Why buying with values does not go far enough

Do we ever consider this question when business touts their values? Do we ever stop to think what business legitimises when they are intent on aligning with our values? It is all well and good to consider values, but do we ever consider them in light of what is never questioned when they are given as a way of engaging "us” more. Exactly who is this “us” here and how is this us defined in light of the question never asked?

What does buying with values presuppose other than the consumer you are, but if that is the case then any good is always tethered to consumption. It is limited in scope as the good is supplementary to the thing or service, or maybe its the service or thing that is supplementary, in the end it doesn't really matter as change is subordinate to the want it legitimises by aligning with it. So we ask again; what does it mean to be a consumer?

This trend of aligning purchasing with values, of business spruiking their values gives free reign to consumer sovereignty. It takes up the implicit recognition consumers control the means of production as people are more aware of the significance of their actions in legitimising the negative externalities such as pollution. Through their “dollar voting” they can be a force of change; so support business that removes these costs or simply end poverty through buying, if only it was that easy. Does controlling the output of production exhaust the potential of our choice, as a “consumer”? What would need to occur for this potential to be given beyond the opportunity as defined by the market where values can be touted so as to be aligned? Would we rather have to consider our choices in light of what we don't question when we accept ourselves as “consumers” and the commercial imperative that reigns? This would throw up the question of what it means to be beyond what you buy, or we say being post consumer.

So does being a consumer exhaust what it means to be as a person? It would appear for all intensive purposes we are only as good as our wants, for we are always addressed as consumers, so potential customers. It matters little whether it is shampoo or an official narrative, we consume the way towards life so disinhibit the way we are legitimised in our market oriented way of life as consumers of life. If meaning is not exhausted in being a consumer then the difference would be in the opportunity that enables this difference to be given free reign beyond the limitation of agency when circumscribed to controlling the output of producers. To be more than your consumption, or your ability to consume would broaden the scope and application of any resultant change as the opportunity would be the very relation that is never questioned at the outset, though is tacitly accepted without question in our market oriented way of life.

It is for this reason aligning with values substantiates our way of life in such a way the creativity necessary for change is never given the opportunity to implicate our actions beyond their economisation. Buying with values substantiates want as the rationale of not only the resultant good but the relation you share in our market oriented way of life. Whenever you are oriented to the satisfaction of want, want is tacitly accepted as the average sociality we share in our everydayness. We are oriented to them in such a way we never stop to think of what underwrites our wants, and if we are aligning purchasing with values then this can be a way of allowing what is never questioned to persist and so the potential creativity of our action to continue to lay dormant.

So can we say, the want of change is catered for through the alignment of values, as we never question what it means to be a consumer but more importantly never question what underwrites our wants? We are no doubt aware a market oriented way of life is about monetization, so catering to the want of change circumscribes change to addressing the negative externalities when a narrow self interest reigns, and perhaps supplementary causes. Yet if we think this satisfactory, that this is the limit of our agency as “consumers” then want persists as the rule such that demand can be engendered to maintain loyalty to a way of life never questioned. A business may spruik their values that align with yours and yet within this branding, is a way of life that is never questioned in light of the relation it maintains; you are a consumer, and so are as good as the want that is maintained.

So what underwrites your want, what good is greater than your want, so even greater than the values tethered to your consumption? Would this not be your time? Though not time as you think it, an intensive experience, the lived moment but rather time in the way it is given, so the way you accept it. What then would this form of time take that is given though is not “primordial? It is time as an economic good. You secure your time by becoming a means to secure the end of your leisure. Yet securing your time as an end does not make it any less of an economic good when you consider it a means. Your time is always an economic good., so life can be rationed. You secure your time as a supplement, so is captured through the presupposition of the good you accept as a given when market oriented; money. So want is primary because money is a given, and money is a given because you make of your time an economic good. After all we are always told our time equals money, and we spend time like it is money and yet this good underwrites our wants and values such that aligning with them means they are subordinated to the preeminent good of our time received as an economic good. If they are subordinate the scope of change when you consider yourself a consumer is limited, irrespective of how aspirational it is.

So aligning with values is an impasse, if your time is not potentialized beyond the economic good. If your time is never brought into play other than being the underwriter of way of communicating to you as a consumer then you will forever be considered passive, and without agency to create the world. The relation of want will reign and the want of life will persist. Why? Because in our way of life want is primary because money is a given.

Your demand is still demand, demand for change means want is primary. To command is to command the way of addressing you that does justice to the creativity that will forever lay dormant when you are a consumer and only ever as good as your wants.

Enterprise good has been establish to reveal the scope of potential for change when we democratise creativity and no longer accept ourselves as marginal in reference to what we presuppose we are oriented to: life.