My Thoughts on Modern Value

11/02/2023 - Londoning

It's no doubt that nowadays 'value' is more important to people. Back in times of old, we used to know the intrinsic value of things by knowing how long they took to make and create, how much real effort had been put into it, and how many other people thought that thing was a good thing and also wanted that thing.

We then end up using that sort of squishy numberish thing to say whether or not you would like or want that thing and then use that to decide if and how you can afford it. Some of us even go as far as to predict the usability of the thing way into the future and find out almost to the day, exactly when the thing will become either very much more valuable or sadly, very much less valuable.

But with the way the world works with its people and things, more people make more things, and some of those things go on to be really wanted by some and not so wanted by others. then some more people go off and make some other things that nobody really wanted in the first place, like hummus ice lollies, or a fully wireless blue-tooth spoon.

With the advent of the internet, every man and his do started selling stuff in the dotcom era, and people from all over the world started using the avenue to force-feed messages deeper into families, societies and into our personal lives. Then this amazing thing happened, just like the tulips of the Nederlands, we just stopped caring. We finally realised, there was no intrinsic value to any of this, people didn't, in fact, need a lot of what these people we offering, nobody had any money, and what little money we had we didn't want to spend it frivolously on electronic pinpricks of light that we called pixels.

We reverted back to a time when we knew the value of tangible assets, people's hard spent time making and creating, developing and improving things that they really cared about. We found a deep respect for all those things that really stayed around through the thick and thin of it. not because they had enough money piled high enough in a back room somewhere, that they could just wait it out and beat their competitors. But because their customers and clients, knew they were getting a good deal.

'I get something I know I need because my life is noticeably worse without it, and in exchange for this product I'll pay what I believe is a fair price for the costs of labour, production, transportation, and generally any overheads that the company encounters.'

This is what makes a good business good, and a great business great, way beyond the capabilities of others. They look at the products, people and issues and understand, way beyond their competition that, because they did the leg work in making their product as good as it could be for the most reasonable price, they'll stay in business with good customers. All they then need to do is take care of their customers and take care of their competitor's customers too.

Now, obviously, these things are a little harder to do with the internet but we still see it today. People have been trying to sell products and services that just have no intrinsic or even observable value to their clients, customers and target audiences. Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFT's, are the absolute best prime example we have of this chicanery. Someone making a product which is quite literally anything, with absolute ease, thanks to the advancements of technology, then repeats the process a set amount of times, let's say 2023 times, and then attributes a value to their products, with no tangible or verifiable method or proving or disproving they are in fact worth that fee.

These NFT gremlins are very much the antithesis of modern dystopian capitalism and money grabbing, but they're there for a reason, nothing just happens to appear, especially out of thin air and without a cause. There are other noticeable leeches, such as social media influencers, profiteering of others' miseries and insecurities like that of those Kardashian creatures, but we can save that discussion for another day.

The issue really becomes one of trust and respect. It's made even more clear to anyone willing to take a step back and look a little closer at why and how we got here. People don't like the wool over their eyes, so when a company or even an individual for that matter, tells a beautiful lie to ease the pain and says that they did the hard work for them, 'don't worry about it and whatever you do, don't look over there', the crowd bite their hands off thinking they're getting the good end of the stick.

Then, it all comes tumbling down, when someone at the bottom asks to see the hard work. the hardship of which was totally fictitious and maliciously intended to deceive and trick people. These people don't get annoyed per say, they just 'stop' using the product or service. I know it all too well, I've never seen such a tidal wave of disappointment as I did with Logan Paul's NFT project, where people lost thousands of dollars prospecting in an idea that didn't even work on paper, simply because the man was at the helm saying it would be 'pretty cool, once the kinks were rolled out'.

That trust in the ones we once idolised is now gone, once it's gone, it doesn't come back easy, and it's the same for quite literally any type of trust needing authority. Designer clothing companies, governments, energy companies, telecommunication companies, the list goes on and on. Right up to the top and right down to the bottom.

In the UK we see it every day, I know people personally who haven't watched any news channels, read any papers and have yet to open up social media, who have found themselves to be happier than ever before in their recent memories. I know individuals who, outright refuse to involve themselves with politics and financial systems simply because of the 2022 elections and subsequent collapses. I know of, quite literally, countless individuals who will never purchase a designer good of any type ever again, after discovering their profit margins and just where they get those margins from.

And unsurprisingly, I'm inclined to join them on their boats as they set sail for better ideologies and lands where you don't actually have to spend thousands to look a certain way or have the same experiences to be part of 'their special club'. The honesty of companies went a long time ago, and we're at a point where a lot of people want it back, and if they can't get it from the companies that they would typically go to, they'll go to the one that can.

A prime example of this is clothing, nobody really cares what you wear, we care how it makes us feel, the toppest and uppiest designer brands are expensive and in more cases than I care to mention, the quality and overall experience of purchasing and using the products is sub-par at best. People buy designer to feel good, and if they don't like the brand, then why the hell would feel good about wearing the products they offer? At no point does a green-washing campaign for a multi-billion dollar fashion brand that purposefully uses cheaper labour, make a dent in the haemorrhaging of previously loyal customers.

People don't have as much money to spend on expensive stuff, in the UK we've got bigger issues to spend our money on, like deciding whether or not to relive our student years, by choosing to have a shower and a cup of tea, or having the heating on for twenty minutes.

Now the issue's become more clear, we still want stuff, but we don't want stuff that is any worse than the stuff we already have, and we still want to feel good about buying that stuff, so where do we go?

Well, it's pretty simple. we go tot he one that's around the same price but has been good since day one. We go to a brand like Finisterre, or Patagonia, and we buy locally or only through companies and brands we know actually give a damn about the products and people making and wearing them. We buy consciously and carefully because we don't want to get hurt again finding out that that brand that made us feel really good was actually way worse than the one that we switched from before.

We find value in the trust and respect that the company has for the people involved in creating and using the product, we find a squared value from how good we feel knowing that it's a good product, with good intentions, and we triple our positive experiences by bragging about how good it is to our friends, who then go and buy it and say something like 'oh yeah it's way better AND it's so much better for the environment'. I'm proud to have already been part of that brag wagon, I've always been overly conscious about things that I buy, I always want the value, and I think a lot of younger more socially active people are starting to see that it's actually really easy to change and make an astounding difference to you and other peoples lives.

Modern value isn't just one thing about profits or how good it makes us feel, it's not about the tangible or even intrinsic values we learn from the story of the product or the history - if they have - of the brand, it's a collection and squishy mess of all these things.

Understanding modern value is huge for anyone involved in being a human. So I guess we should all keep on learning and discussing value a bit more, as we continue to be more human-ish every day.

P.s: This is a subject I'll definitely revisit as it's just nuts what's going on in the world, I can't wait to see what happens, and be the fly on the wall when someone tries to brag about spending thousands of pounds on a coat when everyone else forgets that the brand still sells them.