[HN Gopher] Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010) ___________________________________________________________________ Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010) Author : tacon Score : 281 points Date : 2021-07-31 03:47 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.raptitude.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.raptitude.com) | SuoDuanDao wrote: | I've noticed an interesting congruity - people in the FIRE | community tend to target saving two-thirds of a modern western | income, with most finding that living on less than one-third | begins to have serious impacts on quality of life. From some | studies I came across while studying sustainable energy it also | seems as though a well-designed community in which residents make | certain lifestyle choices can reduce resource requirements by | around two-thirds. | | Most people in the FIRE community of course work more than the | minimum long enough to save money and then join the investor | class, without doing paid work at all from that point - but it's | fascinating to think that we could all reduce work and lifestyles | by two-thirds in a sustainable, ongoing way. | sokoloff wrote: | If "we could all" is constrained to households earning | 6-figures, I tend to agree. I doubt a household making $30K/yr | could realistically live on $10K/yr. | | (Further, if everyone FIRE'd, growth would slow to the point | where you'd need to save more to generate the same income from | investments. We're so far from that being any kind of practical | worry, that it can be safely ignored I think, but would be a | concern if it became more than vanishingly uncommon almost- | fringe behavior.) | cntrl wrote: | Isn't the FIRE person just delaying it's consumption? At some | point the saved up money will be spent, therefore I wouldn't | expect it to have a huge negative impact on economic growth | SuoDuanDao wrote: | It's not delaying but also reducing it significantly - the | FIRE person lives on 1/3 a typical income and saves the | other two over the course of a compressed career. Typically | they retire once they've saved 25X their yearly expenses | and then draw down at a rate of 4% a year, putting any | excess capital gains towards their portfolios to offset | inflation. | | So consumption is reduced by 60% over the course of a | lifetime, which by most metrics would shrink the economy by | a similar amount - of course, most FIRE people also keep | being productive after retiring, so it's probably not so | straightforward to account for everything. | sokoloff wrote: | I think generally no: FIRE adherents are planning to retire | early (the "RE" in FIRE) and _expect to spend less over | their lifetime_ than a standard American working that same | level of job /income for 40 years instead of 10 or 15. | | https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- | si... | WhompingWindows wrote: | Objectively, a lot of the consumption of modern Western life is | unnecessary. We don't have to drive out to dinner, there's | edible food at home. We could skip those bucket-list vacation | trips, purchasing new items instead of making-do with old, we | could live in more modest housing for our income levels. | | It's kind of trippy to imagine what the large-scale effects | would be. If everyone cut their consumption by 1/3, our economy | would contract a lot, but long-term it'd be healthier, right? | Less waste, more efficiency, less environmental degradation | overall, though I'll admit we need new technology to replace | old dirty technology in energy. Overall, it's a very | interesting subset of Westerners, the FIRE group. | closeparen wrote: | Ironically I think things like a regular cooking + cleaning | regime and staying very close to home are most palatable when | they're essentially forced by a 9-5 job. With time on my | hands I'd have much more pressing desire to explore, sample, | and generally spend on what the world has to offer. | notfromhere wrote: | Probably an argument that a forty hour workweek makes that | kind of unnecessary consumption possible. People with time | and groceries would probably make dinner rather than go out | NavinF wrote: | How is that consumption "unnecessary"? I bet 99% of the | people here would not save money or time by working less | hours and using that time to cook more often. Time spent | cooking, cleaning pans, shopping and sorting/storing | groceries etc can easily be >$100/day | MandieD wrote: | As long as you're not making elaborate new recipes all | the time, but variations on the same several, shopping | and cooking don't take nearly that long. I cook three or | four big meals a week, generating a lot of leftovers. | | Since I'm in the habit of cooking and keep a well-stocked | pantry, the time from "what's for dinner?" to "time to | eat!" is faster when I cook than if I order delivery. | | Then again, I've cultivated a love of cooking and a like | for grocery shopping, so neither feels like a chore. My | husband appears to have cultivated a non-aversion to | kitchen cleaning and a keen appreciation for lower-sodium | meals, so win-win. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | I'm not sure about that, even when my wife and I were both | working full time we still cooked all our own meals. It's | not that much of a burden. | sneak wrote: | In-person shopping for food (including travel to/from the | place of purchase), food prep, cooking, and the | associated cleanup is an enormous time sink. Perhaps you | have free time or are already used to spending a lot of | it on these tasks, but let's not pretend that it's "not | that much". It's huge. | kwhitefoot wrote: | Shopping for the four of us in this house takes about | three man hours a week. Cooking about 15. That is much | less than an hour a day per person. If we felt like it we | could optimise the shopping even further by only shopping | when we were already passing the supermarket on the way | to or from work. | | If we felt like it we could do the shopping online and | cut it down to a few minutes a week. | | Cooking Sunday dinner for four today took me less than | two hours. Would have been faster if I had not prepared | everything from scratch. | handrous wrote: | It depends a lot on how varied a menu you want/require | (or your spouse does....) | | Cooking with variety (or "buy whatever's on sale") is | _really hard_ if you also want to do it cheaply (minimize | waste & spoilage, especially). Cooking the same few | meals, maybe with some seasonal rotation, is easy because | you can get the measurements of what you need each week | ver exact to keep spoilage very low, and arrange them so | waste from one meal always goes into another later in the | week. | clydethefrog wrote: | A big part of FIRE is putting your income i to index funds that | get profit from mindless consumption, unlimited growth and | capital extraction. I think if everyone would do that there | wouldn't be any return on the investments. | SavantIdiot wrote: | Most people in the FIRE community are still under 50. I'm | watching to see how this plays out. | martincmartin wrote: | FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early for those who don't | know. | pipthepixie wrote: | I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting | with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a | 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore. | 41209 wrote: | Before Covid made it impossible, I wanted to do this for at | least 6 months. I still hope I get the chance to travel for | an extended period of time . | loftyal wrote: | This gap year has been pretty common in Europe/Aus/NZ for a | while. Lots of young people do it. We even have visas for | it called "working holidays" so they can work a part-time | bar job etc, so you dont need to save up much to do it. | aiisjustanif wrote: | In Europe, a gap year has been a thing for couple decades | now, if not more. | namdnay wrote: | Depends where in Europe. Definitely not common in France. | I know it's common in the UK, not sure about other | countries | namarie wrote: | It's been a thing since at least the 1660s, when people | called it a "Grand Tour". | mateo- wrote: | Can confirm. Am young person considering this. Though I'll | be taking it to study, mostly :) | throwthere wrote: | It's kind of an interesting thought experiment. Think for a | second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. | Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut | their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same | pay. And so on across all jobs producing discretionary goods | and services. