CANS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Technocapitalism, Consumerism, Truthiness

• School: McGill University
• Department: Canadian Studies
• Course: CANS 200
• Professor: Marie Anne

Document Summary

Inequality, status, and the positional economy: a wealthy man is one who earns a year more than his wife"s sister"s husband. People close to you define whether you are wealthy or not. Inequality in the material economy: nice houses/not nice houses. Eventually, when the society reaches a certain level, almost all classes have access to the same general types of material goods. 99% of us homes have a tv: where they differ is in quality, bells and whistles, price, rich people drink the same coca-cola as us, there"s no elite coca-cola, we take this for granted. It"s not that the poor have no cars but it"s that they have cheap cars. (he"s hinting that this isn"t an issue?) The shift to positional economy: 2 categories, some positional goods are scarce in some absolute sense or social sense: old master"s paintings, lakefront property, etc, some suffer from crowding effects: wilderness camping, open road; university degrees.