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status may not enter as a consideration at all. Nevertheless, sucha person will want to be better than others so that she rather thanone of them will get the job.

A job can be better in a different sense: it can occupy a higherposition in the social hierarchy. A person who wants a better jobin this sense clearly seeks superiority over others; the good soughtis what Fred Hirsch calls a positional good, one that is inherentlyscarce. Only in this case do we find the concern with status thathas so dominated thinking about consumption.

Of course, I have been arguing that the concem with status,insofar as it represents a desire for equality rather than superiority,is not reprehensible. Yet educational goods illustrate the instabilityof the distinction. We can further clarify this point with theexample of so-called "gifted and talented" programs in the publicschools. As a parent, I may believe that the educational needs ofmy children and of children generally are better served by anenvironment that deemphasizes tracking, and that does not labelacademically talented students and segregate them from otherstudents in special programs. I may hold this view even if mychildren are among those chosen by the elite system. Nevertheless,given the existence of a "gifted and talented" program, I will wantmy children to be selected for it. For once the system is in place,if they are not labeled as better, they are thereby labeled as worse.It is simply rational to hope they are chosen, even if I disapproveof the system, A similar analysis can be given of the flight frompublic to private schools, "white flight" from integratingneighborhoods, and many other phenomena. In such situations,one who fails to practice what she preaches has at least a partialdefense against the charge of hypocrisy.

We come back to the prisoner's dilemma situations mentionedin passing earlier Just how large a range of consumption practicesshould be understood in these terms is a question that needs furtherinvestigation. But it is clear at least that some such practices dofall into this category: if you don't move ahead, you fall behind.So the decision not to acquire more of the good in question is notsimply a decision not to improve one's well-being; it is in effect adecision to lower it. When high school diplomas are a dime adozen, employers will start to require college degrees; even if the

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additional education is not necessary to do the job, it serves as asorting device. When college degrees are a dime a dozen,employers will require MBAs or law degrees; even though theadditional education is not necessary . . . , and so on. As Hirschputs it, when everyone stands on tiptoe, no one sees any better. Butif you don't stand on tiptoe, you won't see at all. If you want tosee better, you'll have to get stilts. But when everyone getsstilts

Another way in which the line between the desire for equalityand the desire for superiority blurs emerges from a more carefulexamination of the idea of the reference group. It may be true thatpeople often want only equality with respect to those groups towhich they aspire or to which they think they belong. Butsometimes it is part of the group's identity to derive satisfactionfrom what Veblen calls "invidious comparison" with other groups.A member of Mensa may be content so long as his IQ equals thatof other members. But he may also derive satisfaction fromknowing he is smarter than others who do not qualify formembership. Some would argue that class membership workssimilarly: a person's satisfaction with being middle class restspartly on knowing there is a lower class. The instability of the linebetween the desire for equality and the desire for superioritydepends on how central invidious comparison is to a group'sidentity. It is probably safe to say that feeling superior is centralto the identity of some groups but not others.

What's Wrong With Consuming, Anyway?

How much space do the relational aspects of consumption occupyin the totality of reasons for consuming? It is not easy either tointerpret this question concretely, or to know how to go aboutanswering it. My own view is that the relational aspects of con-sumption are extremely important: that the reasons people wantthings have a great deal to do with what others around them have.This proposition has not been fully established by the foregoingarguments; but I believe that observation of and reflection on

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social phenomena support the conclusion that consuming becauseothers consume explains a great deal.

An important corollary is that to the extent that people's desiresto consume depend on what others around them consume,collective reductions in consumption will be less painful toindividuals than reductions individuals effect in isolation. And thereason is not simply that it is easier for people to make personalsacrifices if they know that others are doing likewise. It is alsothat, to the extent that consumption is relational, having less doesnot constitute a sacrifice if others also have less. We can put thepoint more strongly: to the extent that the desire to consume isrelative, two societies could differ markedly in their overall levelof consumption without differing in overall well-being, howeverwell-being is understood.