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | >Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad | revenue. | | I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most | people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising | does is direct where it is spent. | | >Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut | their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same | pay. | | If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and | harder for the same pay. | throwthere wrote: | > I don't think advertising makes that much difference. | Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing | advertising does is direct where it is spent. | | Even if it were true that advertising only directed _where_ | money was spent, there 'd still be 2/3 less money to go to | advertising or anything else if everyone was making 1/3 | pay. > If we all did it then we wouldn't be | working longer and harder for the same pay. | | I don't understand what you're trying to say. Economies of | scale mean that you're more productive with more | consumption. IE) If you write code for a living, you're | generating more value the more people who use it. If less | people use it, you have to work harder to get the same | level of value and the same pay. | RandomLensman wrote: | "Unnecessary" is such an odd category: humans could live in | caves, for example. Who determines what is necessary? Is art | necessary? Music? Nice food? This seems often tangled in some odd | moral/theological origin, i.e. possessions are frowned upon. | | I like to be shown new things to try, for example. So some | advertising I actually like. Is my life planned by large | corporations? From my work there I would say not, as most | campaigns tend to fail even in the short term. | DangitBobby wrote: | The author seems to indicate that what makes something | "unnecessary" in this context is when it very temporarily | scratches an itch but does nothing to meaningfully improve your | quality of life in the longterm. What would really improve your | life is less money, fewer purchases, and more free time. | weregiraffe wrote: | >meaningfully improve your quality of life in the longterm | | In the longterm quality of life decreases until life is over. | Quality of life after death is 0. | DangitBobby wrote: | You'll have to explain what that has to do with the | discussion about having a fulfilling life. It sounds like | you're saying there's no point in improving your life | because you die eventually anyway. | RandomLensman wrote: | Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be | improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, | fewer purchases, not necessarily. | read_if_gay_ wrote: | It's not wrong per se. But things that provide instant | gratification tend to be destructive, and deep satisfaction | seldom comes from things that are easily obtained. | meiraleal wrote: | Nobody said it is wrong, but a life optimized for work and | short-term pleasures is the lifestyle corporations have | carved for you. Many people enjoy it, nothing wrong with | that. But for some, it is meaningless. | RandomLensman wrote: | People have been pleasure seeking long before | corporations existed, so I think the causal chains runs | the other way: corporations exist because they cater to | that. My life does not revolve around work, so that part | isn't for me. I'd be happy not to work at all. | codemonkey-zeta wrote: | > Why is short-term pleasure wrong? | | This is a great question, and firmly in the realm of | philosophy, so there will never be a definitive answer, | only ones which you might find useful. | | I prefer the Stoic's attitude toward pleasure. To (very | loosely) paraphrase Marcus Aurelius: | | For each evil characteristic a man can have, the gods gave | also a counteracting virtue. For dishonesty, honesty. For | fear, courage, etc. To counteract pleasure-seeking, self- | control. How can it be good if we are given a virtue | counteracting it? | RandomLensman wrote: | I am more a proponent of some forms of hedonism. An | emperor talking about indifference to pain or not seeking | pleasure isn't someone I could follow philosophically. | philwelch wrote: | Epictetus was a slave. | codemonkey-zeta wrote: | Agreed, but there are certain people I've experienced who | simply can never acquiesce to stoic doctrine. | | To poorly paraphrase Epictetus (from "Against followers | of the academy"): | | When a man had hardened himself against what is | manifestly clear, what argument, what flaming sword can I | bring to bear against him? | hoseja wrote: | Well for one, because it's very inefficient. | RandomLensman wrote: | Why would efficiency be a relevant measure for how to | live my life? | DangitBobby wrote: | Short term pleasure is not wrong. The entire premise boils | down to the belief that the 40 hour work-week means you are | sacrificing long-term and short-term pleasure for | superficial short-term pleasure, and that the inherent | dissatisfaction arising from the arrangement is the only | thing supporting the economy and resulting lifestyles as | they exist, perpetuating dissatisfaction, for, practically, | the sake of dissatisfaction. | | > My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. | More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily. | | If the entire economy were not designed to suck money out | of your pockets (and thus time out of your life), you might | feel differently. | RandomLensman wrote: | Let me put it this way: people have been spending on | pleasure since ancient times (including people without | any need to work). So that type of economy has existed | for a long time. | | The sacrificed long-term pleasure seems rather mythical | to me and very different from person to person. | DangitBobby wrote: | I think free time allows you to seek long term pleasure. | That was my experience when I was younger, penniless, | relatively un-obligated, and much more free. I would (and | do) describe my current 9-5 existence as largely joyless. | RandomLensman wrote: | Fair enough. I tend to feel most free with a lot of | resources at my disposal and just enjoying my life and | the world. And I'd agree that a lot of work is joyless. I | think the difference is more that I tend to enjoy things | "locally" and not "globally". | ergest wrote: | I agree that the 40h workweek is not technically "designed" per | se but rather it's the best confluence of factors such as keeping | competition at bay, keeping society productive, making people | feel useful, making life purposeful for many, etc. It's the | current local minima. If we could work 60 or 80 hours and still | get the same benefits, we'd do so. However, nobody has | experimented with working less while others work more because | competition will eat you up. | sdumi wrote: | I liked the post and I'm afraid that the author is right on so | many points. | | Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal | development", is this by some design or just natural evolution of | modern society? I guess it was always like this, but I can also | imagine that there are entities (ie, companies, governments, | people) that are doing some thing or the other trying to keep the | status quo: keep the people in the right state to consume as much | as possible... | closeparen wrote: | It's a consequence of our unprecedented prosperity that we can | fret about such things as "personal development." See how much | you worry about personal development when you're trying to | bring in enough of a harvest to meet your caloric needs. | ImaCake wrote: | >Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal | development" | | I don't think being uninterested in disengaging from consumer | capitalism is akin to being uninterested in personal | development. Being pro-mindfullness and anti-consumer is valid, | but so is being pro-consumer and uninterested in mindfullness | (because they are chasing other goals, which could be | considered part of personal development). The mistake the | author makes is assuming their goals are the best way to go, | and then prescribing solutions for that. | | The author's point of view is actually just fairly narrow. | There is nothing wrong with their view, or the ideas they | suggest for improving one's life if you share his perspective. | But a lot of people simply don't share that view. As a | counterpoint, some people (not mine) think the highest goal in | life is to work as much as possible. They will do so, and | probably consume a lot in order to maximise their time working. | That goal and lifestyle might seem unsavoury to me or you, but | it is another way to personal development: that you can, | personally, be a really good worker. | scaleng wrote: | I disagree that the authors return to wastefulness/consumption is | a result of systemic forces. I think it's more likely the case | that when you have a higher rate of income you spend money to | convenience yourself and save time/energy because you value your | time/energy at that higher rate of income. | Mandelmus wrote: | > you spend money to convenience yourself and save time/energy | because you value your time/energy at that higher rate of | income. | | Agreed, but the way I put it is that the higher consumption is | done to compensate for the stresses that come with the work | life(style). I have a lot less patience and mental energy to do | impulse control or to judiciously weigh the pros and cons of | this versus that purchase when in a stressful work environment | compared to when I'm not. I'd say that counts as "a result of | systemic forces". | cushychicken wrote: | As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest | and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife | and I have a dog. | | This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in | the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom | are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. | | Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in | a phase of my life where the shortage is very apparent. And it's | hard for me to deal with. I feel a bit like I've been robbed of | the space to have meaningful personal experiences outside of the | corporate space or my immediate famy. