Greeting Card SCAM! How to Save $6 (Or More) on Greeting Cards -- and Defeat the Greeting Card Industry Once and For All

Why are greeting cards so ridiculously expensive?

It's hard not to think about the incredibly fat and juicy profit margins of these little folded pieces of paper when you find Mother's Day, graduation and birthday cards priced at $4.99, $6.99, and even $8.99 in your local suburban grocery or drug store. Sure, some have glitter or cute ribbons on them. And bad poetry. But the bottom line is this: greeting cards are one of the most profitable products in modern retailing.

And long term readers of this blog know why: it has everything to do with competition. Or the lack thereof.

While there are plenty of items in our grocery stores sold at fair prices and reasonable markups, there are also certain items sold at unfair prices under surprisingly limited competition. Many branded/advertised foods, the dreaded spice aisle, and of course greeting cards are all good examples of non-competitive submarkets in the grocery/retail world.

Two companies dominate the greeting card aisle, Hallmark and American Greetings, making it one of the least-competitive segments of all of retail. Worse, when consumers need a card for Mother's Day or an almost-forgotten anniversary card for a spouse, they don't care that much about the card's price. Typically, they just need to get the card and get on with their day.

An economist would call this a non-competitive market with minimal price sensitivity. An investor like Warren Buffett would call this a wonderful business,[1] because in markets like these companies can actually raise prices, every year, little by little, and consumers just passively keep buying cards like they always do.

There may appear to be thousands of cards to choose from, the choice is illusory. The market and its egregious prices are under complete duopoly control. And that's why you can hardly find a card for less than $4.99 any more.

Just to focus our attention here: for $4.99 you can buy a paperback book. Or five pounds of pasta. Or three dozen eggs. Or three pounds of lentils! Many of Casual Kitchen's most popular laughably cheap recipes cost less than this.

Looking downfield a little bit, I wonder what the consumer reaction will be to the first basic greeting card that exceeds the $10 price point? It's coming. And here's something really mortifying: at the rate card prices are currently compounding, we could easily be paying $20 for greeting cards in a decade, give or take. [2]

Which brings us to a question: how high does the price of a greeting card have to go before it becomes... insulting? Or even condescending? As in "We, the greeting card industry, have so little regard for you consumers that we expect you to mindlessly pay 60,000% markups for a folded card."

Don't misunderstand: I have no problem paying money for a gift card. But I have a huge problem paying sums of money that are ridiculously divorced from the value we receive from that expenditure. As an empowered consumer, you should too.

So, what do we do? Well, as in many consumer empowerment situations, the answer is "it depends." But a good starting point is to stop using our typical buying patterns. Clearly, the greeting card cabal can easily prey on us if we seek to satisfy our greeting card "needs" the way we always have.

One solution we know won't work: going to another retailer. Remember the simple technique of going to a local ethnic grocery store to find more reasonably-priced spices? This tactic, which worked so well to subvert the non-competitive grocery store spice aisle, isn't effective against the anti-competitive greeting card industry. They've pretty much locked up control of all of the shelf space at all retailers, everywhere.

Which takes us to a more elegant solution, something we might call a modified "don't want it!" technique. Rather than submitting to the greeting card cabal, and paying their prices on their cards, screw 'em. I'm playing this game on my own (much more fun) terms, by making my own cards.

So, for Laura's birthday, this was this year's card:

I muffed the ice cream cone, but that's an exact likeness of Laura.

Sure, we save a little money. But more importantly, Laura LOVED it. She thought this card was hilarious, adorable even. We both got a huge laugh out of it. And it was free. FREE. [3]

And if I can do this with my pitiful artistic ability, you can do better.

Here's the broader takeaway for anyone interested in consumer empowerment: in any anti-competitive marketplace where prices are way out of line with the value we receive, don't buy. Don't be so damn obedient. Figure out another way. Play chess.

Saved six bucks. She's amused (and impressed even) by my artwork.

And on her birthday neither of us was exploited by the greeting card cabal. For once. pic.twitter.com/k3OiVAUEKy

— Daniel Koontz (@danielckoontz) May 16, 2019

Footnotes:
[1] Lamentably, American Greetings and Hallmark are both privately held. Recall elsewhere in Casual Kitchen where we discussed how easy it is to self-fund many of your consumer products purchases by investing in the stock of the company and receiving dividend payments. That won't work here unfortunately.

