We’re being sold a lifestyle we can’t afford, fueled by a system profiting when we feel inadequate. It’s time to stop confusing our possessions with our worth

My closets, storage locker, kitchen drawers, bookcases, car trunk and the nooks of my condo are overflowing with things I don’t need. They’re also evidence of a much larger problem. For nearly a century, we’ve been trained to confuse wanting with needing, and the result is a culture drowning in clutter, debt and dissatisfaction.

Most of the items crowding my shelves once promised to improve my life in some way. Instead, they now sit unused, reminders of purchases that felt essential at the time but quickly became irrelevant. My living space has become a museum of dead intentions.

Rewind to the 1920s and you’ll find the moment when modern consumer culture began transforming needs into wants. Over the better part of a century, we’ve been encouraged to see consumption not as an occasional necessity but as a way of life. The result is an economy that increasingly depends on people buying more than they need, more often than they should and sometimes with money they don’t have.

By the early 20th century, industrial production had become a victim of its own success. Factories were producing furniture, clothes and automobiles faster than consumers needed to replace them. Corporate leaders faced an uncomfortable reality: if products lasted too long, future sales would slow.

To keep production lines moving, businesses increasingly focused on creating desire rather than simply meeting demand. The challenge became finding ways to persuade people to buy based on aspiration rather than necessity. The concept of “enough” wasn’t good for business.

If modern consumerism has a Ground Zero, it’s the work of Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, often called the father of public relations. Bernays didn’t simply promote products. He applied his uncle’s theories about human behaviour to marketing and helped pioneer a new approach to persuasion.

Before Bernays, advertising largely focused on product features and prices. Bernays recognized that people often made decisions for emotional reasons and then justified them rationally afterward. Instead of selling products, he sold identity, status and belonging. The lesson was profound: if a product could be linked to freedom, success, attractiveness or social acceptance, people could be persuaded to buy almost anything.

In 1929, the American Tobacco Company hired Bernays to help expand cigarette sales among women. At the time, public smoking by women was widely frowned upon. Bernays didn’t market cigarettes based on taste or quality. He linked smoking to female independence and empowerment in what became known as the “Torches of Freedom” campaign.

Bernays helped demonstrate the power of linking products to identity. After the Second World War, those lessons would be applied on a much larger scale.

Western economies faced a new challenge. Governments and businesses needed to maintain growth, create jobs and avoid slipping back into depression. Consumption increasingly became viewed not simply as an economic activity but as a civic virtue.

The battlefields were replaced by shopping malls. Home ownership, automobiles, household appliances and endless product upgrades became symbols of prosperity and the good life.

In 1955, retail analyst Victor Lebow summarized this new philosophy in the Journal of Retailing:

“Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.”

Few statements better capture the mindset that would shape the next 70 years.

Planned obsolescence, the deliberate design of products to wear out or become outdated, became a central business strategy. General Motors helped pioneer the practice through annual model changes that encouraged consumers to replace perfectly functional vehicles.

Over time, our relationship with possessions changed. We stopped viewing many purchases as tools and increasingly began viewing them as extensions of identity. Marketing convinced us that our current selves were somehow incomplete and that fulfilment was only one purchase away.

Everyone wants to be who they’re not.

Advertising rarely sells products anymore. It sells identities. Buy this product and you’ll become healthier, more successful, more attractive, more adventurous or more fulfilled. The product often matters less than the story attached to it.

You aren’t simply buying hiking gear. You’re buying the image of a rugged explorer. You aren’t simply buying kitchen equipment. You’re buying the identity of someone who cooks gourmet meals.

A few generations ago, buying a major item required planning, saving and patience. There was a “middle distance” between desire and ownership. Today, online shopping has largely eliminated it. The dopamine hit now comes less from owning something than from acquiring it. By the time the package arrives, many consumers have already shifted their attention to the next purchase.

As a result, many of us no longer truly own our possessions. We cycle through them. They arrive, briefly satisfy us and then quietly migrate to closets, garages, storage units and donation bins.

That cycle comes with a cost. Many households are still making payments on products that have long since lost their appeal or value.

The system depends on dissatisfaction. You aren’t thin enough. Stylish enough. Productive enough. Successful enough. The message is relentless: your current self is inadequate, and the solution is available for a monthly payment.

Why do we keep falling for the “new and improved” trap?

The answer goes deeper than vanity.

Dr. Bruce Hood, a professor of developmental psychology and author of The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity, noted in a 2024 interview:

“We don’t buy things because we need them; we buy them because of what they say about our status and our belonging. In an increasingly fragmented world, the ‘latest and greatest’ serves as a temporary tether to a community we feel we’re losing. We’re trying to purchase a sense of security in an insecure economy.”

We’re often not buying objects at all. We’re buying belonging, status, confidence or meaning.

Think about how many purchases are really attempts at self-improvement: the fitness equipment, the productivity apps, the books we never read and the hobbies we never start. We buy the possibility of becoming someone else.

Imagine how many industries would struggle if people woke up tomorrow and decided they were already good enough.

There is a psychological comedown after many purchases. The excitement fades. The promised transformation never arrives. The new gadget doesn’t change your life. The life-changing skincare routine doesn’t change your life. The expensive accessory doesn’t change your life.

Consumerism has become a secular religion, complete with temples, rituals and promises of personal transformation. Yet unlike most religions, it offers no point of arrival. There is no moment when enough becomes enough.

The system depends on keeping people dissatisfied by convincing them fulfilment remains one purchase away.

Look around your home. Look at the closets, drawers, storage bins and spare rooms filled with things that once seemed essential.

Most were purchased with optimism. Many were purchased with borrowed money. Few delivered what they promised.

“Enough” isn’t a number, nor is it a minimalist aesthetic you can purchase at Ikea. In a culture built on manufactured desire, satisfaction may be the most radical act of refusal available to us.

The most radical consumer decision in 2026 may not be buying the latest thing. It may be deciding that what you already own is enough.

Nick Kossovan is a syndicated columnist and a self-described connoisseur of human psychology who writes about what’s on his mind.