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as | a paradise of freedom. | burlesona wrote: | I wouldn't say "paradise" of freedom. Definitely more | flexibility without kids, but kids bring so much joy and | meaning to life. For most people it's a very worthwhile | trade. | visarga wrote: | "All Joy and No Fun" | postoak wrote: | Or don't have them =) | nautilius wrote: | Comments like this always remind me of the interview with | some kids dumpster diving behind some grocery store that I | read many years ago: "Look at all those suckers going into | the store to buy stuff with money, when you can just pick | it up for free behind the store. Idiots!" | postoak wrote: | That is a funny quote, but I don't think it's the same as | questioning the idea that everyone needs to have kids. | Going to the dumpster is a bad idea if you value your | health for everyone, but not having kids isn't clearly | bad unless you only think of having kids in | economic/religious terms (need to produce more | workers/believers, or having support in old age). | aiisjustanif wrote: | That sounds depressing. | SavantIdiot wrote: | The part in the article about finding time to work out hit hard. | He's right: there is so little time to work out because it takes | 1hr to work out and 1hr to travel/clean up: 2hrs is a big deal | when you only have ~4 hours free hours per day to take care of | life. That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for | every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. | You have to exercise a lot to alter your physique, and cramming | that into normal life with a 10hr/day job and kids is brutal. | | What's worse: this is from 2010. Pre-microtransation in video | games, pre-dozens of $10 TV channels fighting over a few film | copyrights, pre-subscription-razors, subscription juice, | subscription groceries, subscription everything... | | I can't believe people who pay $15/month for one TV channel | (Disney+) are shelling out $30 to rent (not own!) the latest | blockbuster. Blows my mind. | | I'm old enough to remember in the 80's when conservatives blamed | poor kids for saving up to buy $100 Air Jordans as some kind of | societal ill, when in reality it was just the correct operation | of the American consumerism. | | Marketing has really upped its game in 40 years. | [deleted] | irremediable wrote: | > That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every | overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. | | FWIW most weight change is due to diet. If you're overweight, | exercise is probably a much lower priority than finding a way | to sustainably eat less. | | I'm not just sounding off here; I lost 20+ kg by tracking what | I ate and eating less. | throwawayboise wrote: | Weight change happens depending on whether calories consumed | - calories burned is positive or negative. | | Diet _tends_ to be more effective for weight loss because it | 's a lot easier to cut excess empty calories than it is to | burn them off with exercise. | | Jogging a mile might burn 150 calories. Eating a Big Mac adds | 600. | criddell wrote: | > shelling out $30 to rent | | My family of four can pay $30 + grocery store food costs to | have dinner and a movie or we can pay around $100 to go see a | movie and have dinner at Alamo. $30 is a bargain. | SavantIdiot wrote: | You're proving my point: that same film is $100 in the | cinema. $100!! But the Overton window pushed you into | thinking $30 is a _bargain_. You think that wasn 't | intentional? | criddell wrote: | How isn't it a bargain? | SavantIdiot wrote: | Because you've been tricked into thinking $30 isn't so | bad compared to $100, when you should be demanding $20 | for the cinema for all four of your family, instead of | rolling over and saying, "Jeez, I sure got a deal." | That's what the Overton Window is all about: making one | option artificially bad so that you don't negotiate and | take whatever other option they give you. But if everyone | just shuffles along and opens their wallets to whatever | the studios ask for, they will absolutely charge more. | criddell wrote: | When I mentioned $100, that was for food and the movie. | | Second, we can all go to the movies for $20 and even less | if we are willing to wait. There are "dollar" theaters | where tickets are less than $5. | | But, if we want to see a new movie and want to go to the | modern theater with a full menu, comfy seats, and a great | sound system, then it costs more. $12 / ticket for 90+ | minutes of entertainment doesn't seem out of line. | | The same goes for watching movies at home. We can get | plenty for free if we are willing to sit through | commercials or watch one of thousands we have available | through services we subscribe to. But if we want to watch | the new thing tonight, it's $30. | fierro wrote: | I understand this perspective, but I take a different view on | life. I don't worry about spending money. I have high leverage | skills, so I focus on making more money. Life is more enjoyable | to me when I can spend without care knowing I'm always increasing | my skills, fulfillment, and by consequence earning potential. | tedjdziuba wrote: | > Life is more enjoyable to me when I can spend without care | knowing I'm always increasing my skills, fulfillment, and by | consequence earning potential. | | "Believing" is more accurate than "knowing". There is no | certainty that your skills today will be profitable in the | future. | Invictus0 wrote: | I am a man and I own 13 pairs of shoes. They're mostly | specialized--water shoes, snow boots, steel toe, fancy shoes, | flip flops, running shoes, and several pairs of dress shoes. But | when I was backpacking in Europe, I only carried one pair of | black Timberland boots with me, which took me from the nightclub | to the top of the Tatras to the catacombs of Paris. It's amazing | how effortlessly I accumulate junk and how every item seems so | important and necessary, until I go traveling with only a 30L | backpack and I seem to have everything I need. | | I have 1 dresser. In my mind, 1 is a nice small number of | dressers to have. But in physical spacetime, one dresser takes up | a hell of a lot of volume. I wonder if many of our possessions | are like this: they occupy little space in our mind, even as they | occupy evermore physical volume in our homes. | n8cpdx wrote: | The trend towards larger homes and storage probably contributes | to accumulation. | | I'm in a ~450 sq ft studio and having to consciously think | about where a new purchase will go cuts down on buying "junk" | and makes me a lot quicker to sell or dispose of things that | are just taking up space. | | Similarly, when I moved to a city with hideously expensive | parking, I sold my car when I wasn't using it enough to justify | the expense. | KozmoNau7 wrote: | I've found that moving house can really make you take an extra | look at all the stuff you have, and is a great opportunity to | get rid of some of the accumulated junk. I've been living in | this apartment for 13 years now, so I feel it's about time :-) | | One thing that I think everyone should do once a year is take | out _all_ of their clothes, sort it into types and then go | through it piece by piece. Identify everything that doesn 't | fit anymore, anything you haven't worn in a long time or maybe | ever, anything you just don't like/love. Give it away to | charity, or if it's something really nice, put it up for sale. | | Clothes you never wear are of absolutely no use. | [deleted] | ilamont wrote: | _Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have | been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, | addiction, and unnecessary spending._ | | Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I | disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is | excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, | whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors | of such pleasures have proved to be remarkably adept at creating | & providing these opportunities. | mathewsanders wrote: | This was my exact thought, and was wondering if they were using | 'designed' and 'built' in that sense of being planned and | directed. | | I'm with you and agree that it's an unforeseen side effect. | | I'd even take it a step further and suggest that along with | being unexpected, that the majority of our leaders in the world | are oblivious that this is even occurring since they are | typically so far detached from most peoples lives. | bnralt wrote: | In the post he seems to only being talking about corporations | (as far as I can tell). His point about corporations pushing | products that people don't actually need, and in fact often | make people less happy, seems fairly on point. The entire | advertising industries that exist to be a conduit for | advertisements (most of the media) are based on trying to get | people to spend their money on things they wouldn't naturally | spend them on. | | His argument that the 40 hour work week is a deliberate way to | force people to be consumers is extremely unlikely. | | You're point about excess and un-directed capital, though, | probably hits at the larger issue. It also can be used to | explain things like administrative bloat and inflating tuition | at higher education institutions, as well as a host of | parasitic industries that go beyond mere consumption. | | It seems like we hit the singularity years ago, but the | majority of the new capacity mostly went into waste, unhealthy | addictions and borderline scams that have taken up an | increasingly large part of the economy. One wonders if more | direct involvement from society (perhaps a robust industrial | policy) could have lead us in a more prosperous direction. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | It's hard to believe western societies willingly and | collectively wanted the fleshlight. | bordercases wrote: | Markets and government interact in ways which mix and transcend | the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy. Consider freeways. | | Freeways are government projects, commissioned federally, given | to private contractors, which setup cities, which enact a | policy of sprawl reified by a small committee, of which only | one member was elected, and for which in order for people to | live in the city, they must purchase cars for themselves, | appearing to the free market responding to the problem of | getting around. | | So at all levels, there is a mix of group-agency vs individual- | agency: different concentrations of power. | | Ultimately the chain of causality to create freeways and thus | create demand for cars is started by a few people at the top. | | But from the consumer's perspective, buying a car is a need | combined with other luxury requirements to differentiate the | car-driving experience to their tastes, and the market provides | it. They don't always ask if there are alternative urban models | that policy-makers could have tried. | | See also lobbyists, that distort this process near the top as a | bid to artificially create demand, or to stay solvent as | economic actors without revenue from the free market. This also | creates the illusion that the market is merely responding to | consumer needs, when in fact it is constrained in ways that | encourage specific consumer responses. