After reading the E-Mail from our professor about the difficult reading that we had to the over the weekend, I was terrified. I was worried that I would not understand the reading. However the guidelines that our professor provided made the reading less of a challenge. After reading the excerpt by George Simmel, I did not fully understand Simmel’s idea. I finally got Simmel’s idea in our class discussion today. George Simmel explains that money is becoming first priority to peoples’ practical lives and how it is changing their living style. “For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of “how much?” Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their in-comparability ” According to Simmel, the value of products is determined by the price. Pricing can be misleading by giving a thought of different values. For example, one will look forward to obtain more expensive products rather than cheaper products. The price tag on an product determines its value.
In this advertisement, there are two groups of house hold needs. On the left side, there are brand name products and on the right side there are the same products as the left side, without a famous brand name. I found this advertisement very interesting because I realized that I know all the brand name products and not the cheaper “up & up” products. Although the up & up products are cheaper than the brand names, I personally buy the brand names because of its expensive value. I think that expensive products are better than cheaper products because it simply cost more. This can demonstrate that I am a person who values, more expensive products rather than cheaper products even though they are the same thing. According to Simmel, people would spend money on products with more value regardless of its effect for their individuality, their specific value, and their in-comparability. After taking the first step to buying brand name items, we do not look back at the cheaper items. We simply believe that money buys value.