Observations
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Commentary
Some days after the last blog, I had another of my "crystallisation moments" where ideas from some time ago suddenly came into sharp focus . . .
Last time I was ranting somewhat about the situation in which people can become entangled financially and practically when a plastic card (and perhaps other services) are withdrawn. As I was working slowly through the archives of John C. Dvorak's blog (Dvorak Uncensored, http://www.dvorak.org/blog/ ), I recalled some ideas from a while back for which the articulation seemed elusive at that time, but this evening (before I popped out for some more bottled water, nachos and booze – haven't quite got my diet right yet, alas . . .) the ideas came together with some words and . . . judge for yourself.
One problem with an electronic economy is that it falls flat on its face when the means to authorise financial transfers is blocked or denied. With systems like VISA, Mastercard, Maestro and all the rest, it is possible to live in one country and pay for a service or product anywhere in the world where payments can be made, and presumably (nowadays at least) there are few places apart from Antarctica where this would not be possible. Of course, this money – electronic credit – is not real, but it gets me the products and services I want, so WTH . . .
Electronic payment using systems like these or EPAY or even PayPal, however, have limitations, not the least of which being that the seller of a product or service cannot easily take payments unless the customer has some way to make the payment in the first place. In England I would happily sign a cheque, send it by mail (or deliver it personally) and think nothing of it; and my first international order using my first CC was actually way back in the day when I got a genuine Napster black T-shirt delivered to my then domicile in Cardiff, Wales (actually during the anthrax scare – anyone remember that???). I still have that shirt here with me in Korea, believe it or not. Napster, on the other hand . . . has gone the same way as the CC . . .
Anyway, fast-forward to the Here and Now, and yet again, the world is reeling from an obviously engineered and fraudulent banking mess, and predictably, a range of financial services are being withdrawn even from loyal and otherwise financially healthy people, myself included. I wasn't happy about it but right now, things are looking a little bit more "sorted" than they were a few weeks ago – not that it's particularly simple for creditors to chase you when you are resident long-term in a country on the other side of the planet, of course – and essentially, my ability to transmit funds from my account in England globally is back.
But like an awful lot of people nowadays, I am chastened, and not just by the difficulty of sending dosh to vendors, oh no. See, accommodation in places like Korea can be very small in comparison with their equivalents in the English-speaking countries – when I got my T-shirt from Napster, for example, I was living in a two-bedroom central house sandwiched between two end jobbies in a three-house development; and just before I moved into my current single-occupant, single-bedroom studio, I had a two-bedroom place in Changwon. Although the compact nature of such dwellings is not always a bad thing, it does bring space restrictions with it which I am already feeling, as unlike the other two places I lived in here, there is no storage compartment above the bathroom, hence the latter is actually quite large. But the point I am trying to make here is that because of space shortages, I now have to think twice about any purchase I make, as in "where will I keep it after I take it home???"
Purchases therefore have to be mulled over for quite a while to figure out whether any object, large or small, will not turn out to be a space hog. Most of my purchases here which are not either food or booze or clothing tend to be books, and what I already have has almost filled three bookcases. I had my own desk – large, robust and expensive – already and this meant not only that the equivalent put in here by the landlady had to be dismantled to make better use of space; but she also has her own small dining table here, so space remains a problem – especially as I would like to get a large and expensive comfy chair in which to watch the likes of Discovery Channel of an evening . . . the whole thing is a classic of different peoples' tastes mismatching, including furniture that probably seemed like a good idea at the time they were bought, but which, when you try to rearrange them, all prove to be of the wrong size. Or the rooms are too small. Or both. Whatever . . . I still think that a judiciously-applied claw hammer and a bunch of cable clips can make the place more bearable.
So my conclusions about the finances to make purchases are twofold. First the obvious part: if people can't make online purchases because these can only be made in certain ways which are only available to those who are not considered a risk by the card issuers, we shouldn't be surprised when recessions come and wallop the vendors who depend on them. But similarly, the high street suffers because people feel the need to be more frugal, something they find hard because the lenders have been encouraging terrible financial habits for so long. Secondly – and perhaps countries like Japan really need to think about this – there is little point in trying to sell anything to people who can only afford small apartments and rooms to live in. If they had more space to accommodate more movable properties, the vendors would make more sales when money was available. But the first point differs from the second because it requires a different type of technology, whereas the second really means addressing the styles of accommodation (and the concomitant expense required) which people are allowed to have, and one would expect the situation to worsen with time simply due to uncontrolled property speculation.
The increasing unwillingness of people at any time to make purchases therefore is perhaps not so much a function of what they can afford as the availability of financial services and finally, actually having enough space at home to enjoy the things they buy; things which are certainly borne out by my own experience.
Andrew. 😛
