What we are victims of, is very brilliant marketing backed up with psychological studies in depth as t what makes people buy more of. Ass in the forums are also in the same business and people are being manipulated into buying what they don't really need, or buying what they already have an adequate amount of. Forums are sponsored by companies selling stuff. Thats way they call them sponsored ads. They have it all figured out how to stimulate our desire to 'keep up with the Jones.' Car industry, gun industry, knife industry, clothing industry, figure outlaw tomato up just like the cat that will lunge at a jiggling piece of twine. I found out of I sty away from the forums for a length of time, my desire to buy goes way way down. When I leave for a vacation and fly someplace with just a recruit in my bag or mailed to myself, I'll roam all over with just that one SAK in my pocket cleaning fish, cutting bait, and then slicing limes for the cold vodka tonic. If I have a package to open, whatever pocket knife I have on me will do. How many people really need a 5,000 pound plus V8 engined SUV to run down the grocery store, or commute to work, or even to go visit family several state away? It's all abut sales, and the right button being pushed on your ego to make you buy bigger and more expensive. How did our fathers and grandfathers get through a great depression, fight a vicious world war, and then come home and go about the job of raising a family and dealing with life with just a regular sedan, a regular little pocketknife combined with a Sears keychain screw driver and a P-38 on the keyring? Used to be if a person wanted to protect themselves they got a .38 revolver. If they wanted to carry , then they got a snub nosed .38. If they wanted smaller, they got one of the little .25 autos on the market like the baby Growing or a Beretta jet fire. Now the gun industry has the gun nuts thinking they need a Glock 17 and at least three spare magazines to just go get the mail. It's all marketing. The ugly truth is, the average Joe human being is not that bright a bulb in the chandelier, and falls for advertising claims of the ridiculous nature. I used to, but for whatever reason, I got burnout on the consumerism of it. Now I just have three SAK.s and I get through my day still alive and functioning. I've sold off most my gun collection, the knife collection is gone, as is the tool collection. I have a basic tool box, a few guns, and a few SAK's. Theres one car each for the better half and I. The car collection of old VW bugs is gone, as is the Vespa motor scooter collection. I do miss the old Vespa PX150 now and then. It's a trap. A very dangerous and clever trap. Not to mention an expensive trap. Try an experiment; stay away from the forums for two weeks. Or even a month.
My perfect SAK would be a Spartan with pliers. I wish that was a thing.
How badly do you want this?Because there is always the Oath of Rutli.
Marketing, perceived need, lust, SAK greed, collectors, users, ease in some cases of acquiring, gifts, they all seem to play into why a great many of us have so many.
... perceived need fueled by more than marketing.
Lots to think about from the last few posts. Choice in an of itself creates a predicament of not been able to make a choice.Missed opportunities. American psychologist Barry Schwartz finds that when people are faced with having to choose one option out of many desirable choices, they will begin to consider hypothetical trade-offs. Their options are evaluated in terms of missed opportunities instead of the opportunity's potential. In other words, after choosing an alternative with a plurality but not a majority of utility, people remember the sum of the lost utility rather than that they made the utility-maximizing choice. Schwartz maintains that one of the downsides of making trade-offs is it alters how we feel about the decisions we face; afterwards, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from our decision. I'm fascinated with psychology. Schwartz relates the ideas of psychologist Herbert A. Simon from the 1950s to the psychological stress that most consumers face today. He notes some important distinctions between, what Simon termed, maximizers and satisficers. A maximizer is like a perfectionist, someone who needs to be assured that their every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. The way a maximizer knows for certain is to consider all the alternatives they can imagine. This creates a psychologically daunting task, which can become even more daunting as the number of options increases. The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. A satisficer has criteria and standards, but a satisficer is not worried about the possibility that there might be something better. Ultimately, Schwartz agrees with Simon's conclusion, that satisficing is, in fact, the maximizing strategy.
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