Obsessively Irrational Discretionary Spending.

Sometimes I find myself wondering how people fifty years ago are going to judge the things we do today. There are many decisions we make that already carry negative consequences that we can easily foresee. For instance, our energy policy has ceased to have any coherent relationship with reality. We know that we have to find a new approach soon. We aren't acting quickly enough. That should be evident to everyone by now. But other more subtle choices can seem pretty irrational when viewed with any measure of objectivity. To many who live with routine hardship, the behavior of Americans must appear inexplicable.

The things we attach value to are mind-boggling. But we are empowered to find worth by our unprecedented luxury. One recent example of surreal commerce has to do with the game World of Warcraft. I wrote about the phenomena in an earlier post. While that particular form of postmodern colonialism is certainly mind-bending, it's certainly no exception. Last night I was reminded of another category of irrational valuation- and this was something with which I have had ample personal experience. Much of our economy has to do with items that have no real intrinsic value of their own, but are rather fraught with perceived value. I'm talking about collectibles. Imagine any class of consumer good... you can bet that somewhere out there is a group of folks dedicated to its acquisition. The law of supply and demand states that if people desire something, then it has relative worth that can be measured in currency. It simply doesn't matter if the object being collected has no actual utility.

I've always been a collector. When I was younger I horded comics, coins, stamps, action figures, and business cards. But my main passion was for sports cards. I estimate that I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 thousand of them. For those of you who don't remember, the 1980's marked a huge craze in the investment possibilities of sports collectibles. Aficionados would identify young prospects who they believed would someday become stars. Then they would purchase the rookie cards of these players in bulk. If expectations were met by performance, then those cards would appreciate in value. For a few crazy years, financial advisers were assessing the merits of this type of investment. Some suggested that the burgeoning industry was a valid alternative to the stock market.

The problem was that more people were buying these cards strictly for investment than there were fans who really loved the sports themselves. To complicate matters, the card manufacturers exploited the perception that their products were serious investments, and flooded the market with countless limited edition sets. No one could really keep up with all of that, and supply quickly outstripped demand. A lot of people who really did love the sports and the cards grew frustrated and just lost interest. Many folks ended up with closets full of cardboard boxes containing mere squares of printed cardboard.

That period in time wasn't unique. As long as there has been disposable income, people have been fanatical about collecting one thing or another. Just Google "tulipmania" to see for yourself. But it's one thing to consider this from a broad sociological perspective, and entirely different to try and understand the individual that fuels any specific collecting craze. Somewhere in the early 1990's there was some obsessive basketball fan, sitting at his kitchen table late on a Saturday night, and agonizing over the urge to buy a Michael Jordan rookie card. Knowing that the cost could reach nearly $1000, the guy must have struggled with his priorities. Maybe his kid had a cleft palate and needed some cosmetic work done. But damn... wouldn't it be nice to have that card!! Perhaps this hapless father rationalized his choice by telling himself that it was a good investment. Junior would be hitting adolescence soon, and he could surely grow a mustache to obscure his flaw. He could even color that space in the middle where the hair wouldn't grow. Would it really be so bad for this guy to indulge himself in the one pleasure that distracted him from his shitty job and dissolving marriage?

Yeah, it probably would be. Yet somewhere there were guys just like him driving the price of that card higher. Would it do to sit back on our perch and judge him? I am still a collector. Now I collect films, books, and art. Do these choices reflect some kind of cultural sophistication on my part? Do they speak of my intellectual curiosity or appreciation for the finer things? What would a starving mother in Africa say? How will my descendants judge my passions when the cost of a barrel of fresh water eclipses the price of a barrel of crude oil? Who can say?