[2] Don't laugh, hear my math: Assume a $7.99 card and imagine the greeting card cabal gradually raises prices at an average 8% annual rate, consistent with recent pricing activity. In just 12 years, that $7.99 card will have compounded to $20.12. It's coming.

[3] Okay, I lied. It wasn't quite free: the cost was technically 1 sheet of standard copy paper at $7.49 per 500 sheets, or about 1.5c. Thus I provided Laura with an amusing birthday card for less than one 300th of the price of a standard $4.99 greeting card.


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You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!

Okay Then, So… When Can I Talk?

All this talk about talking and its role in subverting our actions may have left readers somewhat confused about what they can talk about and when. Heck, I'm confused, and I'm the guy who wrote this stuff in the first place.

Recall that the type of talk we're considering here is the kind that fools our minds' reward centers with "a sense of completion," makes us confuse talk with action, and narcotizes us into apathy and inaction. If we could figure out what kind of talk doesn't do that, that would be awfully helpful.

With that in mind, here are a few general rules for which types of talk you can safely engage in that won't trigger the subversive "sense of completion" loop:

1) You can only talk about actions you have already performed.
a) "Hey, last week I did deadlifts for the first time (and boy are my arms tired!)" (contrast this with "I'm thinking of starting deadlifting" which, as we've seen, produces a sense of completion and therefore prevents you from doing deadlifts)

b) "I did my very first run today, 1.5 miles." (contrast with "I really need to start running.")

c) "I made five new healthy and laughably cheap recipes from Casual Kitchen last month. My grocery bill was down by 45%!" (contrast with "I really should look into ways to cook healthy for less.")

2) You can talk about future tweaks you'd like to make to things you've already done.
"I'm noticing some minor muscle tears all over my rib cage after a few weeks of deadlifting practice. I wonder if adding an occasional cold shower would help my body recover."

3) You can talk about things you don't want to do.
Again, remember: the sense of completion loop means talking about things you want to do makes it more likely you won't do them. Here we simply apply the reverse example, where we use the sense of completion loop on purpose to evade action. Thus, only talk about things if you actually do not want to do them.

A final postscript and disclaimer: Readers, first of all, thanks for being patient with me as I slowly and painstakingly articulate and attempt to solve a challenge I've struggled with, even though it has next to nothing to do with this blog's usual subjects. Second, despite all the prescriptive advice here, please remember that of course you can talk about whatever you want, whenever you want. ;)


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You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!

How to Stop Narcotizing Dysfunction

Last week's post was pretty darn depressing wasn't it? Well, at least it depressed me. I can't stand the idea that I might be narcotizing myself, and I certainly don't want to fool myself into thinking I'm being "part of the solution" or "becoming informed" when really I'm just lulling myself (and worse, those around me) into inaction and complacency.

The only course of action is to take action--and so today's post is an attempt to offer solutions that readers (and I) can use to avoid, subvert and beat the problem of narcotizing dysfunction.

Four things:

1) Eliminate the narcotic. What I mean by this, obviously, is stop consuming media. And for good measure, stop all news, all broadcast media, all social media, and most importantly, stop consuming peoples' rage-driven posts about any issue you care about. These things narcotize you and lull you into apathy, while fooling you into thinking you're doing something about the issue. Embrace a low-information, zero-media diet.

2) Read less about the specific issue that's important to you. Not more, less! Admittedly, this seems counter-intuitive. We all like to think we're missing out on being informed when we read less about an issue, but remember, we're up against a media that has interests that differ substantially from our own. In other words, the information made accessible to us through media isn't the information we want. Which brings us to the next solution...

3) While reading less, go directly to the source for your subject or issue information, do not use media or social media intermediaries that distort or impose (their) narratives on the information reaching you. Thus, read books or papers by genuine experts in the subject--and then read an oppositional book by opposing experts to make sure your own brain doesn't impose its own narrative on you either. I'll share an example in the domain of personal investing: I go directly to company quarterly earnings report transcripts (they are free at SeekingAlpha.com) and never read analyst reports or financial media reports telling me their interpretation of what happened. I don't want the intermediary's perception! I want to shape my own.

