Thanks for the comment, I changed the spelling. Ok, I see what you take issue with, but if you soften it a bit, to some degree it holds water.

Here’s an example I came up with:

Chicken.
My neighbor buys chicken from the normal grocery store, it costs about $4/lb.

I buy chicken from Whole Foods that costs $10/lb.

My neighbor and I start to chat. I mention that I buy chicken that doesn’t have hormones and ant-biotics, the chickens are treated humanely to boot, and to me, it’s worth the extra money.

What Rebel Sell argues is that although I’m buying a more cutlurally sophisticate product, a product that makes the world a better place – still, what I’m doing is raising the bar. I am the Joneses that other people feel like they have to keep up with (in this hypothetical). So now my neighbor, who now feels like crap – as she’s feeding her kids hormones and anti-biotics through the muscle tissue of tortured poultry – who, remember, was spending $4 on chicken, now feels like she has to spend $10 per lb on chicken.

So that’s how it happens. I’m not the anti-consumer, I’m the jerk who’s raising the bar and getting people to pay 2x’s as much for chicken. And it’s done via me showing off my sophisticated consumer status. It’s not all bad, American Apparel does pay their factory workers better. However, they’ve turned the $5 t-shirt into at $25 t-shirt. So it doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad thing or being a bad person, but you are raising the price-bar and driving consumerism.

So that’s the core argument.
K

I also take issue with the statement that most adults buy things to stand out. That’s ludicrous.