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Commercial Capitalism and its Cultural Implications

Submitted by tokiokobayas on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 22:33

    In our society, there exists multiple cultural ideas that stemmed purely from commercial greed. For example, the idea that men must propose using a diamond ring, came about from western commercialism and the need to sell diamonds. Suddenly, diamonds are very expensive because of this tradition, even though most diamonds are actually surprisingly cheap. They’re constantly sold for thousands of times their actual worth; when in reality, even the most fancy diamonds are only worth three to four hundred dollars. The same thing goes for milk. Although it is true that milk contains a lot of calcium and vitamin D, it actually isn’t that healthy to drink. Yet through commercials and advertising, marketing companies were able to put a spin on the idea that milk is actually great for you. The reality is that milk is only good for you if your body is able to readily digest it, and that only goes for a very slight portion of the actual human population. For the most part, everybody is lactose intolerant to a certain degree, east asians especially. It’s incredibly to think that some of these traditions and ideas are not even a hundred years old yet, yet most people do not even think about it, and eventually believe that it’s been a cultural aspect of our society for centuries.

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