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Sprawl is caused by zoning in a way, but the cause is the overly restrictive zoning in central cities that makes sprawl development cheaper by comparison. Why bother with three years of permitting when you can put down a new subdivision on greenfield in less time for similar profit?
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Jun 21, 2017 19:10
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Last night while driving I caught the last five minutes of On Point where they were talking about the future of retail, I think. On Point is uniquely frustrating for me so I dare not listen to the whole thing, but there might be some interesting stuff here. That should work, but I'm on mobile so I can't test audio.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:12
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By the way if we look at the actual worst sprawl? It's all stuff laid out in places like unincorporated county land, which maintain the same low property tax rates as rural land in general does, and in exchange get barely any services. They also get barely any infrastructure, paid for by local government or anything else. Nobody's really subsidizing anything for them, besides whatever previously existing road between real places the development empties out onto, and which is unlikely to ever get upgraded.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:14
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fishmech posted:Yes they would. They'd simply be a little less appealing. Right.. that's the entire subsidy I'm talking about. The government pays, directly or indirectly, to make those far flung suburban houses more attractive, and thus more of them get built. This is not at all a controversial claim to anyone remotely connected to the fields of planning or econ policy. Big box retail is often subsidized in a similar way, at a net loss to the greater community. The city (or most likely local non-city authority) will pay to upgrade a road or sewer or something, or the developer will pony up the initial funds but then offload all future upkeep on the local authority. Meanwhile "pro business" tax policy will see the big box store paying extremely little in the way of taxes. In the short term the local officials pat them selves on the back for attracting development and getting funds to upgrade infrastructure, but in the long term are stuck with the costs and a huge development that's taxes don't end up covering the long-term costs, plus it's put a bunch of local businesses in the city-proper out of business, businesses that were in buildings that payed much higher property taxes and were a net profit for the city based on their related infrastructure costs. Both for housing and retail, sprawl is bad short term thinking that offloads the long term costs onto the region, which means the actually profitable areas (cities) end up footing the bill. Usually these unincorporated areas just end up not being able to pay for the upkeep, so they go begging cap in hand to the state or other authorities in the name of "economic growth" and "supporting rural development" and get money, but that is starting to tighten up in some areas. The screaming and gnashing of teeth when a local authority declares it needs to drastically reduce the miles of paved roads so rip up some suburbs road and puts in a dirt road. They'll even give these areas the option of incorporating or paying more taxes if they want things like paved roads or street lights and they'll vote no. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 19:14
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Badger of Basra posted:Sprawl is caused by zoning in a way, but the cause is the overly restrictive zoning in central cities that makes sprawl development cheaper by comparison. Why bother with three years of permitting when you can put down a new subdivision on greenfield in less time for similar profit? Texas.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:17
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Baronjutter posted:Right.. that's the entire subsidy I'm talking about. The government pays, directly or indirectly, to make those far flung suburban houses more attractive No, they don't. And they aren't in fact very attractive to most people. This is what you don't seem to get, the edge of sprawl is primarily populated by people who have no other choice, or have some sort of complex about being around other people that feel the need to flee. And then a slice of people who just want cheap land, and that land is cheap precisely because there's little infrastructure or services to make it worth more. By the time that edge becomes just another ring of suburbia, it's also densified and usually raised local taxes quite a bit. Property values and house costs also go up, because it's a place that's geninely nicer/more useful to be in at that point. The pattern exists pretty much all over the place. Your "subsidization" conspiracy does not make suburbs cheap, it makes suburbs cost more. Suburbs are really quite expensive to live in, to the people who live there directly, they just usually make enough to ignore how much all their gas and other stuff is actually costing them. Baronjutter posted:
Er no, they have no ability to do that. Because they aren't incorporated. They would need to incorporate or allow themselves to be annexed by a closer in town to be able to get that stuff. The unincorporated area also doesn't have any upkeep in the first place. That's kind of the point of being an unincorporated area, the minimal infrastructure is covered by the county and the county's minimal taxes. fishmech fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 19:19
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You are, like often, incorrect on just about anything related to urban planning or land use by cherry-picking examples and nit-picking the trees to miss the forest. Luckily you dont work in the planning/land use policy field thank god, so we can both leave these issues to people who actually study them for a living and all agree there's a huge number of policies from mortgage deductions, regulations, tax breaks, and direct and indirect subsidies that artificially make sprawl-based development much more financially attractive than it should be.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:27
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Why does the US have so insanely much retail space compared to other countries? Is it just more square footage (i.e. big box grocery stores where other places might have something more similar to a bodega) or is it number of storefronts too?