This view helps explain the common observation that people insocieties less affluent than our own are not necessarily worse off,and often do not seem less happy or satisfied, than we are. Relativedeprivation—deprivation relative to those around you—is crucial.This is not to say that deprivation is wholly relative, or that thereare not certain privations that are absolutely bad and to be avoided.Such a conclusion would be comforting yet pernicious.Nevertheless, for a society acting in concert, the pain of reducingconsumption should exceed the pain of reduced consumption,since what we are used to and what we are exposed to centrallyaffects our desires and degree of satisfaction. Collective, concertedefforts are less painful not simply because welfare is relational inthe ways I have described, but also because typically, they do notrequire the same kind of full awareness that individual efforts do.Legally-mandated taxes, deducted like clockwork from one'spaycheck (and from everyone else's), do not hurt—because we donot notice them—in the way that individual choices to donatemoney often do. The latter may be purely voluntary, but becausethese acts are done deliberately and in full consciousness, we areconstantly reminded of our sacrifice.

It is worth noting that I have not addressed the question whetherwe ought to consume less or not. Partly as a result, this discussionmight seem to have a certain ambiguous, "half-empty or half-full?"quality. Looked at in one way, it might appear to be an apology for

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consumption; looked at in another, it seems a call for the simplerlife. It looks like the first because in explaining the relativity ofconsumption practices I have also been defending these practicesto some extent. It looks like the second because the questionsraised get their force from the assumption that consumption issomehow problematic.

Both impressions have some warrant. Let us see why.First, let us consider the (partial) defense of consuming because

others consume against the charges of conformity, greed, envy, orone-upsmanship. I have argued that the desire to consume restspartly on factors that have nothing at all to do with status, and thateven the desire for status is not always reprehensible—that weconsume partly to satisfy the desire for a certain kind of equalitythat is essential to self-respect. Do these arguments commit thenaturalistic fallacy? Just because people behave in a certain wayor possess certain traits (assuming they do) does not amount to ajustification. Perhaps we should conclude instead that humanbeings are contemptible or at least morally weak.

To some extent this dispute will remain immune to rationalsolution. When all is said, there will still be serious disagreementsabout how much we can or should expect of mortal humanbeings—disagreements that cannot be analyzed further intosoluble bits. But we can make some headway by distinguishingthe different ways in which consumption is relational, for thesediffer morally. Consider the four categories that emerge from theforegoing discussion: (a) consumption dependent on infra-stmcture and networking effects; (b) consumption dependent onsalience and the demonstration effect; (c) the status-related desirefor equality; (d) the status-related desire for superiority. The firstis least problematic morally, because it affects needs that almosteveryone will agree are basic and whose fulfillment thereforetypically does not reflect vice. The last is most problematic, whichis not to say that no defense of the desire for superiority can bemade. I myself would not make it, however, and insofar as Veblenis right empirically I think he is wrong evaluatively: we should"depreciate" and "deplore" the tendency.

It is the two intermediate cases that are most difficult to resolve.As I argued above in the discussion of salience, one person's greed

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is another's openness to new experiences, and it is not easy to seewhat further information could get them to see eye to eye. Whatthis may show is just that their disagreement does not depend ondivergent factual beliefs, but rather on differing judgments aboutthe moral value of certain character traits or behavior. Similarthings can be said about equality and self-respect: facts abouthuman psychology aside, we may disagree about how much avirtuous person should care about what others think.

Facts about human psychology aside? Here, it seems clear, wecannot dispense with naturalism. What we count as virtue musttake heed of psychology; if the great mass of people cannot thriveor be happy without a certain degree of respect from their fellows,then it is at best only the remotest kind of virtue, fit for the veryfew, to go without it. There is still room for disagreement, ofcourse, about how much we should care about what others think.This disagreement is rooted partly in disputes about or ignoranceof the psychological facts, and partly in evaluative issues.

The moral heart of the question about what consuming becauseothers consume indicates about our character may rest, finally, onthe importance of self-sufficiency as a moral ideal. Self-sufficiency can be viewed in terms both of things and of people.Salience and the demonstration effect involve dependence onthings; the desires for equality and superiority involve dependenceon other people and public opinion.

In these matters I would urge moderation. With respect both tothings and to people, too much self-sufficiency is eerily inhumanand remote; too little is slavish. It is for this reason, among others,that I take the foregoing arguments to constitute a defense ofhuman character, but only a partial defense. We are made torespond to the stimuli around us, and to care about the opinions ofothers; but that doesn't mean that we don't often care more thanwe should. We do.