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Yeah, I think we got here by evolution not revolution.It's a | local minimum until the next upheaval. Lots of people are | comfortable. As can be seen by comments on HN of "how can | anyone possibly live on $100k?" . I think we may be at a local | max of change as a certain level of comfortableness has allowed | a false sense of revolution/being deprived as well as POC | taking on more political power in the country. This has reached | a critical mass in the form of the current republican party | headed by Trump, I think unfortunately the violence from them | will get much worse before it gets better. | agumonkey wrote: | In consumerist societies "pleasurable" is very much stretched, | when your life is dull, you'll find spending money on whatever | cool guy is trying to sell you. People with big pockets know | all about your flaws, social behavior in the large, fads and | followers, and they sure play with it like an orchestra | conductor. | | unlike russian communism you're not forced to do anything but | you're seduced out of your mind, I guess it's fair | goodpoint wrote: | > you're not forced to do anything | | You are forced to choose between working to pay rent and | health insurance or go hungry, homeless and ill or in prison. | | In various developed societies there is free healthcare, | social safety nets, or some forms of UBI or other help. | | > but you're seduced out of your mind, I guess it's fair | | Fair? Consumerism is threatening all ife on the planet. | Humanity can do so much better. | goodpoint wrote: | There was a comment that is provably true and has been | downvoted: | | -- | | I think the comparison of carbon footprints between the | average westerner and the global south seems to indicate | these issues aren't about the raw number of people and | absolutely to do with lifestyle. | | -- | namdnay wrote: | > You are forced to choose between working to pay rent and | health insurance or go hungry, homeless and ill. | | Oh lord, being "forced" to provide work in order to receive | the work of others | | I think the US has serious progress to make on safety nets, | but this type of statement doesn't really help move the | discussion forwards | anemoiac wrote: | > Oh lord, being "forced" to provide work in order to | receive the work of others | | I didn't write the comment you responded to, but I don't | think its author was advocating for the mythical "free | lunch." I read their comment as a statement decrying the | seemingly artificial constraints built into modern | (American, I presume) society that force workers to make | an essentially binary choice between a stable, secure | life and one of, potentially, poverty and | marginalization. | | To be more explicit - most people can't simply provide | (even valuable, in-demand) work on their own terms, so | they're forced (by various intentional and unintentional | social/economic/legal/etc. barriers) to work according to | terms that may not make sense to a rational third-party. | This is (probably) why the commenter you responded to | mentions the binary distinction between financial | stability and physical insecurity - there's hardly any | middle ground between the two categories when it comes to | most fields of employment. Although "tech" is probably | _the_ most flexible industry in this regard, it 's still | difficult to find positions that allow part-time | employment with health insurance benefits (even at lower- | than-average pay rates), for example. | | In most industries, the prospect of being able to work to | provide only enough "value" to comfortably sustain | oneself, as opposed to "being forced" to fully commit to | _the lifestyle_ (i.e. 40+ hours /week, car for commuting, | lodging within commuting distance, childcare, general | cost of paying for convenience in food/housework/etc. due | to having less free time, etc.) is laughable. I believe | this is what the commenter you reference was referring to | - having the freedom to live cheaply without becoming | financially insecure or socially marginalized, not some | desire to have others pay for their lives. | namdnay wrote: | But how is that binary choice artificial? You'd have | exactly the same choice 10000 years ago. Either go and | hunt and forage for food, or starve | scarecrowbob wrote: | I mean, I'm living near a concentration camp for folks | who were doing that. | | Some folks fenced everything off, hunted the large | animals to death, and re-educated the children. | | There really isn't a choice, or at least if there is, | I've seen what the US did to the folks choosing that | choice, and it wasn't pretty. | ABCLAW wrote: | This is a false dichotomy. Parties do not have to have | binary, 1 and 0 values for how much power they have in a | given transaction, and remarking that employees having | little power places them in the same place as ancient | hunter-gatherers is... perhaps somewhat dishonest? | | If we're experiencing what it is to have an employer have | 8:2 relative power to an employee, that doesn't mean that | a ratio of 6:4, while still favoring the employer, is no | different. | heavyset_go wrote: | It's not the work that's the problem, it's that most | people are forced to work in an arrangement that's | stacked against them. | | > _I think the US has serious progress to make on safety | nets, but this type of statement doesn't really help move | the discussion forwards_ | | This type of statement is nothing new. The abolitionist | and former slave Frederick Douglass had this to say on | the subject[1]: | | > _[E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery | of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its | effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of | wages must go down with the other_ | | According to Wikipedia[1]: | | > _Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as | arising from the unequal bargaining power between the | ownership /capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer | class within a compulsory monetary market: "No more | crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern | laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes | orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. | It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the | laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the | shopkeeper"_ | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery#History | [deleted] | grumblenum wrote: | A Malthusian crisis has been "imminent" since the 19th | century. I think that you should try writing down what | facts you think support the a priori assumption that our | sinful ways are leading us to a future, sudden disaster. I | don't think you will find much evidence that isn't | traceable to popular opinion. Sorry, fam, it's just | Puritanism for the modern age. | Fricken wrote: | Some guy in the 19th century made a bad prediction and | that's your rationale for dismissing climate change? | goodpoint wrote: | Are you saying that climate change, ocean depletion, soil | depletion, desertification, plastic pollution and food | shortage are not real? | chrisco255 wrote: | We don't have a food shortage. Crop yields and | agricultural productivity are at all time human | civilizational highs. | agumonkey wrote: | This is a fragile argument. Systems can often be at peak | before crashing. | chrisco255 wrote: | It's a factual argument. Our civilization has been | peaking in agricultural productivity decade after decade | for 200 years. Your hypothetical argument is not | statistically likely. Sure, on a long enough time frame | some natural disaster will occur that causes a crisis, | but the fundamental mechanics of photosynthesis and ag | science aren't going anywhere. | meiraleal wrote: | The population growth trend proves OP point. | toiletfuneral wrote: | I think the comparison of carbon footprints between the | average westerner and the global south seems to indicate | these issues aren't about the raw number of people and | absolutely to do with lifestyle. | i_d_rather_read wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism has been | widely criticized for its incorrect predictions and ties | into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism and | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics | agumonkey wrote: | When I say fair I mean 'accepted' by people, they know | people are selling them stuff, probably useless, but they | still choose to go and buy some. It's fair to most people's | brain inner workings IMO. | | Also I had various western countries in mind in my comment, | including those where healthcare is paid for, it doesn't | change the overall lifestyle that much (high rent, long | hours, dumb jobs) | coldtea wrote: | > _Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the- | top?_ | | Doesn't matter. You don't need to give "directive-from-the-top" | is your interests as an industry with the interests of other | industries are more or less the same, and you can all push | individually in the same direction. | | > _A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess | capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, | whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll._ | | Some things yes. Most things, people find it pleasurable | because they are in a state where they take pleasure from | buying shit. | | In fact, they only find them pleasurable before they buy them, | afterwards there's a small rush for a few days, and they could | not care less for them again, they're back into the lookout for | buying the next "pleasurable" thing. | | This is not accidental, it's the result of many changes, | including what the post describes, but also a century of | efforts from advertising and industry leads which have been | well documented and with the overt intention of bringing up | consumption and reducing self-reliance. | jbcdhn wrote: | Citation needed for every claim in this post. | | > Most things, people find it pleasurable because they are in | a state where they take pleasure from buying shit. | | Counterpoint: my largest purchase ever was my house. I enjoy | owning it much more than I enjoyed buying it. | gentleman11 wrote: | There are job postings for mobile app/game developer positions | requiring x years of designing slot machine casino games as a | prerequisite. Calculated addiction and whale hunting is a major | part of the economy right now | captainmuon wrote: | Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think | there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the | ability to predict what will considered modern next year. | | The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce | at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce | everything and public opinion decides in the end what is | "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be in | demand. But by and large, fashion is not predicting what will | be cool, but specifing what will be produced. | | When they say "blue will be in fashion next year", then it | means you'll be able to buy a lot of blue clothes (and some | people will be able to deduce that you have not recently bought | clothes, which is a bonus to encourage more buying). | | I only realized this a I got older, when certain items were | missing in every shop, that were there the previous and | following years. Be it a certain cut of jeans or a certain | colored shirt. (And it's not just clothes, I noticed it in | interior design, PC cases, salad sauces, and just about any | product category.) | Animats wrote: | _When they say "blue will be in fashion next year"_ | | "They" being the Color Association of the United States.