Empowering the Uncontainable

Meritocracy and conspicuous consumption are dirty dancing partners. Value is personal, and price is a blunt tool for exchange. Price is a way to “put a number on anything”, even if it shouldn’t be boxed in that way. 

Demonstrating your wealth via things you can see can be an attempt to put a price on yourself. To show what you are worth. If you buy the idea that people with more merit, have higher prices, and so in a hand-to-mouth world... consume more. Another way of thinking of money and price is a tool to build the capacity to cope with life. Not about ranking or comparison, but rather about endurance and resilience. 

If you snap the need to (always) listen to price, you can internalise the way you look at value. You are not extracting yourself from life, in all its glory, and with all its challenges. You are building capacity which requires support. You can’t do it alone. 

Wealth is built in containers. We need to recognise our communities, and see how the containers we build exist within bigger containers. Trust in the bigger container is part of Adam Smith’s argument in favour of win-win capitalism versus win-lose mercantilism (battleship diplomacy with nations competing). He was able to show that freedom of movement in capital, goods, services, and people is win-win. 

You need to give things shape and form to make money, but those containers can morph and empower the uncontainable.

Changing Shape and Form