The Paradox of Affluence: Positional Competition or Coerced Exchange?
| Published date | 01 April 1981 |
| Author | Adrian Ellis |
| Date | 01 April 1981 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1981.tb00041.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
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....................
THE
PA~A~O~
OF
AFFLUENCE
:
POS
IT1
UMAL
COMPET
IT
I
OH
OR
COERCED E~C~A~~~E?
The
notion of 'positional competition', developed by Fred Hirsch
(1977)
in
Social
Limits
to Growth,
has
been used as
an
explanatory concept in dealing with
some of
the
unforeseen shortcomings
and
political
effects
of
economic growth.
In Social
Limits
Hirsch formulates
three
questions about economically advanced
societies,
two
of
which
he
sought
to
answer using
the
concept of positional
cornpetiton. The
first
question,
which
he
called
'the
paradox of affluence'
and which
is
the
focus
of
this
paper,
is:
Why
has
economic advance
become
and remained
so
compelling
a goal to
us
all
as
individuals when
it
yields
disappointing
fruits when
most,
if not
all,
of us achieve
it?
(Hirsch,
1977
p
6)
In
this
paper the assertion explicit in
the
question
will
be
assumed correct.
But
it
will
be
argued
that
the
idea
of
competition for positional
goods
is
not useful in explaining
the
paradox
as,
first,
the
results attributed
to
competition
for
positional goods transpire
to
be
an attribute of
the
method
of
exchange unrelated to
the
defining properties of positional goods and therefore,
secondly,
there
is
at
best
a
highly contingent relationship between this
attribute
and economic
growth.
will
be defined; in
the
second
its
inability to
help
explain the paradox
will
be
demonstrated; and in
the
third
it
will
be
argued
that
the
notion of 'coerced
exchange'
whilst
less
ambitious, offers
a
more
accurate insight into
the
collection
of
phenomena Hirsch
wishes
to
examine.
In
the
first
section the concept
of
a
positional good
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