4) Be aware of the phenomenon itself, always. If you can remind yourself that "this information I'm seeing about issue X (or this discussion I'm having about topic Y) is likely displacing or supplanting action I would rather be taking" you are far less likely to be lulled into narcotized complacency.

5) Take specific action. Fricking actually do something about the thing. And no, once again, posting rubbish on social media does not count. True action involves putting your own skin in the game: If you want to do something about the pay gap, hire a woman. If you want to do something about wealth inequality, teach people how to invest. If you want to do something about XYZ political issue, run for office. If you want to write a novel... write a novel. Do not talk about it or consume media about it unless you wish to be narcotized and made inert and impotent. See how that works?

To summarize:
Eliminate media consumption.
Read less about the issue.
Go directly to source documents; never use informational intermediaries.
Be aware of the phenomenon: you are always at risk of being narcotized.
Take action.


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You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!

Narcotizing Dysfunction

Narcotizing dysfunction is a theory that as mass media inundates us on a particular issue, we become increasingly apathetic to that issue.

Worse, we find ourselves substituting factoids and other ersatz knowledge about that issue in place of taking action to help.

As an example, everybody knows about the gender pay gap, and most of us know specific ersatz information about the issue--like the standard factoid women get paid 23% less than men.

But do you know anyone who's actually put their own skin in the game to do anything specific to ameliorate this pay gap? Me neither. And no, posting something about it on social media doesn't count. More on that in a minute.

I used the phrase ersatz knowledge earlier on purpose, because it begs the question whether it's even in our interests at all to know this kind of information. If you really think about it, the "23%" factoid appears to persuade us of something, but at the same time it lulls us into not doing a darn thing about it. It results in people talking rather than doing. Or worse: complaining rather than doing. And just to make sure readers don't get wrapped around the axle about the pay gap as an issue (see the postscript below), we could substitute many other issues in many other domains just as easily, including issues like obesity, saving money and financial independence, the alleged high cost of healthy food, etc.

There's another psychological phenomenon called "sense of completion," by which talking about something--merely talking about it--produces a tiny squirt of dopamine in your brain. That squirt of dopamine, and the small blurt of satisfaction it produces in your mind, is a miniature replica of the genuine sense of satisfaction you'd get if you'd actually completed the task.

Thus we talk about writing a novel, or post something on Twitter/Faceborg about writing a novel, but our talking produces a "miniature replica of satisfaction" that fools us into a feeling of taking action when we haven't. And we end up not writing a novel.

Everyone thinks they don't do this of course. But the truth is, talking is far, far easier than doing, and our brains take the easy route: we talk about doing stuff, we post online about doing stuff, and we don't actually do the stuff. We settle for a mental simulacrum of accomplishment rather than the accomplishment itself.

So now we have two psychological phenomena: sense of completion and narcotizing dysfunction. Both help explain why people are full of natters and they don't do shit. To put it crudely.

Talking, debating, quoting ersatz factoids about "the issues," consuming mass media, and (perhaps worst of all) consuming social media: It all narcotizes us.

If you start to think about these mechanisms, it starts to make you a bit suspicious about what you think, why you think it, and who's giving it to you to think. And, exposure, repeated exposure, to the very factoids you "know" about an issue seem only to keep you inactive. To keep things just as they are.

Call me crazy, but if you wanted to run a gigantic nationwide experiment on how to impose complacency on a society.... this might be how you'd do it.

Once I finally wrapped my mind around these concepts, my desire to debate politics--in fact, my desire to debate most issues, certainly over social media--instantly died.


READ NEXT: How to Use Ersatz Knowledge For YOUR Benefit, Not Theirs
AND: A Terrible Paradox for Locavores

Postscript: A discussion of the gender pay gap is obviously far beyond the scope of this blog and far outside my circle of competence, and as a result I don't have the credibility to offer an opinion on it. Furthermore, keep in mind that this post isn't about the pay gap per se, but about our complacency about any important issue even after we're persuaded.

What's even more intriguing is how there are other types of "gaps" that we never hear about that actually favor women, and in some cases monstrously favor women (examples: workplace deaths, workplace injuries, pay gaps for workers younger than 30). It begs the same questions: why do we all "know" (and are relentlessly fed) the "23% less" factoid, but not the others? And why would we even want to "know" this, then, if the result seems to be nothing more than our complacency? It bakes your noodle just to think about it.


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You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!