The preoccupation with status and the opinions of others canmanifest itself, and often has manifested itself, in value systemsthat place less emphasis on material goods. Are these other outletssuperior? Some would argue that material inequalities constitutea more benign and democratic manifestation of inegalitarianismthan other forms, at least in part because material things are more

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easily separable from a person's identity. Others would insist onthe intrinsic superiority of spiritual, moral, intellectual values,even if they do not solve the hierarchy problem and even if,because they are less separable from the self, they give rise togreater problems of self-respect and deep inequality.

These are large questions that I cannot address here. They matterinsofar as we are interested in the intrinsic moral value of materialconsumption and in the implications of consumption for characterBut—to come back to the beginning—^we worry about con-sumption for other reasons too: because it seems wrong for someto have so much while others have so little, or because we thinkthat those who have so much are partly to blame for others havingtoo little, or that by consuming so much themselves theyimpoverish others. Insofar as we worry about consumption forthese reasons—reasons of justice—or for environmental reasons,consuming less materially could make a big difference.

To know whether it will for certain would require us to analyzeand evaluate these reasons carefully. I hope at least to have shownwhy such changes, once effected, might be less significant andtraumatic than those of us who have become accustomed to a

27certain level of material comfort might suppose.

Notes

1. That is because, as I shall argue below, the concept of "too much" is partlyrelative to what others have. And so to know what too much is, we first mustdecide on a frame of reference—on tlie community to whom comparison isbeing made.

2. One might take Peter Singer's essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality,"Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-43, to mark the beginning ofthe contemporary philosophical debate.

3. I am leaving aside questions about whether we have had a role in bringingabout the situation in which the poor find themselves. If one thinks A iscausally responsible forB's plight, that gives a strong (perhaps undeniable)reason for thinking A must do something to remedy it. But the question israised and vigorously discussed in the philosophical literature, even whereit is not assumed that A is causally responsible for B 's plight. I shall describeboth these situations as raising questions of justice, although some would

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reserve the term for the first situation, describing the second instead in termsof benevolence or decency.

4. Amartya Sen, "Poor, Relatively Speaking," Oxford Economic Papers (NewSeries) 35 (1983): 153-69, esp. pp. 155-63.

5. Of course, cars have acquired a great deal of significance apart from theirutility. One may want a particular kind of car to express something aboutoneself or to demonstrate one's status. The point is simply that these motivescould be entirely absent and one would still have reason to want a car.

6. James Duesenbeny, Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. 26-27. Duesen-berry describes some of the same phenomena discussed here in terms of the"interdependence of preferences." As I hope my discussion makes clear, nosignificant questions are begged by allowing Duesenbeny's description ofthe new goods as superior.

7. Here and elsewhere the word "neighbors" must be understood partly meta-phorically. Who the reference group is to which I compare myself variesfrom person to person and context to context. Sometimes it is literally myneighbors; sometimes my coworkers; sometimes those who share my occu-pation; sometimes the parents of my children's friends. Literal neighborssometimes have a special significance because, particularly in the suburbs,one is confronted by their houses, theiryards, and their cars. As the sentenceimmediately following shows, there are, at least in the contemporary world,few constraints that can be imposed in advance on the class of neighbors.

The concept of a reference group to whom one compares oneself, exten-sively analyzed in the sociological literature, is central to our understandingof the processes described here. See, for example, Robert K. Merton andAlice Rossi, "Contributions to the Theory of Reference Group Behavior,"in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 1968 enlarged ed.(New York: Free Press, 1968).

8. For discussion and defense of the attractions of consuming, see MichaelSchudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, afterword to the new English edition (originally publish-ed in the United States by Basic Books, 1984); and Colin Campbell,"Consuming Goods and the Good inModem Consuming," inDavid Crocker(ed.). The Ethics of Consumptionand Global Stewardship (Lanham, Md.:Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming 1997).

9. This is one reason for thinking that, as Robert Goodin puts it, "voting greenbut living brown" is not necessarily hypocritical. See his Green PoliticalTheory (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1992), pp. 78-83, 120-23.

10. See A. Strudler and E. Curio, "Consumption as Culture," in Crocker (ed.)for a discussion of non-status-related expressive aspects of consumption.

11. I do not mean to imply that these choices are consciously designed toimpress other people; almost certainly the processes are less than consciousmuch of the time.

