[Petro]

At 11:30 PM -0700 7/22/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:

>>I'm not sure what you are talking about.  What are the "forces of
>>capitalism" to which you refer?  Personally, I try to avoid the word
>>"capitalism" at all.  First, it's a pejorative Marxist term.  Second,
>>everybody seems to have a different definition.

>Hmm.  What I was referring to is the science of marketing, and 
>the fact that the data available to do it is ever more precise 
>and personal.  When marketing and advertisement get sufficiently 
>sophisticated, the "average" person feels more pressure to buy 
>stuff.  In the aggregate, we see a lower savings rate, but on 
>the personal level, I think it's a source of stress -- a feeling 
>of being on a treadmill.  This is one of the main reasons I no 
>longer indulge in advertising-supported media myself; I wasn't 
>able to handle it and keep my tendency toward depression in check. 

	I recently got into an argument with an (apparently) elderly lady on a Firearms rights mailing list who was incredibly annoyed that because of her arthritis she was going to have to "live with the pain" the rest of her life. 

	She somehow thought that this was a new and unique thing. 

	The only thing new about it was that *she didn't expect it*.

	My father grew up during the depression, he lived in what today would be called a ghetto, except most of the people there weren't black. He often went barefoot in the summer so that they wouldn't spend money on Shoes. His father died when he was 14, and his older brother supported him and their mother until my father dropped out of school (at 16) to work. 

	There was a *lot* that the non-specialized, non-personalized media pushed in those days that many people couldn't afford, that they saw in the newspapers or heard about on the radio, or saw in the stores that they couldn't afford, and for the most part their parents *told them so*. They learned, as my parents taught me, that you can't always have what you want.  

	The pressures of commercial advertising--in the sense of mass media--have been with us for as long as there has been mass media. 

	You either deal with it as an adult, or you deal with it as a child. To complain that people are making you want something and they should stop is definitely in the realm of the latter. 

	I say this as someone who has a bit more credit card debt than he really should, so I understand the consumeristic drive, but it's really all about self-disipline, now isn't it? 

	Which is one of the things people who rail against capitalism are really complaining about. 
	
>>If you mean "free market economics" I totally disagree with you.  If you
>>mean government welfare for favored businesses, well, we might have some
>>common ground there.  Clear definitions make all the difference in the
>>world.
>
>Nah.  Free market economics is fine, and necessary, the way water 
>is fine and necessary.  But lately it's seemed a lot like the water 
>is boiling hot and under about ten atmospheres of pressure.  It 
>gets a little stifling when people can't or don't control how much 
>pressure (as advertising etc) they are exposed to.

	You left out one word in there. 

	Won't. 

>>I'm sorry, the Furby definition of capitalism isn't very cogent or helpful.
>
>Let's put it this way; why would a rational person or even a sane 
>person purchase a furby?  It is useless; it is annoying; its expected 

	Mostly to stop their children from wailing about wanting one. 

	Children are, almost by definition, not sane people. 

>lifespan is under five weeks; your kids will be unhappy when (not if) 
>it breaks; and its price exceeds that of two good meals at a nice 
>restaurant.  I maintain that people buy furbys (and most other "fad" 
>items) because of pressure and false expectations raised by carefully-
>designed advertising, and then fall into inevitable disappointment 
>with the real item.  In short, they are acting irrationally, and 
>have given people a vested interest in maintaining their lack of 
>mental health.

	As someone who has 12 computers laying around his "office" along with innumerable parts, piles of half-read books, 2 motorcycles, 3 bicycles etc.

	I couldn't agree with you more. 

>I believe in capitalism where it meets real needs; where rational 
>buyers meet rational sellers, where the customers know what they're 
>buying and will in fact be well-served by it, I am delighted to be 
>part of the transaction.  
>
>But the science of marketing is increasingly about arresting the 
>processes of rational thought, and even the processes of mental 
>health, in order to induce people to buy crap which they don't 
>need, won't or can't use, or can't get any real satisfaction from.  

	Nonsense. 

	Advertising only works on adults (or rather rational people) when it shows them something they already want. 

>Sometimes I wish I could grab people and shake them and yell, "no, 
>the car will not come equipped with a bikini model.  Make your 
>decision about the car, not about the woman..."  It's not *explicit* 
>deception.  But I believe that the marketer today, and particularly 
>the marketer in posession of personal information, unfairly distorts 
>people's perceptions to a point where the average consumer is no 
>longer an equal rational agent in financial transactions.  People 
>are buying things that they later regret buying.

	Marketing has not gotten anywhere near that personal. 

	I don't receive car commercials with a picture of a buxom oriental woman wearing red PVC undergarments, while my neighbor get his with a picture of one of maplethorpe's models. Now, granted part of this is because it's not commercial feasible, and I doubt it ever will be. 

	No, the most that "modern advertising science" has been able to do is to direct clients NOT to advertise in places where they won't get a ROI, in favor of places that WILL. 

	That, and these days you rarely get mail addressed to "Dear Customer" as laser printers can now make that "Dear Mr. CypherPunk". 

	If you can't see through something like that, you *deserve* to be deep in debt. 

>On the one hand, you can call it "survival pressure" and hope that 
>the next generation will be smarter.  On the other hand, it's 

	It's not a question of being "smarter", it's a question of self disipline. My generation (well, most of them) didn't need it, so we never learned it (like I said, most of them). From what I've seen, the generation following us doesn't have it either. 

>just one more example of the kind of things that make life suck 
>if you're on the recieving end.  And on the gripping hand, it's 
>why some of us are concerned about the use of private information 
>by marketers.  This is why people feel exploited by "capitalism", 
>giving rise to some of the "anti-capitalist" rhetoric that's come 
>out of the protests.  

	Funny thing, one of the guys I work with, a reasonably competent Systems Administrator (meaning that he has the ability to think logically when pressed) rants about corporate greed and all that, but he's working at (at least) his second start-up, stock options and all.