questions worth asking

This book sounds very interesting, if a little pessimistic. But it's attack on alternative forms of consumption is quite refreshing. Again this is a book I will have to read (like the DIY culture one), but I think the question of whether any of the ethical/radical/alternative forms of consumption have any validity or are simply forms of social distinction is interesting. On the one hand it seems to posit capitalism as a complete and bounded system and assumes that truly ethical behaviour is antithetical to any status seeking motivations.

This second point is rather stupid, as their book itself could be construed as a piece of status-seeking 'we're better than you' type hype and secondly we'd have to dispense with the great ethically minded heroes of the past as attention seeking hypocrites - goodbye Jesus, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King & co, they were clearly no better than the latest batch of Big Brother contestants.

The first point is slightly harder to discredit, capitalism seems to be everywhere, although it does depend what is meant by capitalism in this case. Selling things doesn't equal capitalist behvaiour per se. Human beings have probably always sold things, commodities are nothing new. Plus while economic institutions may apply free market rules literally (although G8 might change that a little, it appears to be an exception rather than a rule and comes with lots of rather dodgy caveats apparently) most businesses that participate in capitalism are less strict in their adherence (see profits being 'invested' in shareholders offshore accounts rather than business improvements).

What it does bring into question is: precisely what are alternative consumer practices doing to actually make the world a better place, and more pertinently to this blog does buying some obscure new wave album from the late 70s qualify for truly alternative behaviour or just a classic example of social distinction?