What would you sell your friends for?

"As well as goods and services, people and relationships are reduced to a monetary value in an increasingly capitalist world." This quote is taken from "Consumerism as a way of life" written by Steven Miles.

How much money is a friend worth? In an age when we increasingly tend to rank things in order of monetary value this phrase may start to become more relevant to every day life than we would want it to be.

How does this actually play out in our everyday lives? What do you think? I will attempt to come up with some every day examples here and then in the next week or so. If you are one of the reader's of this blog it is your turn to get involved and come up with a real life example of this quote.

My example ---------------

When Mindy and I were starting to want to have a baby we tried to figure out the cost of having a baby. We wanted to make sure that we had enough money to do it. Go figure. We didn't. How could we ever afford to have a child? We had no baby clothes, furniture, or diapers. We had no money in savings. We were in college and I didn't even have a full-time job. We could not afford to have a baby.

When did that start becoming the way to start a family? At what point in time did that happen? Have parents always wondered if they had enough money to have a family? Or is it because of our increasingly consumerist culture?

Mindy's dad gave us some good advice. He said we shouldn't wait until we have enough money, because we never will. So now we have three kids. I'm back in school. I am working full time. And we can pay our bills.

What's your example?

Comments

Kaitlin said…
AND you have one pseudo-child who is coming home in like, 3 days...!
October 13, 2009 at 8:28 PM
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