" Well, one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is by what the great political economist Thorstein Veblen called “fabricating consumers.” If you can fabricate wants, make obtaining things that are just about within your reach the essence of life, they’re going to be trapped into becoming consumers. You read the business press in the 1920s and it talks about the need to direct people to the superficial things of life, like “fashionable consumption,” and that’ll keep them out of our hair. "

― Noam Chomsky , Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power