Consumers are thus sold a big lie comprising the supposed benefits of consumption as well as the meaning of other important aspects of human life. Agglomerating shops and stores in one place increases sales to customers who travel to one shop to buy one item and find themselves buying other items in the nearby shops. When consumers buy an item in a shop, they are also given a bag to carry the item. A consumer can often refuse a bag, but that bag usually carries advertising, i.e. the name of the shop. This sort of advertising is not so much to entice others to shop in the store but to display the status of the store, as is most billboard advertising.
Firms can also increase their profits by reducing their costs.
A good way to decrease costs is to increase productivity, generally through technological advances, but this is not the only way. An environmentally harmful way to reduce costs is to inflict them onto the environment. For example, a factory can emit its pollutants into the atmosphere or into a river rather than pay for more benign means of removing their wastes. A new tactic is to export pollution to poorer counties, e.g. China or Mexico, paying them for their environmental service. Poorer counties are attracted to this service because of the revenues it brings to their poorer economies.