Infomercials, QVC, & HSN: Do I Really Need That?

When suffering from bouts of late night (or early morning) insomnia, nothing puts me to sleep like the smiles and promises that flash across the television screen during an infomercial. Most of us have seen them--infomercials that offer amazing deals on things we all must have, and home shopping channels that we must call right away to ensure we get the item we need before it sells out. When we see that the seller is "throwing in free gifts," reducing the number of payments if we call within the next three minutes, and boasting high customer satisfaction through "unscripted" testimonials, it's hard not to fall for such attractive offers. Each of us starts to tell ourselves, "Yes, I really do need a steam cleaner," and "I've always wanted to make my own ice cream." And of course, we're always in luck because for a limited time only, the handy steam cleaner of your dreams only costs three easy payments of $39.99 and the easy-to-use ice cream maker comes with a free, revolutionary ice cream scooper.

Why are we lured so easily into buying things we just don't need, or even want? Has our culture become so rooted in materialism that we cannot make the distinction between wants and needs anymore? Bill McKibben in The Age of Missing Information says that, "On these channels—the shopping networks, the channels that devote half their day to the ‘infomercials’—you are more and more encouraged to buy simply because the very act of buying will make you feel good” (123). This is an insightful thought that not only makes me think about where human desire might stem from, but also about people's decision-making abilities in an economic sense.

One assumption in economics is that when consumers buy something, they make a logical decision based on perceived value and the belief that the benefit they will receive will be greater than the cost incurred to purchase the item. However, many times, consumers don't exactly know if the cost of buying an item will be less than the benefit they will receive from it. This is a topic discussed frequently in the field of behavioral economics. In this relatively new field, psychology and economics meet, leading economists to better understand some of the economic decisions people make everyday that are seem irrational.

Here are some links to interesting articles about the behavioral economics:

Why We Buy What We Buy

Behavioral Economics on Why We Buy What We Buy

And here is the video I made about infomercials, QVC, and HSN:

Bucky Fuller

Who is Buckminster Fuller? I know I had never heard of him until a few days ago when I encountered a mention of him in McKibben's 1992 reflection The Age of Missing Information. While I initially questioned why such an important figure has remained virtually unknown within our society for so many years, I quickly realized that his lack of appearance is simply based on the subject he studied and the way he went about his discoveries.

In today’s society, a formal college education is a must, however "Bucky" decided that formal education only limited his creative ability and after being expelled twice from Harvard decided not to return to college. One may wonder how someone could ever be influential without receiving a college degree. The answer is creativity, something Bucky had and many others lacked or chose to ignore. After considering suicide, Bucky Fuller decided to reevaluate his life and realized that by killing himself his life would have been essentially worthless, and decided that he should take the greater good of humanity into his own hands in an attempt to better the chance of existence of the human race. His life would be a test and he would call himself Guinea Pig B. With confidence Bucky began searching for ways to solve the problems of the world, deciding that the greatest problem would one day be sustainability.

Throughout his career Bucky made various discoveries and inventions as he put his creative and devoted mindset to work. All of his designs focused on how to make and do more with less, the idea that he later named “ephemeralization.” Most notably was his idea of the geodesic dome: a self supporting structure that maximizes space while minimizing materials and cost.

This concept alone revolutionized the design of lightweight backpacking tents, some of which weigh only 10 lbs. yet can withstand 120 mph winds.

Along with his idea of ephemeralization, Fuller was devoted to his idea of "spaceship earth." This idea focused on our world floating alone in space, one large, boundless sphere.

Spaceship earth is a completely closed off environment with limited ability to regenerate natural resources, as our earth actually is. By viewing the world in such a way, Bucky was able to understand that man must use natural resources wisely and scarcely as they are not renewable. He also believed that there is no place for selfishness within spaceship earth and all men must work together for the common goal of survival. Although Bucky worked extremely hard for the progression of his inventions and idea, few people recognized his ideas as credible and viewed him as a crazy futurist with radical perceptions of the world.

Today Bucky’s ideas still linger, however the problems he recognized over fifty years ago still exist. Why is it that we have known of these problems for so long, given possible solutions to fix them, yet have not been able to rally society as a whole in an attempt to cure the issue of human sustainability? I wonder if we would still have the problems we have today had be implemented Bucky’s ideas into our society, or are the problems we face inevitable and incurable? While one will never know, maybe we can think more openly next time a monumental figure such as Bucky Fuller comes around.

In researching Fuller I was amazed by his quirkiness yet ability to think so freely against the norm and strive for unimaginable goals. While I admire him, I do not feel the same about Bill McKibben, who mentions Bucky in his work The Age of Missing Information. While McKibben agrees that mans problem is sustainability he seems to follow Bucky's contemporaries by viewing him as a “crank” with “victorious” yet unrealistic goals and ideas. Will our society ever reach a point where we can come together as a whole and fully accept a person’s ideas or has our individualistic nature been too deeply instilled to escape our own trap?

A video of Bucky Fuller describing his idea of the dymaxion car.