Record sales, for instance, have risen drastically over the last couple of years (I forget the figures, but I read about it in the paper here the other day), which one might take to be a sign of people's interest in having more sanctimonious objects, so to speak. Of course, online purchases of music dominates still, but as CD sales drop, LP's rise. From my experience and from talking to others it seems to be a case of, well, I'm interested in the music (or book, or film) so I'm willing to pay for a nicely prepared package, something that obviously has aesthetic value over mere information.

At least, that's what I prefer. Guess I basically agree with what this guy was saying. But I think the trends we experience in consumerism are true of our culture as a whole which has come to invest in so much prefab bullshit that it's nearly unbearable to anybody with any sense of still participating in a dynamic, living system, that is, the Earth. Makes me think of News from Nowhere but it's been too long since I read it to say exactly why.