Corporate subsidies are used for little less other than perpetuating corporatism. One such application is the promotion of slick advertising campaigns whose purpose is to trick the public into flippantly spending away the fruits of their hard-won labor in order to further entrench the oligiopolies who benefit by virtue of undue government favor. The real injustice behind this is that people need their wealth not only to live, but also to resist tyrants, since it is the material source of their freedom. To paraphrase Tyler Durden, we are tricked into doing work we hate to buy shit we don’t need.
Conspicuous consumption is the sociological phenomenon whereby individuals buy goods in the market, not because they genuinely need or even want it, but because they simply want to flaunt it to other people. As can be expected, this distorts market forces and creates unintended perverse consequences, since it gives misleading signals to producers who interpret it as genuine customer demand. Unfortunately, too many liberal statists abuse this concept by declaring that it somehow justifies the validity of the welfare state.
Culture jammers have tended to revolve around the overarching theme of anti-consumerism. Since consumerism is nothing other than the inevitable result of corporatism, the more principled counter-propagandists have also been anti-corporatists, thus also logically necessitating that they become anti-statists as well, if they are to avoid being unwittingly hypocritical. Sadly, the otherwise anti-Establishment attitude common to all culture jammers usually does not carry on to this result since too many of them fail to realize that it is the enemy rebel government that is the cause of the effects that they are jamming about in the first place.
Predictive programming is a force not to be underestimated, especially through the medium of television, since you are not aware that you are being downloaded through emotive sequences that deliberately manipulate your psyche. This is significant with regards to consumerism since it is true that the Madison Avenue social engineers can literally create an artificial market demand for a good or service that otherwise would never have been profitable. The same options for mitigating the effects of predictive programming should also be used in order to handle the problem of conspicuous consumption (such as by emotionally detaching from fictional storylines through studying television).
The Patriot Community is not even close to being immune from the effects of predictive programming (as well as Establishment propaganda in general), as can be evidenced by both the Carnival of Distractions and the McVeigh Syndrome. In private conversations I’ve had with some gun owners and “preppers,” I was denigrated on multiple occasions for not currently being a gun owner, despite the fact that I was one in the past. Their perception of my alleged insincerity for wanting to acquire a firearm eventually is not only just plain insulting, it is also incredibly snobby. Bernays would be so proud that his techniques for controlling the hearts and minds of the masses have been so successful that credit card survivalists are filled with noticeably more hubris than even fashion-conscious “reality” TV celebrities.
Consider also the financial ramifications of spending beyond your means. Through careful consideration of how you allocate the fruits of your labor, you reduce waste and increase your personal happiness by not keeping yourself on the hamster wheel rat race of constant debt bondage and interest payments. Also, the more expensive toys that you flaunt, the more likely you will be targeted for civil asset forfeiture by the police.
What can be done to refrain from keeping up with the Joneses? First, and most importantly, it is imperative that you emotionally detach yourself from all so-called status symbols. As part of this, you will also need to change your mind regarding the entire notion of ownership by deemphasizing the physical possession of goods, while simultaneously affirming property rights. Next, I would encourage you to learn more about civil asset forfeiture and explore what can be done to protect the property you already have from being arbitrarily seized by the government. Finally, I would suggest that you discriminate amongst your wants by preference ordering what vices that do require expensive toys are the most important to you; even then, plan on hiding them instead of putting them on for public display.
Ultimately though, it would be best to at least pay off the expensive toys you already have and then follow through with never acquiring any more. Better yet, contemplate selling them off; by acting as a good steward of your own personal property, you will value not so much the luxurious technology itself, but instead the people who built them. Perhaps then you will discover that what is truly important to you is not greed or the shallow admiration of strangers, but the honor and respect that you share with your loved ones.
The Last Bastille 
