Reason 56 I am Glad I No Longer Work in Retail (& I Thought the Cabbage Patch Doll Fad was Pazzo*!!!!!)

Tonite I was out shopping at Target. In front of the store were several tents & about 15 people. They were there for a reason. They were camping out so that when it goes on sale Friday morning they will be able to get the must have present of the year, PlayStation 3. Now, I'm not faulting capitalism, I support it. But, this shows me how much more spoiled a lot of children are today than 20 yrs ago when I worked at Zayre.

Back then the big thing was Cabbage Patch Dolls. Yes, they were cute & popular. But, I don't ever remeber parents camping out to get their children (or often themselves) 1. I will admit that they would gather early on Sunday morning if they were advertised. & if we got a shipment in during the week then the pay phone would get a lot of use as people would call friends to tell them to get out there. (Another change today, with cell phones, no lines at the phone & no wondering if the friend would be home.)

Video games are not a bad thing. They can be entertaining & educational, in their place. But what does it say about our priorities when we will stay out all nite in 20 degree F weather to buy something that will soon go down in price rather than invest the time with the kids & use some of the money to help those less fortunate? What is even worse than that is that there are those out there who will get 1 & put it on sale on E-Bay & make a fortune so someone else can keep their child from throwing a temper tantrum.

Captialism is good. the Catholic Church approves of it as the best means for the improvement of society. But within limits As it says in paragraph 334 of The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: "The economy has as its object the development of wealth and its progressive increase, not only in quantity but also in quality; this is morally correct if it is directed to man's overall development in solidarity and to that of the society in which people live and work. Development, in fact, cannot be reduced to a mere process of accumulating goods and services. On the contrary, accumulation by itself, even were it for the common good, is not a sufficient condition for bringing about authentic human happiness. In this sense, the Church's social Magisterium warns against the treachery hidden within a development that is only quantitative, for the “excessive availability of every kind of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups, easily makes people slaves of ‘possession' and of immediate gratification ... This is the so-called civilization of ‘consumption' or ‘consumerism' “.

In so far as making PlayStations creates good jobs & helps the creation & spread of wealth, it is OK for them to be made. It is OK for them to be sold & for consumers to buy them. But when it reaches the point where people camp out all nite then I think it has definitely crossed into making "people slaves of ‘possession' and of immediate gratification" that the Church warns against.

Again, before any of you get mad, I am not against Sony making & selling PlayStations. The Church recognizes their right to do so. I worked in retail, it was things like this that kept me working by making the store I worked at profitable so it would stay open. Things like PlayStaion have their place, if they are kept in the proper perspective. Camping out all nite to get 1, scalping 1 on E-Bay & the like, is neither.

* crazy