[1] | Which had a lot more clout when the US made its own textiles. | | They also used to manage the consumer electronics color | cycle, from grey to black to white to colors to putty and | back to grey again. | | [1] https://www.colorassociation.com/ | quesera wrote: | It's really not that simple. | | Fashion is an industry where hundreds of individual | designers, some with the backing of megacorps and some | without, try to meet popular interest (or to lead it), with | production times measured in weeks to months, and with | seasonal variation. | | There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for | drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and | then pull their customers by the nose ring into purchasing. | | (Yes, there is a media-favorite color survey that gets | printed every year, and there are some downstream effects of | that). | | The music industry works similarly. Bands toil for years (or | months), doing their thing, and A&R reps from major labels | try to predict what they can promote that will be popular | enough this year (based on the choices of other promoters in | the industry), or next year, to sell in the near term, and | yet differentiated enough to have lasting value. | | The snack food industry works similarly. | | The software industry works similarly. | | The political industry works similarly. | habeebtc wrote: | There was a great article years back, on oped by guitar | virtuoso Joe Satriani about the death of Shred music. | | In short: the way trends work is they get popular and then | all the people already doing that thing get popular too. | | There is during that time people who jump on the bandwagon. | Once the popularity dies off, lots of people keep doing | that thing, it just doesn't get the notoriety it did | before: it returns to its niche. | bulletsvshumans wrote: | > There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together | for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of | 2023 and then pull their customers by the nose ring into | purchasing. | | "Twice a year Pantone hosts, in a European capital, a | secret meeting of representatives from various nations' | color standards groups. After two days of presentations and | debate, they choose a color for the following year." | | "OVER 20 YEARS OF INFLUENCING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND | PURCHASING DECISIONS" | | https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-archive | quesera wrote: | Pantone was the reference intended by my parenthetical. | | There are some downstream effects, but they are | overwhelmingly not relevant to fashion design, no matter | what their marketing material claims. | hermannj314 wrote: | And, amazingly, in the year 2000, the color they chose | was cerulean blue. | quesera wrote: | That is exactly why I chose that example. It was the last | one I remembered. | | Pantone sells color chips. They are not designers, and | they do not make or sell fashion. | | The color of the year is just a marketing stunt which the | media laps up, but the fashion industry _completely | ignores_. | jl6 wrote: | Is the cerulean scene from The Devil Wears Prada based | somewhere in reality then? | awillen wrote: | Wow... this is maybe the best counterpoint I've ever seen | on HN. | chrisco255 wrote: | Did you buy anything this year in response to Pantone's | color of the year? | detaro wrote: | Not that I'm paying much attention to these things, but | I've not seen much to support that "ultimate grey" and | "Illuminating" yellow are the dominating colors this | year? (https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021) | monocasa wrote: | It takes a few cycles to hit if you're not on the | forefront of fashion. But perhaps you can see how the | colors from a few years back have come and gone even | among fashion 'normies'? | | https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-of-the-year/color- | of-... | | http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/macos- | cat... | naravara wrote: | I'd say this is a more nuanced and sophisticated | explanation of the same dynamic the person you're | responding to is getting at. Yes there is no "cabal" as in | a smoke-filled room where shadowy figures make the | decision. But, in practice, the net effect is that of a | large genetic algorithm settling on an approved trend that | it then uses its market power to push people towards. | | And, of course, the more the industry is consolidated the | more "directed" it will seem. | crazygringo wrote: | > _It 's not like they produce everything and public opinion | decides in the end what is "cool"._ | | To the contrary, public opinion _does_ decide. Brands are | trying to _guess_ what will sell and be in fashion, and | produce that. But they get it wrong _all the time_ , as sales | plummet for a particular season collection because consumers | don't like it but really like another designer who guessed | better. | | The fashion industry isn't monolithic. There isn't one person | deciding what gets produced. Ultimately it _is_ all consumer- | led as brands compete to try to produce what people will buy | -- and they know fashion-conscious people _don 't_ want to | buy what was for sale the previous year. But individual | brands get tastes wrong _all the time_ -- even well-known | brands have seasons where they just totally mess up. | ABCLAW wrote: | I've gone through probably 300 slide decks from various | industries that explicitly state that 'consumers in x | demographic sector will need to be re-educated about the | value of [something they didn't want]'. | | I've seen it in regards to premium breads, in-app | purchases, crude oil solvent levels, public infrastructure | features, clothing, etc. This isn't a new thing. Sometimes | you just spend money to fabricate culture when it isn't on | your side. | | >There isn't one person deciding what gets produced. | | Is this really an appropriate standard for examining | whether or not an organization can push culture rather than | merely adapt to it? | crazygringo wrote: | Well sure every company is _trying_ to convince customers | their thing is best. That 's just marketing. | | But different companies can be trying to convince things | that are totally opposed to each other too. It's still | not monolithic. (Regardless of whether it's "one person" | or not, it was just an illustration.) | | At the end of the day it's still customers buying what | they like from a range of companies that are all | competing with each other, some succeeding and some | failing. | ABCLAW wrote: | Not really. All companies that make bags may be pulling | consumers in different directions with respect to which | style of bags they should purchase, but all will pull in | the direction of "purchase bags". | | You can zoom out from bags to fashion, and the same idea | repeats itself. | | Consumer consumption itself is the unified cultural | zeitgeist. That's the issue - in some areas it'll spur | innovation, but in others it is an obviously wasteful use | of limited resources and time. | crazygringo wrote: | I think you're having a different conversation? | | I was arguing that fashion trends are ultimately driven | by consumers, not by companies (as GP was arguing). | Consumers _aren 't_ blindly buying whatever's for sale. | | Whether people are purchasing more than they need, or | whether that's wasteful, is a totally orthogonal | conversation. | | But pretty sure most women need bags. And a lot of guys | use backpacks too. They're not some artificial need | invented by companies. | whiddershins wrote: | Even an emergent intelligence is different from top down | dictate. | erwinh wrote: | Imo the real fashion trendsetters don't think about it in | terms of what might become trending to surf it like q wave | but are focussed on ideas&concepts which are relevant for | society in that year/age. | Bayart wrote: | >The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to | produce at least 6-12 months in advance. | | That's fast fashion. It's neither elegant not particularly | valued by people _who are into fashion_. | cehrlich wrote: | No, it's the companies who show at PFW and places like that | which need 6-12 months. Zara can do it in 14 days. | gmadsen wrote: | The isnt entirely true. clothing companies mimic what was on | the runway a season before and mass produce it for consumer | consumption | CPLX wrote: | This isn't an accurate take. | | Fashion trends are created in the same way art, architecture, | and music trends are. By people who are talented and come to | be influential. | | The fashion "industry" is the very last stop in the process. | The trends are determined by the "cool kids" for the most | part. | | If