[HN Gopher] Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
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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...
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