…an absolutely terrific article by Mark C. Taylor examines today’s “hyper-fast, hyper-modern” markets and the inherent problems with them:

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/02/fast-cheap-and-out-of-control-how-hyper-consumerism-drives-us-mad/

Ladies and gentlemen, this could well be THE article regarding today’s markets and consumers, something I’ve personally found worrisome for a very long time.

There used to be a time we would buy a product, say a television, and if it went “bad” you would call a TV repairman to come over and check it out.  Not so today.  Today, we simply throw the old away and buy the cheap, new, “better” product, thus putting us in more debt and adding to a tremendous amount of waste products created annually by consumers.

I first noticed this trend of throwing the old away, even if it still works pretty well, with Apple and their i-products.  How many times have we had the Apple marketing folk unveil their newest, “greatest” product only to go through the same thing the very next year?

For me the realization came when my daughters were younger and the “must have it” item near Christmas time was the touchscreen iPod.  Commercials for the product were everywhere and it was one of the hottest items on sale during that Christmas season.  I bought them for my daughters and, not even two or three months later, was shocked when the company announced it would soon release its next itineration of the very same item, and this one had cameras which users could use to communicate via wi-fi and actually see each other as they talked!

I was furious with Apple because here they were, only three or so months earlier, promoting the hell out of their iPod and they knew damn well the next version would come out very soon and they would happily go through the process all over again and were hoping to force people like me to simply chuck the previous iPod and buy the next, better one.

Needless to say, I developed a great skepticism for Apple and their products from that moment on.  I may have, but others either haven’t or don’t care.

Apple has been following that same game plan for years, and so far there remain millions of customers drawn to their products.  The Apple iPhone 6 is but the latest example of something “new” that clever marketing makes desirable to its clients but which maybe we don’t quite need or isn’t quite as big a step forward as marketing would have us believe.

Not to pull out my fuddy-duddy card, but I use a Samsung S3 phone.  I bought it when it was first released sometime in 2012 and it still works fine for me.  Currently, the Samsung S5 is available and the S6 is expected to be released in early 2015.

Will I get the new phone?  Unless mine develops some serious problems, I don’t think so.  Yet companies such as Samsung and Apple live and die on the basis of “planned obsolescence”, something Mr. Taylor’s article points out and which I realized back when I bought those iPods.

We’re living in a time when it has become desirable to buy whatever is new and improved and toss aside whatever is “old” and which the magic of marketing makes us feel is suddenly useless.

I worry, as does Mr. Taylor, about the economic, social, and environmental impacts of this hyper-consumerism.

Read the article.  It’s pretty damn interesting.