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12. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Mineola, N.Y: Dover,1994), chap. 2, pp. 20-21. Veblen describes the point of this kind ofaccumulation as "invidious comparison," although he hastens to add that"there is no intention to extol or depreciate, or to commend or deplore anyof the phenomena which the word is used to characterise. The term is usedin a technical sense as describing a comparison of persons with a view torating and grading them in respect of relative worth or value" (p. 22).Whether Veblen meant to "depreciate" or not, that is certainly the way hiswords have been taken. It is not hard to see why.

13. Self-respect is among the Rawlsian primary goods—^things that artyonewould want no matter what their values ortheirplanof life. See JohnRawls,A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

14. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class,p. 20. Veblen speaks of self-esteem,not self-respect. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, thereare reasons for distinguishing them. See David Sachs, "How to DistinguishSelf-Respect fnam Self-Esteem," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981):346-60. Following what I take to be Sachs's main idea, I understandself-esteem to mean having a high opinion of oneself or one's accomplish-ments, while self-respect involves having a proper regard for one's rights,deserts, or entitlements—having a sense that one is a person of value whoseinterests and wishes ought to be taken seriously. These concepts are clearlyrelated, and are not always easily distinguishable. Nevertheless, my point isabout self-respect, and I employ Veblen's assertion in support of it.

15. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth ofNations, originally published 1776 (New York: Modem Library), book V,chap. 2, pp. 821-22.

16.1 owe this point to Thomas Pogge.17. In addition, societies differ in the goods that serve as rharkers of status. The

Veblenesque critique of consumption practices can mask two different(although not mutually exclusive) complaints: that people care about statusand superiority; and that these concerns manifest themselves crudely, in thedisplay of material things, rather than, say, in intellectual, aesthetic, orspiritual values. I discuss this point further in the final sectioa

18. Samuel A. Stoufferetal., The American Soldier. I: Adjustment During ArmyLife (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949). The authors of this studycoined the central and now common term "relative deprivation."

19. W.G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and SocialJustice: A Study of Atti-tudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England (Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press, 1966), p. 18. For a discussion of the significance ofrelative deprivation in envy, with references to the social-psychologicalliterature, see AaronBen-Ze'ev, "Envy and Inequality," Journal of Philoso-phy ^9 (1992): 551-U.

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20. A full account of these matters would have to explain how the referencegroup gets chosen: how people decide which—that is, whose—^boat theyare in. Sometimes this will be fairly obvious, but not always.

21. Perhaps this is not strictly true: one might think that the possession of thingswas itself tantamount to status or superiority. But I believe that the relation-ship is commonly taken to be an evidentiary one: possessions (which ofcourse may be thought also valuable and desirable in themselves) are takenas a sign of worth. Compare the Protestant idea that emerged during the riseof capitalism that economic enterprise and wealth (although not materialdisplay) were the signs of spiritual salvation. See Max Weber, The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner's, 1958), and R.H.Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Penguin, 1980).

22. Robert Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Questfor Status (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 148-49. I amindebted to Frank's book and to Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) for stimulating mythinking generally about these matters.

23. Things are not quite so simple. The informational aspect of ability-signalingis conjoined with a disinformational aspect. I may want to communicate myabilities, or I may want to fool people into thinking that I have abilities thatI don't.

24. My discussion of education owes much to Hirsch's account. See SocialLimits to Growth, chap. 3. The distinction between the intrinsic and thepositional advantages of a j ob can sometimes be hard to draw. A person whofeels his work is unappreciated or unrecognized, because it lacks a certainstatus, may be unable to enjoy what would otherwise be an intrinsicallyrewardingjob.

25. See a 12 above and the text accompanying it.26. For a discussion of the virtue of self-sufficiency, see Michael Slote, "\lrtue

Ethics and Democratic Values," Journal of Social Philosophy 24 (1993):5-37.

27. This essay was written with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. I amgrateful to audiences at the University of Illinois, the University of Con-necticut, Yale University, and Wesleyan University for helpful discussions.I especially want to thank my colleagues at the Institute for Philosophy andPublic Policy, and, in particular, Karla Hoff, David Luban, Thomas Pogge,Jerome Segal, Alan Strudler, Leonard Waks, and David Wasserman for theirconversations and comments.

Judith LichtenbergInstitute for Philosophy and Public Policy and

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Maryland at College Park

jlichtenberg@puafmail.umd.edu