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be of value, the producer could be rewarded with monetary compensation,
which would allow them to similarly meet their own desires. In fact, the con-
cept of profit or loss , in the sense that the producer either does not cover costs
or covers them and has a significant amount left over, is a post-Industrial
Revolution idea. What's more, this idea developed only with the growth
of larger, impersonal producing entities paying salaries to the workers, as
opposed to a single proprietor who simply lives off the returns for services,
whatever that amounts to. For all practical purposes, profit and the corpora-
tion evolved simultaneously.
As a final point, the behavioral assumption of unlimited wants on the
part of Rational Economic Man is nonetheless retained. Therefore, despite
a transition within economic theory over the years to focus on the producer
rather than on the consumer, the task the producing entity inherits borders
on the impossible: Produce as much as you can of anything you can sell, and it
will still probably not be enough. That is, provided advertising has done its job
on instilling a constant sense of lack and its corresponding dissatisfaction—
a mandate proposed by 20th century economist and retail analyst Victor
LeBeau, who wrote in the Journal of Retailing (Spring 1955):
Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consump-
tion our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into
rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in
consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of pres-
tige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning
and significance of our lives [is] today expressed in consumptive terms.
The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and
accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspira-
tions and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats—his
home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies. 5
As we will see both later in this chapter and throughout the topic, this
cultivates a sense of lack, of never having enough to feel secure, and has fun-
damental implications for both our environment and our values.
Reconciling the Differences
How do we assess the evolution of the completely interpersonal economics
of the early tribe or village to the modern, completely depersonalized eco-
nomics of globalization?
Let us be clear as to what has been lost in this evolutionary process. It is
human dependency. People depended on one another economically to their
mutual benefit. I will produce your shoes and you grow food for me. You
 
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