you don't have exposure to the communities that actually | drive trends it might feel the way you describe but if you | live in a place like New York or pay attention to certain | media the dynamic is obvious. If you're basing your read on | what you see in the local shop you're fully a year or more | behind the curve. | | Which is fine. You don't have to care about it at all really. | But the your description of the dynamic isn't correct. | flycaliguy wrote: | Yeah, it's a complex system like economics. It often has to | do with things like immigration and cultural fusion in | influential neighbourhoods. Musicians or break out visual | artists chasing an career and bringing their style to | London or NYC. | KozmoNau7 wrote: | There _are_ cool people with the seemingly uncanny ability to | predict fashion, but it 's a bit of a trick. They do | something that's different and can be monetized, and the | industry grabs on to that and tries to push it as The Next | Big Thing, through advertising, magazine contacts and social | media influencers. Meanwhile, the production lines are | running full-tilt so they can have the clothes in stores for | when the right level of desire/FOMO has been built up. | | At that point, the cutting edge fashionable people are | already on to the next thing, and the cycle continues. | | Since it's impossible for ordinary people without industry | contacts to be ahead of the curve, do you try to follow the | fashion trends, knowing that you'll always be at least a half | step behind? | | Or do you stick with tried and true stalwarts, such as slim- | to-regular cut dark denim jeans, Oxford shirts, sports | jackets and so on, never being super fashionable, but also | certainly not sartorially hopeless? | | Trends are almost always pushed or at least encouraged by | financial interests. | WalterBright wrote: | I've been wearing the exact same jeans cut for 30 years now. | When they get holes, I just push a button on Amazon for more. | My dress shirts are 20-30 years old. They're not out of | style. | | Of course, I've never been cool, so there's that. | throwawayboise wrote: | > My dress shirts are 20-30 years old. They're not out of | style. | | They are, you just don't care. Which is OK. | handrous wrote: | Eh, you can pick plain white or blue button-up shirts | with one of a few normal collar types and you won't be | trendy but you also won't be "out of style". There are | also some approaches to fashion the point of which is (at | least in part) that they change only very slowly ("prep", | for instance, which is practically defined by that | quality--certain very casual styles like country/cowboy | might also qualify, they have trends but you can | definitely avoid them and achieve a look that's as close | to timeless as it gets, on human-lifespan timescales). | | Suits are slowly evolving fewer buttons but you're | probably still OK with a 3-button in most contexts, and a | 2 or 3-roll-2 is probably future-safe for 15 years at | least. Suits may well be almost gone by the time they're | out of fashion, really, and will only remain in contexts | that don't really evolve (the 3-button is _firmly_ OK in | a legal, funeral, or wedding context, for instance, and | likely to remain so pretty much indefinitely, provided, | in the latter case, it 's not an _extremely_ formal | wedding and /or you're not in the wedding party itself) | WalterBright wrote: | You're right that I don't care, but if you saw a photo of | me in one you couldn't tell what decade it is from. | stjohnswarts wrote: | I'm kind of in the same boat. I never cared about fashion | much. It always seemed hollow and vapid to me. Even as a | kid/teen-ager/20s when it's supposed to matter the most. | deltron3030 wrote: | >The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to | produce at least 6-12 months in advance. | | It's more the mainstream you're referring to, late adopters | basically. of course they can produce in advance as the | styles are already validated on urban streets and within | subcultures who really set the trends. | | There are inventors, early adopters and late adopters, quite | similar to SaaS. | coldtea wrote: | That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, | teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" | through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a | juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then | a huge industry copying them at various levels and with | various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level | mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or | whatever. | | This results in a huge industry, selling junk people don't | need, which are enviromentally harmful, with the ludicrous | insistence that the clothes you bought last season are not | good anymore because "fashion". | deltron3030 wrote: | Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for | the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the | first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider | not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing | a certain way. | | It's valuable and sells because social ladders are | everywhere, we're all apes to a degree. It's not a | suprise that the epic centers are urban melting pots with | a higher population density and more "troubled people". | coldtea wrote: | > _Fashion is basically part of a real world interface | for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak | the first impression._ | | Yes. But it's a shallow real world interface, for shallow | groups and facile identities, mostly used to associate | with teenagers and juvenile group forming. | | I dont say it's not a thing, or don't have a use. I say | the use is bad. | TuringNYC wrote: | >> Fashion is basically part of a real world interface | for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak | the first impression. It's only junk for you as an | outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders | dressing a certain way. | | I've seen former peers and fellow students borrow and | become indebted to become part of the group this way. | Great if the subject can afford it, not so much if the | subject is now enslaved to debt or is misallocating | funds. Then, perhaps find more welcoming social groups? | savingsPossible wrote: | Maybe both? | | There are social ladders, and there are people using | social ladders to sell clothes they started working on | last year? | jjcxfjmb wrote: | I don't think you can make such a pretentious comment | about how juvenile it is to follow fashion without | posting a selfie of yourself in your fedora | sjg007 wrote: | Yes and no. People can pick out vintage and older stuff and | mix it up. | | Also you should look up Zara and fast fashion. | nitwit005 wrote: | > The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to | produce at least 6-12 months in advance. | | And they guess wrong all the time. If they could actually | control things, they wouldn't have so much unsold inventory. | | They're making predictions based on heuristics, not magically | controlling the masses. | Retric wrote: | There is surprisingly little unsold inventory, outlets are | selling cheaper versions of clothes not unsold inventory. | Of course not every design or brand succeeds, but the | industry as a whole is reasonably efficient. | blablabla123 wrote: | More subtly a smaller but far more interested proportion of | the population tries more experimental things and the big | shops just copy that. That's both cheaper for the buyer and | the producer. | | It's the same for tech, various gadgets or technologies that | are hyped right now have been gathering traction since years | but have been picked up by the big brands only very recently. | Best example is the trend of using non-x86 Computers, a few | desktop/laptop projects have been there including Chrome | books. Now Apple picked it up and it's a completely normal | thing to buy an ARM laptop. | | Looks kind of planned but it's not. It's just that some | things fall out of fashion for whatever reasons... | Rerarom wrote: | But who produces that experimental clothing in the first | place? | coldtea wrote: | > _Looks kind of planned but it 's not. It's just that some | things fall out of fashion for whatever reasons..._ | | "Not planned? Whatever reason?" There are huge billion | dollar campaigns for what things "are in fashion" this | season. For starters, the thousands of ads by fashion | brands with the same "current fashion" messaging. | | Without that, the majority of the population could not care | less what some "small proportion" of idiots consider | "experimental/cool/etc". Sub-culture fashion would stay | with the subculture (like most of it does, unless it's | picked up by the mass fashion industry and promoted to | hell). | | It's the endless branding, messaging, adverting, PR, | articles, etc, that get Joe/Jane Average buying into this | season's fasion. | chrisco255 wrote: | The people chasing "this season's fashion" are rather | niche. People care less and less about this stuff as they | get older. We also work in an industry where free | conference t-shirts and khaki shorts are perfectly | acceptable work attire. It's been over 100 years since | blue jeans were invented and they're still quite popular. | | And if some people get enjoyment out of trying out new | fashion styles, who am I to judge? No different than me | buying the latest video game or checking out the newest | programming language or listening to new releases of | music. | coldtea wrote: | > _The people chasing "this season's fashion" are rather | niche._ | | The people who consciously chace "this season's fashion" | are niche [1]. | | But even more so, people who are bombarded with messages | to buy new clothes, and that this style is now obsolete, | get this instead, are pretty much everybody though. | | [1] Though not that small of a niche: a big percentage of | women do it quite a lot (as evident by the success of | that side of the fashion industry and peripheral | industries like accessories, perfumes, cosmetics, and | such), and men have increasingly