Another example is Fredrick the Great of Prussia, who wanted Germans to adopt the potato to provide a second carbohydrate staple in addition to wheat. (This would stabilize price volatility in bread and lower the risk of famine.) The problem, says Sutherland, was that Prussians weren’t big on vegetables, and the potato is rather ugly.
So, Fredrick made a law that people had to grow potatoes, and there are records of people being executed for refusing to comply. This didn’t work, so he tried a new approach, which was to declare the potato as a royal vegetable — only royalty could eat it. He had a royal potato patch planted, with guards who were asked not to guard it too well.
“Now 18th century peasants know that there is one pretty safe rule in life, which is if something is worth guarding, it’s worth stealing,” says Sutherland. Pretty soon there was an underground potato-growing operation (ha — underground).
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey, used a similar marketing ploy to createnegative perceived value when he wanted to make the country more modern by discouraging the wearing of a veil. Instead of simply banning the veil, which would incite anger among the people, he made a law that prostitutes had to wear the veil. (Sutherland admits he can’t verify this story, but “…it does not matter,” he says. “There is your environmental problem solved, by the way, guys: All convicted child molesters have to drive a Porsche Cayenne.”)
All value is relative — all value is perceived value. This is why all but maybe the top expert wine tasters think a more expensive wine tastes better (and it stimulates in the parts of the brain that experience pleasure), when really it’s a cheap $5 bottle of wine — or the exact same wine to which they’re comparing it.
Wanting what we’ve got “We need to spend more time appreciating what already exists,” Sutherland says, “and less time agonizing over what else we can do.”
One way to start to place higher value on what already exists is through social networking. (Yes, that threw me for a loop, too; Facebook and I have a love-hate relationship.) But get this: He says there’s some evidence that social networking helps people appreciate what they have because it lets them share news and give “badge value” to everyday, trivial activities.
“So [social networks] actually reduce the need for spending great money on display,” he says, “and increase the kind of third-party enjoyment you can get from the smallest, simplest things in life. Which is magic.”
That’s true — at least in my social network. People post about funny things their kids say, a photo of the cookies they just baked, pictures of loved ones, updates about funny stories or the things that are making them happy. Nobody posts shots of their new Hummer or boasts about spending $500 on new clothes. It’s pretty humdrum, really, but also, as Sutherland says, a little magical.
