When the book Problems of Post-War Capitalism in the United States talks about the importance of marketing in American capitalism, I will agree that advertising is extremely important in stimulating the economy. I also agree that because of the money we spend on advertising and products, it kind of has an effect on the job market, but at one point in the book they said that more products will still create more jobs. I think like most things, this happens to a point, but maybe our society has gotten to this point. Advertising a product will create a need for people to buy that product, but at what cost?
Customers will stop buying one thing to buy the new one, and while the new product is getting more customers, the old product is losing customers. In this case, the labor market does not change. Since one company needs more employees, the other will need fewer. Today, there is more or less something for everyone in the world, so once you introduce something new to the market, you will simply take customers away from another group.
For some reason reading this book made me think back to my 6 week stay in Ghana. As I was reading here how fragile capitalism seems to be and how our marketplace, clothing shopping and labor market affect our economy so much, I realized that much of this was not present in Ghana. I’m not saying that your society is a better place than ours, but stress related to certain issues does not exist there. In capitalism I feel that all people want to be successful. You work for prestige and wealth is always a problem. In Ghana, fame, wealth and power play a less important role in people’s lives and therefore the general public is much less stressed on a day-to-day basis.
From this book I learned that capitalism might not be the way to go. This is somewhat counterintuitive because most Americans have been raised learning that capitalism is the only option and the right path. Reading about capitalism’s reliance on advertising and product buying is perplexing because if that market were ever to die or be disrupted, capitalism would fail. I am also very interested in being eco-friendly and constantly buying new products seems like a waste to me. If products were made to last a long time and didn’t break/become obsolete, then people could save money and waste less. Unfortunately, after reading this book, I now see that if this were the case, capitalism would suffer greatly. I think that in the future we will have to find an alternative to capitalism.