being doing it ever | since the 80s too, especially if we include things like | sneakers and so on). | | As someone wrote, it's not like 250 million Americans, | men and women, each individually by themselves, decided | bell-bottoms are a good idea some year in the 70s... | chrisco255 wrote: | You could say that of rock and roll too couldn't you? Or | disco? Or 80s rap? Or hipster coffee shops? Or Atari | video games? | | Like, of course we have waves and trends of various | things that take hold of popular imagination for some | time. Trends start as some niche then people see it | taking off and jump on the bandwagon. Sometimes it sweeps | the whole country or an entire culture. But it's fun and | people get enjoyment from it. And it gives us a common | cultural framework to relate to each other with even | across vast distances. | | Was there no trend you ever participated in that you look | back on today and smile about? | tonyedgecombe wrote: | Yes, it seems far more likely that it is emergent rather than | planned. | | That's not to say you shouldn't try and understand and | criticise it and opt out where necessary but there is no big | conspiracy going on. | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | You may be being unrealistic about the role of spontaneous | personal choice in this. | | To a surprising extent, people find things pleasurable because | they're told to find them pleasurable. | | No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to damage | their own health, but people do - because they're encouraged | to. | | People buy new phones because they're somehow "cool". No one is | really sure why, but it's something that happens. | | There used to be an element of spontaneous creativity in | trends. Traditionally industry noted the trends and sold them | back to customers. | | But it's easier and cheaper to skip the organic and spontaneous | part and sell trends top-down by linking them to perceptions of | social status. | | This is done by key players inside the relevant industries | instead of by a Politburo of fat elderly men. But it's still | heavily bureaucratic and centralised. Just in a cool way. | | It also creates economies of scale, which is both convenient | and useful. | CPLX wrote: | > No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to | damage their own health, but people do - because they're | encouraged to. | | This is a ridiculous take. You think indigenous communities | in pre-Colombian America were using tobacco because of media | influence? | | It's a pleasurable and highly addictive drug. | metabagel wrote: | The difference being that indigenous communities weren't | aware that they were inhaling a carcinogen. | mancerayder wrote: | > No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to | damage their own health, but people do - because they're | encouraged to. | | That's a bit naive. The carcinogenic leaves have mental | effects, a buzz, pleasurable even before and despite | addiction and carcinogenic qualities. | | New phones have new features, speed and sizes / resolution. | | None of these things are free of influence, peer pressure, | advertising, and 'needing to feel in' the group. Sure. But to | remove personal choice too strongly is a False way to look at | the world. But this - this, call it systemic, way to look at | the world - is popular and trending - ironically. | NotSammyHagar wrote: | Certainly advertising makes people want to start smoking or | maybe continue. But people smoke because it gives them a high | from the nicotine. Why do you think people were smoking in | 1700? Because the nicotine made them feel relaxed, good and | they became addicted. | nitwit005 wrote: | > No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to | damage their own health, but people do - because they're | encouraged to. | | Smoking dates back to tribal society thousands of years back. | People chose to do it without any corporate influence. | lwhi wrote: | > Purveyors of such pleasures have proved to be remarkably | adept at creating & providing these opportunities. | | It feels like this was also the central point the author was | making, although they made it more forcefully. | | .. these purveyors aren't necessarily 'providing these | opportunities'; they are actually the inventors of many of the | pleasures in the first instance. | | It's not a calculated directive from the top. It's a | crystallised consensus from those in a position of influence. | Incentive based capitalism, at it's worst (or best, depending | on your point of view). | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Debt is >60% of the economy, and it's price fixed. It's | interesting that people seem to think fixing the price of | bananas has more consequence than fixing the price of debt. | pharmakom wrote: | How is it price fixed? Interest rates go up and down, | different lenders offer different terms, etc. | slibhb wrote: | That quote is right out of Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional | Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man). | | Marcuse argues that we only think we're choosing to pursue | certain things (pop music, sex, cars, food, etc). Actually, | society has been transformed by certain parties to push these | "false desires" on us. | | I think there's something creepy about telling people their | desires are false. This is an example of what Isaiah Berlin | called the abuse of positive liberty: telling people what they | should rationally want, which amounts to a kind of paternalism. | | I suspect you're right, this stuff isn't top-down. To the | extent that taste-makers and corporate boards determine what we | want (which I suppose they partially do), they are | participating in the same economies as us and are acting for | the same reasons as we are. There's no domination going on here | as far as I can tell, though there are certainly undesirable | outcomes (from my perspective). | CyanBird wrote: | > I suspect you're right, this stuff isn't top-down. | | But it is, thats where Bernays enters on the picture with | Manufacture of Desire and Manufacture of Consent through | Propaganda and Mass Media imprints | | > "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the | organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important | element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this | unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible | government which is the true ruling power of our country. | ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, | our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. | This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic | society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must | cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a | smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our | daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, | in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are | dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who | understand the mental processes and social patterns of the | masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the | public mind." - Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927 | | > "No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice | of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and | lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the | people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders | in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the | manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited | prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas | supplied to them by the leaders." - Edward L. Bernays, | Propaganda 1927 | | > "Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man | to control his environment. Once he could read and write he | would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic | doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given | him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising | slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, | with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of | history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's | rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so | that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all | receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to | say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this | wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are | disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad | sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or | doctrine." - Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda 1927 | markus_zhang wrote: | It's just a planned economy not by government men but by mega | corporations. Then they put up some facade to pretend that you | have the freedom of choice. