From Seoul’s youth to Mumbai slum dwellers

I came across this article a few days back which told about how a new culture , Shibal Biyong, has crept in amongst Korea’s millenails. Shibal Biyong basically means when you tend to splurge on things when you are angry or frustrated or just to make yourself feel better.

Why Young Koreans Love to Splurge

This article talks about how young Koreans have made it trendy to splurge more to find short-term happiness instead of saving money for the future. It’s surpirisng how similar that is to the behavior which Nobel Prize winning economists-Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo, observed while doing RCTs (randomised control trials) amongst the most economically disadvantaged in countries like India, Morocco etc. They found that the poor were more willing to spend their money on television instead of using it for savings or having a more nutritious diet. They preferred to buy more sugary food instead of healthy food. Clearly underscores the fact that the desire for entertainment is as much of a motivator as hunger.

The major insight is that a lot of things that we see around is driven by human psychology and is applicable to all people alike. South Korea’s young millenials are also making the same choices in distress as the poor slum dwellers of Mumbai. It’s interesting to note how a lot of the news that we see around is packaged and brought out in a certain way to us.

I believe this highlights majorly 2 things:

1. We are all alike in more ways than we can imagine. The terms we use for ourselves (millenials, Gen Zs etc.) are mere signals than an indicator of character or attitude. Under stress, everyone behaves alike.
2. Most of the news can be made sense of by reading about human pyschology. In fact, a lot of the news that we consume is written in different ways to appeal to a specific demographic.