I recently bought a cycling magazine to read about things that I cant afford, wont buy and will never own.
This is a fairly typical experience for cyclists who are not investment bankers.
A good, basic bicycle is actually relatively cheap, depending on whether you want a bike to ride to the store, to commute to work, or to crash into trees on, you might have to spend $500 to $2,000 for a solid, new model. That bike will last for decades.
But the top-of-the-line bikes cost ridiculous amounts of cash. Known as halo bikes, these are the ones that will run you more than $12,000.
Theyre made of materials engineered by NASA, then hand-crafted into the form of a bike by blind Belgian cyclo-monks, their chains forged from mithril and cooled in melted snow collected from the Col du Tourmalet.
These bikes are bought by two kinds of people: top professional racers headed for the Tour de France or Giro DItalia, and chubby dentists who will come in 47th place in their local weekend road race.
Of course, every industry is like this. Just about all of us have cars. Mostly we get cars that are practical, or practical-ish. Some, however, have enough money and are car-crazed enough that they purchase a Bugatti Veyron, one of the worlds fastest and most expensive street-legal cars, a car that can drive 400 km/h and howls like a banshee getting a root canal.
Then they use it to go and get an extra litre of milk at the corner store.
The weird thing about these bikes and cars, and clothes and shoes and houses and weddings and childrens birthday parties, is that there are industries which exist to sell us the experience of not having these things.
Think about the number of people who actually buy halo bikes, or Bugatti Veyrons, in a given year. Its tiny compared to the number of people who read product reviews on cycling magazines, or watch Top Gear, or surf websites on their lunch hours.
A century ago, there was window shopping. No one got paid for this, and capitalism abhors a vacuum. So to replace the experience of looking at things and not buying them, they produced books and magazines about the things we cant afford. Now you can look at things and buy something.
Of course, the pretense is that you can. These publications are all about including you in a privileged inner circle. For the length of time youre reading, they make you feel like you could take off on that two-month cruise.
What fraction of people buying bridal magazines are not only not getting married, but not in a relationship? I suspect its a non-trivial number.
We all know about the people who buy things they cant afford. When theyre our neighbours and relatives, we worry about their financial health. When theyre our bankers and CEOs and politicians, we get another financial crisis.
Then theres the responsible types.
Were the people who buy the things we can afford to perpetually sell us the things we cant afford.
How big is this segment of the economy? How much money flows, scrap by scrap, to an industry dedicated to letting people drool over luxury cars, over solid-marble kitchen counters, over wedding dresses that look like a lace factory exploded?
Like Hollywood, this industry sells fantasy. It sells us the idea that were rich, or that we will be someday. Its a lie, of course.
By definition, most of us will not be that rich. But the owners of the dream industry might be.
Visit Matthew Claxtons blog at http://tinyurl.com/7mwo2qj or at www.langleyadvance.com.
