All he wants is better salesmanship. He wants someone to tell him why he wants something so that he'll actually enjoy owning it. A desk becomes more than just a desk. Shaving cream becomes more than just shaving cream.

Looking for reasons to not just buy el-cheapo shaving cream. Is there anything out there worth spending a little money on?

The best shaving cream isn't worth spending money on until somebody sells you on it.

Here's another idea: if you don't get pleasure or a feeling of discernment out of your shaving cream, maybe you should accept that. If the Ikea desk makes you just as happy as the Stow Davis desk, maybe you should accept that, instead of yearning for a salesman to help you believe you have better taste. It's moralistic and a downer, but looking for ways to get more satisfaction out of your purchases is a sickness.

Example: I don't have a very sensitive palate for wine. Therefore, I don't spend much on wine and don't pretend to know anything about it. When my friends talk about wine, I sit back and wait for the subject to change. Part of me feels like I'm missing out, part of me feels like an inferior yuppie -- which I suppose I am. It would be so easy to fake it. Fooling myself would be almost as easy as fooling other people. I could read reviews of every wine I buy and parrot what they say about bananas, strawberries, and barnyards. I would enjoy myself immensely, and people would like me better because I would be more fun. High-end wines would provide another way of buying excitement and validation. I could transmit that excitement and validation to other people. I could even make them feel loved by my careful attention to the wine I served them. My conscience, my intellectual integrity, is the only thing holding me back from these benefits.

Wait, you say -- wouldn't the pleasure be genuine? Sure. It would. So why pass up an opportunity to manufacture pleasure? Aren't I just stealing happiness from everybody to gratify a moralistic urge that has no valid moral basis? If it's one kind of empty self-indulgence versus another, shouldn't I pick the one that provides happiness to myself and other people?

This is a serious question, and I can't claim to have an answer that is much better-founded than my simple engineer's (or prude's) instinct that there must be a catch. However, I can name a few things that would be wrong about it.

First, I would be financially supporting wine prices that could, for all I know, be completely fraudulent. Unless I can be confident I can tell the difference between a $12 wine a $60 wine, my spending $60 just creates an opportunity for unscrupulous folks to make money by overpricing wine. That might not hurt me, but it would hurt real connoisseurs.

Second, I suspect that I would get more pleasure out of real appreciation than out of an illusory appreciation, as my "appreciation" of wine would be. The excitement, validation, and pleasure in tasting would all be genuine, but the taste itself would not be stimulating. I would, at best, be imagining novel sensations based on the descriptions of people with more sensitive palates. Nothing would exceed my imagination. I would be investing time, thought, and money into a cognitively incestuous and sterile experience. Aesthetic masturbation, if you will. Wouldn't I be better off concentrating on areas where I have the capacity to be truly surprised and stimulated? Wouldn't Rands be better off ignoring desks and focusing his attention on something he has legitimate taste for, instead of asking a salesman to manufacture an illusory appreciation for a Stow Davis desk?

(After all, you've been exposed to various kinds of furniture all your life, and if you still need a pep talk from another person to care deeply about the widely admired qualities of a certain desk, then you're simply blind to it. It's okay. Everyone has domains of insight and domains of blindness, and to elevate wine and furniture over other domains is just snobbery.)

Third, you should be careful what you do with your money. My bank balance affects how much I invest in truly worthy causes. Every year I sign up for recurring charitable deductions from my paycheck. When I decide how much to sign up for for the next year, the state of my finances has an effect on how much I feel comfortable comitting to. I also lend money to friends and family when they need it; again, my bank balance affects how much I'm comfortable giving. Basically, I'm a selfish, risk-averse person, and my willingness to be altruistic is heavily dependent on my own security and comfort. It's easy to give away excess. Looking for expensive new ways to turn my excess into pleasure is another way of saying, "I'd better find something better to do with this money than give it to the EFF/Doctors Without Borders/<your favorite charity here>!" If you're really miserable and money is all you have going for you, then converting money into happiness should be your top priority (though buying stuff is probably not the best way.) If you're already reasonably happy, then go ahead and buy what you enjoy, but don't look at every expensive toy and think, "Oooooh, I want to learn how to appreciate THAT so I can enjoy BUYING and HAVING it!" You already know a million ways money can buy happiness; if you've exhausted all the ones that apply to you, then maybe you should spend the money on somebody else.

I know Rands is exploring this issue from the consumer side for the sake of working the sales side. That doesn't make it any better. If you wouldn't feel right doing it yourself, how could you feel right making money by persuading other people to do it?