In his 2012 book “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”, American Philosopher Michael J Sandel talks about many social as well as moral implications of the free-market, neo-liberal Capitalism prevalent in the USA for the past 40-odd years. At the end of the short yet brilliant book, the question remains; What is that money can buy? Can it really buy a better life, better health, better security? The problem here is not if money can do any or all of the aforementioned things; the bigger question here is should money even be a factor in every aspect of our lives as modern-day individuals? And if it should, to what extent should it be so?

In the first episode of the HBO classic TV series “Sex and the City”, Samantha Jones, one of the four upper-middle class white women living in the Manhattan of late 90s says something that in part forms the thesis of the entire show: “For the first time in the history of Manhattan women have both power and money.” Even the premise of the said episode, in the context of which she said this is based around a simple question of reversal: can women have sex like a man? This might seem like a pretty simple and straightforward question but this rabbit-hole leads into some bigger ones. What does it even mean to have sex like a man? And is that something that can truly give women a sense of power and autonomy? Is there anything more than power and money that the single women of Manhattan need to be truly empowered?

There isn’t much difference between the thesis of Michael Sandel and that of Candace Bushnell, the author of the anthology series “Sex and the City” on which the HBO TV series is based. Of course the latter had a stronger personal appeal to someone like me, who related to Carrie Bradshaw’s lust for pretty shoes without any problem.

THE INVISIBLE HAND

Scottish Economist Adam Smith is know as the “Father of Economics” or more accurately “Father of Capitalism”. It was he who posited that in a free market, rational self-interest and competition can lead to optimal prosperity as it is the perfect and automatic way of allocating the resources of a society; resources like wealth and labor; also known as “The Invisible Hand“.

Portrait of the political economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) by an unknown artist

Better people than me have of course done tons and tons of valuable research in destroying the assumption of “Rational Self-Interest” and the corresponding free hand as academic work in fields like Psychology, Sociology and most importantly Behavioral Economics over the past two decades have shown that human beings are not necessarily as rational or logical minded as we have been presuming. The biggest example of this in recent past is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Richard Thaler, who won it for his work in the field of Behavioral Economics by exploring the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control. In exploring these aspects of human nature, he has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.

And this is exactly where our charming protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, columnist for The New York Times comes in. She is someone who is in the thick of the Late-90s decadent Manhattan, spending $40,000 on shoes and finding it extremely hard to keep her finances together; who else can be a better candidate than her to navigate the loop holes of a capitalist system?

Capitalism as a social system allows us to pursue each of our desires in a very focused manner. What we often times forget that it sometimes ends up equating the worth of something with it’s value; an equivalence that can most of the times be extremely inconsistent and dangerously contradictory. This is also something that can creep into our personal lives and the decision we make there. This is something that is shown many times in the show too but the one plot-line where it is most apparent is the relationship of Carrie with Aidan Shaw, the sensitive, sweet, caring and perfect furniture designer.

Carrie’s life, personality and preferences were always at odds with that of a man like Aidan by virtue of their very structure. Just compare Aidan to someone like Mr. Big, the true love of Carrie. We are never clearly told exactly what it is that Mr. Big does; only this that he is an impossibly rich man. Aidan on the other hand has his work all around Carrie, in their apartment, he builds their world with his own bare hands (he even fixes Carrie’s toilet before breaking up with her for good). In the times we live in, our focus is rarely at how a person acquires their wealth and more on how they spend it. Because of this opacity, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between the worth of something from it’s intrinsic value. A big example of this is how for many years Dior, Saint Laurent and other fashion brands have been quietly using Indian embroiderers for their goods, depending on their expertise while offering little in the way of employment protection. This is the sort of thing that happens when you allow the diktats of the free market to muddle the perception of the value and importance of the people who are the ones who actually create majority of the things we consume.

We see literally see throughout the series Aidan building so many things and fixing so much on his own. He even decides to undertake the task of merging the next-door flat of Carrie (which he bought on his own mind you) himself, breaking the walls and fixing the rest with his own hands. And all of this is not just about mindlessly putting in the labor. Aidan also pours in a lot of emotions and genuine passion in his work. While building a wedding gift for Charlotte, Aidan talks about it with genuine compassion, giving Charlotte and her husband something he feels he should really gift instead of just another mindless object produced with impersonal motives.

Big on the other hand is as good as writing Carrie a check for $30,000 so that she can buy back her own rent-controlled apartment. The fact that Carrie struggles to be truly happy with Aidan despite everything being as perfect it can be is the manifestation of the confusion that plagues most of us. When one too many of us start confusing superficial and heavily-engineered worth of something with it’s true value, we end up finding ourselves utterly confused. Seeing the effect Mr. Big has on Carrie; who is the embodiment of both the Manhattan life and Manhattan lifestyle, depsite being a deeply flawed person is the most obvious sign that we might not be as free or rational in a neo-liberal scenario as is expected of us. This is a system that has an unhealthy obsession with solely the end product, in a manner that always finds ways to justify the means by the end.

