As people’s collective awareness rises, outdated business models fall away and must necessarily give way to new models. Here’s one who’s time has clearly passed: creating false markets of dependence (FMDs).
How to create an FMD-model business:
Create a perception of a lack or need using manipulation (false lack/need).
Fill that perceived need with a product or service.
Create a perceived or real dependence on said product or service.
Bonus Step! Upsell, bait and switch, price gouge… whatever! As soon as they believe they need you, the sky’s the limit!
Based on collusion and opacity, FMDs pander to egocentric desires and rely on ignorance and fear.
FMDs run the gamut from the relatively benign to the truly diabolical.
Benign example: All your friends have cute painted nails, don’t you feel shabby without them? Use our nail polish!
The hook is ego/status and perceived lack, but the impact of withdrawal or refusal of the product is negligible.
Diabolical example: Corporate or illicit drug dealers peddling a false sense of security, happiness, peace, health/wellness, whatever, while creating an actual physiological dependency on their product so that if you try to eliminate your use of the product, serious physical complications are incurred, in some cases death.
The hook could be anything from a promise of a few anxiety-free hours to a threat such as “take this if you want to live.” The impact of withdrawal might be catastrophic.
Any business built on this created perception of false need, however, can only operate when the consumer falls for their lures, which relies on an obliviousness to the user’s own sovereignty and agency.
With this business model, consumer awareness becomes their biggest problem.
So they do their evil best to eradicate, block and confuse awareness (as when the consumer becomes aware that the need is false, the model collapses).
One of the biggest problems for companies or individuals who believe their livelihood relies on selling you something you actually don’t need is that human awareness always eventually spirals upwards towards expanding consciousness.
*Big problem. Keep ‘em distracted and asleep, captain.*
Losing game, that.
When people wake up to the fact that most of their own perceived lacks/needs are false and the “fix” is often detrimental, eventually only exacerbating the initial non-problem with the intention to prop up the false market, they simply stop funding FMDs.
Customers (people) hold all the power, if they don’t allow themselves to become caught in the old model’s web of deception and trap themselves into a manufactured dependency. That’s a bad move and something we should all be looking closely at right now.
Not every business is an FMD, of course. But here are another couple of FMD examples from the water I swim in: the food and exercise industry. To sell their wares, these businesses must first create a market for themselves, and this is done, as we’ve discussed, by creating a perception of false need (e.g., “You neeeeed this supplement! It’s anti-aging!”)
Their primary problem, of course, is that anyone can enjoy radical health simply by eating only fruits and vegetables and taking a regular walk, a hike or doing a little physical labor and adhering to very simple and well known habits such as getting enough sleep. This makes very little to no money, however, for corporations; they must “add value” to what’s already rightfully yours for free and sell it back to you at a massive markup to rake in the kind of cash they’re dependent upon.
In the case of the food industry, they face an additional, perhaps more perplexing issue in that their modified, food-like, commercially processed products actually damage health. So they must distract, confuse and cover up innate knowledge, demonize inherent qualities and create perceived needs.
Aspects of the medical/pharmaceutical industry are frequently no different.
We could go on and on with examples. However, I think I’ve made my point.
In the new model, sales will revolve around actually bringing something to the table transparently and fairly: a truly useful service, art or other skill must be transparently on offer (key word, offer).
I think that at this point in history, we’re all a bit weary of the salesperson. And yet, the evolved salesperson is aware of this and does everything they can do to ever so unobtrusively ingratiate themselves ubiquitously into the fabric of our lives. We must notice them, ask ourselves about true needs and about what kind of life we want to live—what kind of life we want our children to live—and remember who we truly are.
Turn FMDs away.
We see you, windbags.
Love it! My own sense of how to disrupt/dismantle this is a learning module/system that gets other's eyes above waterline to see. The indoctrination is deep, however, so it would have to be a form of mental aikido to be able to supplant the lies with honest replacements.
Adam! From acting class??? Hi! I like your sense of it!