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Jun 21, 2017 19:30
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Baronjutter posted:You are, like often, incorrect on just about anything related to urban planning or land use by cherry-picking examples and nit-picking the trees to miss the forest. Luckily you dont work in the planning/land use policy field thank god, so we can both leave these issues to people who actually study them for a living and all agree there's a huge number of policies from mortgage deductions, regulations, tax breaks, and direct and indirect subsidies that artificially make sprawl-based development much more financially attractive than it should be. You have a dogmatic belief that suburbs have to be cheap, to explain why people live there. It simply isn't true but by god you keep bringing it up constantly. You also still haven't addressed how the "subsidizied infrastructure" you holler about largely doesn't exist in the worst sprawl locations, because their very purpose is to just build a subdivision in a middle of a field and leave the area as soon as all lots sell. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Why does the US have so insanely much retail space compared to other countries? The massive and pointless overexpansion in retail space in the 80s-2000s. Very little of it made sense to build, which is why so many chains who participated in it are going under now that they can no longer service the debt they incurred. US retail space per capita in like the 70s was a lot closer to other countries, though still a bit higher just because there was more and cheaper room available.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:35
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Why does the US have so insanely much retail space compared to other countries? Is it just more square footage (i.e. big box grocery stores where other places might have something more similar to a bodega) or is it number of storefronts too? It's a lot to do with what I mentioned above. Local policies give massive incentives for warehouse-sized stores and strip malls to be built right at the borders of cities. They get access to that city's customer base and infrastructure without paying any taxes towards them. Tons of cheap land and policies designed to encourage its development. It led to a tax/regulatory/zoning sort of race to the bottom as communities all competed to get these huge retail developments because if they didn't, the neighbouring area would and jobs jobs jobs. Geography of Nowhere is a really good and easy read that lays out why the american built form is the way it is and touches on the retail angle a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Nowhere Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 19:36
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fishmech posted:By the way if we look at the actual worst sprawl? It's all stuff laid out in places like unincorporated county land, which maintain the same low property tax rates as rural land in general does, and in exchange get barely any services. They also get barely any infrastructure, paid for by local government or anything else. Nobody's really subsidizing anything for them, besides whatever previously existing road between real places the development empties out onto, and which is unlikely to ever get upgraded. Part of my job involves going to food banks, and the ones in unincorporated county areas are by far the busiest. We're talking 250-300 clients vs like, 40 or 50.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:58
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Baronjutter posted:It's a lot to do with what I mentioned above. Local policies give massive incentives for warehouse-sized stores and strip malls to be built right at the borders of cities. They get access to that city's customer base and infrastructure without paying any taxes towards them. These days that sort of development, when it can still afford to exist and hasn't been priced out by the ongoing rising property value in inner ring suburbs, is primarily getting its customer base from suburban commuters. They'll be placed along major commuter routes, and get a ton of their business from people coming home from work and deciding to their errands then, rather than once they're closer to home. City customers are generally not going to bother to go out to the edge of the city to hit them up, there's plenty of big box stores and strip malls inside city limits after all. Edit: Honestly your whole perspective on suburbs relies way too much on how they were and were made in the 50s-70s. And has very little to do with the reality of 21st century suburbia and and cities. These days tons of suburban dwellers never even enter the city on regular basis, employment, services, education, career advancement - it'll all be done in old inner and even middle ring suburbs that have practically become new cities - the "edge city" phenomenon. The idea to continue to paint it as "robbing the city by not paying any taxes there" just doesn't hold up anymore. fishmech fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 20:04
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Before we go any further into this rural/suburban/urban discussion, would someone please define or point to a previously established definition of those terms specifically?
