Chapter 2
INNOCENT BYSTANDERS OR CALCULATING PROTAGONISTS?
At the end of the first chapter we laid out an argument that at the same time as the explosion in production, migration and wealth, we entered the Era of Social Capital Waning. A combination of reductions in certain forms of social capital and dramatic increases in hedonic needs gave rise to the slow, inexorable creep of individualism and materialism at the individual level, and consumerism at the societal level.
Brands were certainly instrumental in that decline, we believe. We’ve talked about the fillip brands offered to this new, mobile consumer, and how it became divisive in terms of our overall ‘operating system’ for society. But were brands really aware of the potential long-term impacts of their actions? Was this a deliberate ploy?
In hindsight, despite the venom that is directed at brands today, there may be a suitably strong argument to say it was not. If we consider for a moment a balance sheet for society, and turn specifically to the liabilities side to see how society was being ‘capitalised’, it’s possible to look back and see brands as supplying what could be described as low quality, very short-term debt for society. Brands contributed by propping up quantitative growth in the short term, pumping the market with staggering sales figures and expansion plans. Brands, on behalf of their corporate guardians, were responding to increasingly shrill calls for quantitative growth in shorter and shorter periods. To ...
