Animal Spirits

The Grand Game of Perception Management (February 16, 2012)

The economy will expand if you believe it is expanding--because you'll be "animal spirited" into buying a lot of stuff on credit that you can't afford.

It all boils down to perception--that's the insight at the heart of the Grand Game of Perception Management. Economists speak of magical "animal spirits" that fuel economic expansion, but this is simply a colorful term for perception management: when people perceive others reaping outsized gains in profits or pleasure from taking risky bets and freely spending borrowed money, then they will feel an overpowering urge to follow the herd and leverage their capital (if any) and disposable income (if any) into risky bets and zealous over-consumption, i.e. "animal spirits."

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb12/grand-game-perception-mgt2-12.html


HT:
Of importance here also is advertising ease of collection of what really works to get the "best of humans". With things like grocery store "club cards" they know very well what you are buying at what price in reaction to actions they took. The whole social media boom, will one day be seen as a very evil thing. It puts the actions of humans out in the domain of HAL 20000 that can easily data mine crowd reactions for crowd control.