Carrie is someone who could never bring herself to find any value in the things Aidan builds and design on his own (the guy built an entire cabin on his own, including the plumbing! What more can a person even do?). To someone like her, the mysterious, fast-paced and haphazard life of Mr. Big will always be more valuable than the big comfy armchair that Aidan built; the kind which gives equal comfort to you regardless of whether you are sitting on it alone or you have someone in the room with you (also it was made just for you). She is more naturally drawn to the secrecy and distance of Mr. Big, his erratic decisions, his leaving her for a prettier younger woman. Because at the end of the day, Mr. Big can always hire people to build a bigger walk-in wardrobe in the bedroom of their Central Park West Penthouse. Which means bigger room for the $40,000 worth (or more) of shoes (also the fact that he is played by Chris Noth just makes all this a lot more palatable and even charming in some sense).

Adam Smith was not entirely wrong when he stated the presence of an “Invisible Hand” in a free market. He just didn’t mention that the hand was that of a crafty trickster conjuring up delusions that feed on the worst parts of our collective and individual egos and insecurities.

MATERIALISM DONE RIGHT

After spending a few paragraphs lamenting the impact of late-stage capitalism upon our decision making process, I wanted to end my take on the show on a somewhat positive and optimistic show. It is true that the free market does re-organizes the way we as an individual as well as a society function; and while it does that in negative ways like I just described, there are certain positive outcomes of the reorganization as well. The critique of something should not be done with the malignant intention to discard it root and stem, instead it should be done to better understand it so that we can always have chances to keep growing (something that is also true about critiquing humans).

A criticism of materialism usually entails reconsidering the real worth of the things that surround us or the ones that we acquire. One should also keep in mind that the objects around us aren’t necessarily completely worthless. Consuming products has always been a very integral and important part of human existence throughout history. One of the main sources of information about the civilizations that existed thousands of years ago is the wide variety of archaeological findings we unearth. The Indus Valley Civilization was an extensively urban one as is evident from the plethora of manufactured goods, factories and dockyards found by generations of archaeologists and historians. Same is true for other major civilizations like the Egyptian, Chinese and Peruvian.

Consumption has always been and will always be a very important part of human societies with respect to their economy, culture and history. The real problem arises when we willingly or unwillingly create systems where we start negating the humanity intrinsic in so much of the consumption we undertake.

Shopping might be a ego-stroking vapid activity where you gossip about people, but it can also be a very effective way to spend some real organic quality time with the people you love while you do the healthy mental exercise if evaluating your preferences regarding the black patent leather stilettos and cobalt-blue gladiator high-heeled sandals. Carrie’s Christian Louboutin chiffon ruffles heels might be an indulgence to some but they do hold some value. Not because they are pretty or because she wore them for a romantic date with Mr. Big, but because those were the shoes she was wearing when she rushed to the hospital to be with Miranda as she went into labor. Those were the shoes Carrie was wearing when she was wholeheartedly supporting her tough friend’s tough decision to become a single mother.

It is also noteworthy that while Carrie’s attraction to Mr. Big might be questionable, it is also something that is able to transcend the superficiality of the modern existence. One of the most important moments that the two of them share involves a flipping of the rich, luxurious aspect of romance as they share a pizza together in an empty apartment or bond with each other after falling head first in a lake. This is the kind of naturalness that doesn’t entirely dismiss materialism but finds ways to be a lot more comfortable with it in a healthy way. Materialism that allows someone like Big to move on from the mistakes he has made in life regarding women and share a real and honest bond with someone like Carrie is actually the good, angelic form of it. Of course that does involves a lot of complications and heart-breaks; but what doesn’t?

If the new society has isolated us from each other, one must also have faith in our ability to always find ways to better connect with each other despite all odds. Materialism does not have to be the complete negation of human emotions and empathy. The free market while putting up everything for sale, should not forget that money itself is something that derives it’s value from what we consider it worth, a piece of paper of the same dimension was just that some 200 years ago. Allowing it to govern our lives at the cost of the things that matter most to us is something that we should be very careful about.

Like my favorite fictional writer Carrie Bradshaw would have said in her column;

The world we live in has definitely given millions of women around the world freedom to be a woman, but I can’t help but wonder: what does it really mean to be a woman? What is empowerment if it denies us the freedom to orchestrate our private and personal lives? Will it be enough to get as much as any other man equal to us is getting or do we need to have more? What does it really mean to be truly equal in our world today?