In economics, people are considered selfish
so they always do things according to their profits. Demand also can be
explained by this concept. They buy goods because they earn utility when they
earn goods, not because they are benefactors. Not only behavior of modern
people but also that of our antecedents cannot be a deviation from this
concept. However, there is a huge difference between the motive of consumption
of modern and ancient people. Ancient people’s motive was survival, they have
to demand dead carcass in order to survive, but modern people’s motive is an
aggregation of survival motives, ‘show-off’ motives, and ‘advertisement’
motives.
‘Show-off’
motives mean people consuming because they want people to know they have an
economical capacity to buy such expensive goods. It is apparent in the demand
of ‘Gucci’ bags. It is much more sensible to think that if a price of the bag
rises, the demand would decreases. In this example, however, the demand of the
bag increases as the price rises. We can conjecture the fact that people do
have ‘show-off’ motives when they consume. Even in ‘black Friday’, which first ‘buy
nothing day’ started, many are buying presents not to make the receivers happy,
but to impress them, saying that I am rich enough to buy this kind of presents
for you. Therefore, ‘buy nothing day’ is all about criticizing ‘show-off’
motives as it begets unnecessary demand.
It
is possible to see different kinds of advertisement every step you take,
meaning there is a deluge of advertisement these days. These advertisements
make confusions between need and desire. Let’s confirm this using an example.
You wanted to drink milk, so you went to the market. There were two kinds of
milk on the shelf. One was A milk and the other was B milk. Suddenly, you
remembered watching B milk’s advertisement, saying that it was milk from the
Alphes. So you bought B milk though A milk was cheaper. It is apparent that
people decide because of ‘advertisement’ motives as what you needed was milk
and what you desired was B milk, so you bought more expensive B milk, an
exception of the law of demand. Once, major broadcasting stations denied
advertisements of ‘Buy nothing day’. This denial is a sign of self-admitting
that advertisements input desires to people. ‘Buy nothing day’ can be a protest
of excess consumption that came from advertisements.
‘Buy
nothing day’ is a movement against modern problems of consumption. We can
specify the problems into two motives of demand, ‘show-off’ motives, and ‘advertisement’
motives. A long time ago, people did not have to face this kind of problems as
their motives were more about surviving in unfavorable environment. Therefore,
they consumed according to the amount they needed, not they wanted. No current
problem appeared itself at that time. ‘Buy nothing day’ is a movement that
allows people to understand current problems, which is vital for overcoming the
problems.