Consumerism a Sickness That Is Getting Worse

After reading Michael Silverstein’s Dec. 23 commentary, “Let’s Lose the Guilt Trip; It’s OK to Buy,” I have to conclude that he is incredibly naive, has another job as a marketing executive for a high-end auto dealer or has never been to Wal-Mart. This country has a sickness that worsens every year. The mother who buys the American Girl doll is more likely doing so because little Susie next door has the whole set and her own daughter won’t stop begging for “just one.” Almost all of us have been told since we were kids that money does not buy happiness, yet we try our utmost to discredit that theory every day.

I am a home inspector, and I have lost count of the times I have been to an old, badly maintained, one-bedroom shack where four or five kids live in near squalor, only to see a $40,000 SUV parked in the driveway and $500 worth of video games on the floor. Does Silverstein think that these kids will ever go to college or even get a decent job? Caring a great deal about material goods without being morally bankrupt is surely a rarity. The marketers would be proud.

Chris Roberts

Thousand Oaks

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Silverstein’s platitudes laud our greed but ignore one salient distinction -- the difference between marketing to our strengths and marketing to our weaknesses. The concept of the “free” market, for all the many other distortions it hides, refuses to admit that selling poison, if people want it, should be treated differently than selling medicine. Think tobacco.

Gluttony and greed may not be sins any longer, but we do agree they are weaknesses. By Silverstein’s logic, if the demand is there for poison, we deserve to have it. That’s also advertising’s logic and, unfortunately nowadays, political logic. We get what we deserve.

Rex Styzens

Long Beach