Suggestibility (I Need This)
Gullibility (I Really Need this - that ad is so Pretty)
Insatiability (I Really need All of Those)

All lumped together under the root cause of the symptoms (Gee I'm maxed out on 4 cards, but.. I Just Gotta HAVE This NOW)
[all verified by the US er 'savings rate' and growing % of those with 0 net worth] summarized as:

Dumbth.

I assert that every mercantile economy counts on Dumbth at its very core, fosters it, and via its now omnipresent *ads: makes every effort to counter any tendency towards Smarts. Consumer as Patsy, by definition of the system.

* Watched any UAV, truck ads lately? - noticed the fantasyland depicted as reason for running out to get one?

(Hmmm tattoo Caveat Emptor on every newborn's right hand? Would make a lot more sense than circumcision, for females OR males.)

"'Market forces' on some nice neat graph" - indeed. Snake oil for the academics and MBAs and by the same -- no reps for the consumption-besotted on any of Those committees -- formed solely to get the marks to go into hock more, and for longer. No matter what. *THERE's* the Real Market Force\ufffd

So.. does Dumbth belong on the ordinate or the abscissa - or is it a Constant offset, with an annual CODA rise?



A.
Innumeracy leads to consumerism. We have both in spades.