You are most welcome for the article, Mr. Pants (should I just call you "Cranky"?), and thank you for the Bernays link.

I was first introduced to the notion of "conspicuous consumption" during the anti-Viet Nam War years where my generation rejected the norms of the 50s and early 60s and that included the materialism recounted in Galbreath's "The Affluent Society" (1958).

In my later years, I learned about journalist Samuel Strauss who said in the mid 1920s, "Formerly the task was to supply the things men wanted; the new necessity is to make men want the things which machinery must turn out if this civilization is not to perish" (theatlantic.com/magazin…). Apparently, Bernays was influenced by Strauss.

As to your last paragraph, I think the desire for status, that the consumer economy exploits, exists in the un-self-reflective human being. Advertisers figured that out. It drives more of our behavior than relationships.