We’re Living In A Golden Age of Bullshit
And it’s time to fight back.
In The Simpsons episode “Much Abu About Nothing,” Lisa and Homer have the following conversation:
Lisa: Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers.
Homer: Uh-huh, and how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work. It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: I see.
Lisa: But you don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I’d like to buy your rock.
It highlights a misconception at the heart of one of our most cherished ideas about the free market: that people will only buy valuable things.
See, many of us believe that, in order to be paid by a customer, we must first generate something that is actually valuable to that customer. A widget, a service, or something else that will make the customer’s life better or solve the customer’s problem.
But that’s not quite true.
There’s a second way we can get ourselves paid. We sell a widget or service that’s useless — or even detrimental — to the customer but convince that customer that it is actually useful. The customer will then pay for the apparent utility of the product, even though it does them no good at all.