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | It's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather than | genes. Corporations are trying various things to | differentiate themselves and be profitable. The ones that | consumers like either due to real interest or due to | marketing keep getting made/refined, the rest die off. And | the process repeats from there. | ruined wrote: | That's the ideal conception of it, but practically, power | also plays a very large role. Firms don't get to "try | things" without lots of resources already, any novel | startups may simply be acquired and assimilated or even | shut down, large existing organizations are capable of | sustaining failures despite market conditions, extra-market | rules may be implemented by firms with political access, | and if enough of the supply enforces a choice, consumer | interest doesn't matter and may even adapt to what is | available. | postoak wrote: | I agree with you, but in evolution there are also power | differentials due to organism size/features or population | leading to some organisms/species having an advantage at | a certain point in time. I think this could be considered | analagous (not exact mapping) to corporation power at a | given time. | bordercases wrote: | These appeals to power are disconnected from the | selection pressure given in the original proposition | though, which was based solely on consumer choice, and | which would have been more relevant to the original idea | of lifestyles being designed vs spontaneous. | bordercases wrote: | Markets are distorted by subsidies, lobbying, credit lines | and old-boy networks to (a) remain solvent beyond their | actual consumer revenue, and (b) act on information or | distort the flow of information in a way that's independent | from consumer choice, and in fact frames consumer choices. | | Large corporations also act anti-competitively through | acquisitions without market development, which in the | evolutionary metaphor is like an invasive species | suffocating the diversity of ecosystem by digesting other | species only for what they need and excreting nothing | valuable back into the whole. | | So you're articulating an idealization that's only true in | free markets, and we are not, and almost never, in a free | market. | coldtea wrote: | > _It 's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather | than genes._ | | Only there's no evolution. It's just "buy this" and "now | buy that", because if you continued to buy the previous (or | a perennial) model, they'd be out of sales. That's not some | cultural evolution. | | Before 19th-20th century marketing and mass advertising | societies could do decades without changing fashions. | jhbadger wrote: | Maybe among peasants, but the upper classes were very | fashion conscious and things changed, maybe not quite as | rapidly as today, but still. For example, in America we | picture our founding fathers as wearing powdered wigs, as | that was the style around the time of the Revolution. But | that was a comparatively brief fad, and a decade later | had fallen out of fashion. | kktkti9 wrote: | Capital being money, the flow of which is managed by Fed policy | and laws. | | So, yeah, calculated from the top. Handed to those closest to | the tap. | | Look into our transfer payment system, our system of political | budgets, and apportionment. | | Before it gets to workers, how money is carved up is very much | monitored and managed. | | Just because one is ignorant of how the system functions does | not mean there is a free market. | mindslight wrote: | So disappointingly predictable that you're being downvoted. | It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his | salary depends upon his not understanding it, and all that. | | If interest rates were up at 8%, there would be a lot fewer | bets of the type of "litter the sidewalk with scooters and | hope some money falls into them". The entirety of | Surveillance Valley is basically a play to parlay | overabundant monetary capital of the present into | surveillance capital of the future. | | The "continual growth" mindset was only worthwhile when it | produced productive investment. The mass malinvestment we see | today indicates that it has gone way too far. If you care | about sustainability and global warming, you should be | concerned with monetary policy - it's the main lever | controlling the amount of production/consumption. | | Furthermore, higher interest rates would allow technological | deflation to actually occur, making it so the surpluses of | technology get widely distributed in the form of lower | prices. As it stands right now, the feedback cycle from the | mandate of "full employment" guarantees that everyone on | average will need to keep working the same amount, making | technological gains accrue centrally to where new money is | created. | kktkti9 wrote: | Pseudoscientific is the default state of the mind. | | Propaganda research became behavioral economics, | advertising, marketing, and various psychology programs, | but surely that's not been used socially to titillate | biology and insert desired talking points in that excited | state from childhood forward. | | It can't simply be we were easily mesmerized by what are | really banal statistics extrapolated from speculating on | the movement of political scrip in an era of imperialism | that's now faded. Humans have never succumb to nonsense | group think before! | | Believing one has transcended their biology is not limited | to kooks who think they can live on light alone. | kktkti9 wrote: | By "It can't simply be..." I mean economic theory as a | basis for accepted political norm. | | Which form of meta-analysis we use to normalize against | politically isn't up for debate in the market of free | ideas and information exchange. | Animats wrote: | Weak article. Mostly virtue signaling. | | Yes, your lifestyle was once "designed". That probably peaked in | the late 1950s. See "American Look". [1] That's the high point of | industrial design. Also the era of tailfins. That was when the US | first had far much manufacturing capacity than it really needed. | | As for fashion, go watch this clip from The Devil Wears Prada.[2] | | All this used to be coordinated from New York, when Madison | Avenue and the Manhattan garment district had real power. Now | it's much more random, with manufacturers struggling to keep up | with trends, rather than dictating them. | | [1] https://archive.org/details/american_look | | [2] https://youtu.be/KqaOY6al-ZQ | ImaCake wrote: | I think the article has worth if you are unfamiliar with these | ideas. You don't think to question your fasion until someone | exposes you to the right concepts. For someone who is | interested in anti-consumer mindfullness then this article is | probably really good. But if you are not that kind of person it | is indeed a weak article. | Sebb767 wrote: | > The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this | sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. | Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the | evenings and on weekends. | | I slightly disagree with this point. The 40 hour work week is a | rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot | longer with no or only one day of. The trend actually goes in the | direction of reducing it further (at least here in Germany), | where 35 or 32 hour weeks are getting more common (depending on | the job, of course). Plus, there are alternative models, such as | 4x 10h days + 3 days off. | | Sure, the current model serves corporations, but it is by no | means their invention. And while they are a big part of why it | still is so large, the reason is most likely that they need the | labor hours, not the specific consumption behavior. | slv77 wrote: | Longer work weeks we're mostly confined to Industrial Age city | populations that didn't have access to land to farm. Few | laborers working in early industrial mills was doing so because | it was easier then farming. | | Agfa, Foraging and hunter-gatherer populations, work about 20 | hours per week and transitioning to farming increased working | hours. | | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.h... | | !Kung spend 40 to 45 hours on food gathering and prep between | women and men. | | https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/... | namdnay wrote: | And hunter gatherers lived to what age, 40? | | And you're skipping a few thousands of years of civilization | between hunter gatherers and the industrial revolution. I can | guarantee a Roman or medieval farmer worked pretty much every | hour of sunlight | namarie wrote: | >I can guarantee a Roman or medieval farmer worked pretty | much every hour of sunlight | | The work was seasonal, though. They built up their reserves | for winter, when I imagine they didn't have to work nearly | as hard. | meiraleal wrote: | You can't guarantee that. If that was the case the | bourgeois revolution would have happened way before with | all the surplus someone working every hour of sunlight | would produce on a piece of land. | deepnotderp wrote: | > And hunter gatherers lived to what age, 40? | | Transitioning to farming is what dropped lifespans. | | https://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly- | as-... | namdnay wrote: | It says in your article that life expectancy at birth was | 25 years for hunter gatherers societies. Now that's in | great part due to infant mortality, but where does this | lower infant mortality come from? Advanced civilization | with doctors, medicines and machines that can keep | mothers and babies alive, | deepnotderp wrote: | Not really, it's due to healthier moms and sanitation, as | evidenced by socioeconomic disparities in infant | mortality and higher infant mortality in the U.S. | relative to other developed countries. | | The U.S. example in particular refutes your "overwork = | good" thesis | tome wrote: | "Hunter-gatherers do not experience short, nasty, and | brutish lives ... there appears to be a characteristic life | span for Homo sapiens, in that on average, human bodies | function well for about seven decades." | | https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978- | 3... | | Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science | heavyset_go wrote: | People worked fewer hours in preindustrial society[1], and | people had more time off, as well. | | [1] | http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... | z3ncyberpunk wrote: | Yes because of the rule of law, if corporations out of their | way we would be working 24/7 and disposed of and replaced when | we ultimately keel over. Nothing about corporations, their | corruption, or modern predatory capitalism is to be admired, so | please stop | tresil wrote: | Agreed. There's quite a bit of evidence that the 40hr work week | has a lot to do with our human tendency to compete. | | Here's a relevant 3min podcast on the topic (also transcribed). | | https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we... | noir_lord wrote: | > The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the | past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day | of. | | At a point in time, hours worked where often lower in pre- | industrial times. | | http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-01 23:01 UTC)