To survive we do not need a lot of things. Water, bread, air to breathe, shelter from cold and rain. A hot stove to cook a dinner and to warm your hands after long and wearisome day. Some clothes on our back. But in reality we need more, we want more. We want something that is ours. Our car, our home.
We want things, special things, that are beautiful and unique, or just luxurious and fashionable. We want a car to move around and not to depend on public transportation, we want a house or an apartment that belongs to us, not just a rental place.
We (especially women) want nice clothes and more than enough of them, so we could change our image and look differently all the time. But sometimes that choices take too much time and money from us and we cannot resist temptation to get more than we need and pay more than we can afford to obtain that. And we end up with lots of debts and frustrations, and with plenty of unnecessary things we cannot get rid of. Or some people become sick with hoarding.
I never even heard about such affliction in my old country where we had the only choice usually - one type of a product, one brand and probably limited so you can just buy one piece, or one kilo or one thing of it (like one loath of bread) even if you need more. It's just 2 choices - to have it or to have not, to buy it or to buy not. So you could make an instant decision without complex procedure of making up your mind what color, size or brand to buy. Just grab it until somebody else does and be happy, and take good care of that thing or it might get ruined by something and then you have to live without it until another occasion. Is it a good thing or not when you have multiple choices?
I guess some things are really can be more simple. We do not need 50 brands of toothpaste or 30 brands of bread or soap at the store. Or may be 100 brands of cookies or cereals in colorful boxes. They are not good nutritional product anyway. And they are basically the same, just boxes and prices are different. So far if I met a really healthy cookie, the price was usually astronomically high, so I never had a chance to appreciate the taste - beyond my league, sorry.
Well, right now so many thins are just made in China, and there is not much quality in them. You cannot expect to buy a winter coat and wear it for 10 years in such way that it still looks good on you after that. Or shoes/boots that you can wear for 5 years and be happy with it. Things are not the same now. I used to buy boots that you could wear for 5 years but they were not made in China...
A lot of choices probably is a good thing anyway, i just do not want to spend so much time at the store, I value my time and my money. So buying a complete crap even a cheap one is not nice either.
I bought a bed in April 2010. It is January now and I already giving away parts of it, as I am going to throw away it soon. My mattress is absolute garbage. All springs are sticking into my ribs already. And I assumed that a bed supposed to last a long time, not half a year. Do I want a new bed? No, I don't. Do I have to buy it? I am afraid I have to.
I do not like sleeping on springs. Not much fun after all. So what is sustaining our economy - our buying power, or existence of credit cards, as our buying power is close to zero, as most of us are in a survival mode anyway? Well, I am all for choices, for lots of choices - in employment possibilities, in cheap housing, in healthy nutritional food. Wishful thinking, I am afraid, it's not going to happen. not in my lifetime.
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