27 Feb 2025 It’s Gotta Be The Shoes!
In her phenomenal book In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work, Kyla Scanlon writes about what she calls the “vibes economy.” So much of what happens at the macroeconomic level seems to be based on sentiment—or, vibes—and it’s crazy how much power those vibes have in the face of objective facts that belie them.
(Just this week, Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal reported that consumer confidence plummeted yet again in February, despite the fact that the economic data available to us continues to be solid to strong. Vibes!)
But do you know where the vibes are working the hardest? In your own purchasing decisions, and in mine.
The other day Amy asked me if there was a particular piece clothing that I loved as a kid, and I had an easy answer: a pair of Jordan 9’s I bought with my own money. (They were probably on sale, because Michael had retired for the first time and wasn’t playing in the 9’s…but that’s neither here nor there). Of the many reasons those shoes were important to me, one, in the form of a story, stands out: I was wearing them while walking with my family at The Buggy Festival (my hometown’s best tradition), and we ran into another family who had high school-aged boys. One of them immediately noticed my Jordans and said something about them. Vibes! Feeling cool was a new one for me, and I cherished it. To this day that memory is seared into my brain.
Of course we all have similar little anecdotes, because try as we might to deny it, the fact is we cannot help but buy things for more than their pure utility. Even a maniacal pursuit for rational utility is probably itself a play for affiliation with others we deem likeminded. Seth Godin had this to say last week:
An expensive watch isn’t purchased to tell time. We already know what time it is.
The food at a wedding isn’t really there to keep guests from going hungry. A cookie could do that.
Our focus, energy and money are often spent on transactions that are disguised as something else. What we’re really doing is buying affiliation, status or the freedom from fear.
The Jordan 9’s were amazing shoes designed for my favorite athlete, but they were also status—I was cool when I wore them. The Toyota/Lexus vehicles our family drives are reliable and high-quality, but they are also status, freedom from fear (of breaking down), and affiliation with others who love Japanese products as much as I do (see also: my Seiko diver watch).
These are just a few of many slightly embarrassing examples from my own life of the futility of living purely in the field of utility. We are inherently social beings who desire to be in community with others, and in some strange way we attempt to create that community even by the shoes we wear. The desire is good, and shouldn’t be avoided; it’s the execution that can use some work.
Maybe the initial takeaway for all of us is just to stop deluding ourselves about our buying decisions. They are rarely as simple and utilitarian as they seem, so let’s do the work of asking what exactly, in addition to utility, are we buying? Affiliation? Status? Freedom from fear? And then begin to uncover whether the purchase will be an effective way of getting what it is we really want.
I think a regular practice of being honest with ourselves in this way will help us peel back the disguises, and at the very least remind us that when it comes to fostering meaningful, lasting connection, maybe it’s not the shoes.
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