The Magpie Effect

There was plenty more in the form of objects dart and items of decorative value as well as the memorabilia we all accumulate even if the memory no longer has any meaning. I looked up the meaning of Magpie Effect: it referred to an overwhelming urge to purchase an item of no practical value and/or out of ones price range purely based on its appearance. Apparently,it primarily affects women where shoes and bags are concerned and men in car showrooms or electronic stores.

Psychologists have a phrase for it Compulsive Buying Disorder. Its a condition that forces us to become what we own. Nowadays,what you wear,the gadgets you carry,where you live and the car you drive projects your personality,even if it has no connect to the kind of person you are or the emotional characteristics that define your being. A more modern translation is affluenza,a socially-transmitted condition of overload and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. My parents were almost miserly in comparison.

One can blame it on the spread of affluence across the country and among all classes that has created a new model of consumerism but a more compelling factor has been the credit boom which has given everyone an artificial sense of worth as well as a misplaced desire for possessions and acquisitions beyond our means. Economists call it Sign Value,or the value accorded to an object because of how it impacts the social status of the possessor as opposed to the use value,derived from its primary purpose. Sign value is like splashing out on a Rolls Royce partially because it represents a means of transportation and partially because it signifies the buyers wealth to other members of society. The former is the primary function of the limousine (giving rise to use value); the latter,the sign value. This generally applies to most high-status goods,such as very expensive wines,designer handbags and luxury watches.

An economist called Thorstein Veblen wrote extensively on people who indulge in such high-end products. His theory was that any decrease in the prices of such products decreases the preference for buying them because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high-status products. His theories were later named The Veblen Effect because he was the first to point out the concept of conspicuous consumption and status-seeking.

There is history behind that development. Way back in 1920,British academic R H Tawney wrote a book called The Acquisitive Society, still considered the finest book on economic inequality ever written. Heres what he wrote: As long as a minority has so large an income,that part of it,if spent at all,must be spent on trivialities. Im nowhere in the Rolls Royce buying class but I know where he was going as I survey the pile of possessions I now have to discard,which is,of course,another story. A few years ago,I could get rid of any junk to the ubiquitous raddiwallas who would arrive on your doorstep every Sunday.

Today,I have no clue how to get rid of that pile of discards,shameful examples of conspicuous consumption and status seeking. Where do you think the raddiwallas have gone? Probably down to the nearest mall to become part of the growing tribe of Indians who are sexing up the meaning of acquisitive society.