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Jun 21, 2017 20:41
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Why does the US have so insanely much retail space compared to other countries? Is it just more square footage (i.e. big box grocery stores where other places might have something more similar to a bodega) or is it number of storefronts too? Because were ten times the size of any other country? Der? The whole great things about suburbs and why people buy them is the value even if cheap. Mortgage tax benefits. You're never going to give that to renters. Property Value rise which increases the wealth of middle class families. These are good things. You try to argue they're not. Good luck trying to find a way to give property value wealth growth or rent tax benefits to people living in apartments in NYC.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:51
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Solkanar512 posted:Before we go any further into this rural/suburban/urban discussion, would someone please define or point to a previously established definition of those terms specifically? Urban means a dense walkable downtown-like place with wall-to-wall buildings, or it means any non-rural incorporated land, or some arbitrary density, or political border on a city map. Suburban means any residential area of mostly single family houses even if right next to downtown and serviced by great transit, or it means only far flung massive subdivisions of McMansions built on the cheap by greedy and racist developers. Rural means suburbs but on bigger lots with maybe the odd farm nearby, or it means only extremely remote areas not just at low densities but also also hours from the nearest proper city Select which ever definitions best work for the semantics of your argument, or make the other person's claims seem invalid. Hope that clears things up.
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Jun 21, 2017 21:06
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:Because were ten times the size of any other country? Der? Per capita, dumdum. Also, no we aren't.
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Jun 21, 2017 21:35
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:This thread keeps going on and on about how superior urban shopping and urban living is but completely ignores the fact of how expensive it is. Would it blow your mind to learn that suburbs were created and promoted to counter the political power of the urban working class and create the very situation you are lamenting? 
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Jun 21, 2017 21:44
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:Because were ten times the size of any other country? Der? I mean you could easily pass a law creating an exemption similar to the mortgage interest deduction that applies to rent. I think some states have that for their state income tax. We just don't because renters have no political power as a class. It's not like it's forbidden or not possible in an administrative sense. The rest of your post touches on the pernicious and destructive view of housing as investment, which is what causes so many of our problems today. Ideally people could come to see housing as another asset that depreciates rather than the only good on the planet that's destined to appreciate forever.
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Jun 21, 2017 21:47
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Per capita, dumdum. Also, no we aren't. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-24/u-s-stores-are-too-big-too-boring-and-too-expensive http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/02/america_has_too_many_stores.html These articles touch on the too-much-retail problem in more detail. Less what caused it, more what the fallout is going to be.
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Jun 21, 2017 21:48
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Jesus Horse posted:Would it blow your mind to learn that suburbs were created and promoted to counter the political power of the urban working class and create the very situation you are lamenting? What are you trying to say with this? Badger of Basra posted:I mean you could easily pass a law creating an exemption similar to the mortgage interest deduction that applies to rent. I think some states have that for their state income tax. We just don't because renters have no political power as a class. It's not like it's forbidden or not possible in an administrative sense. Except house ownership and land ownership functions like that in every country on earth and would work fine if americans keeped loving and producing children like the good lord intended them to do.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:01
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Jesus Horse posted:Would it blow your mind to learn that suburbs were created and promoted to counter the political power of the urban working class and create the very situation you are lamenting? Nah. They were primarily created because there was no longer anything to go back to in rural areas, after small family farms collapsed or had to be abandoned during the Great Depression and World War II particularly. With the old owners gone, the large farmers in the area usually took over all the small family farms. This largely crushed the tradition of the "farmer" being a progressive/socialist inclined demographics. That was the primary socialist aspect that got dismantled. Many of these temporary transplants of the depression/war era never wanted to stay in the cities long term, but were obliged to just to get by in the near economic collapse, and then had to report to war jobs largely in the same locations. The new suburbs after the war provided a more rural feel while still being accessible to the sorts of places had now been working for as much as 20 years. Eventually those jobs slowly drifted out to the suburbs too.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:12
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Baronjutter posted:https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-24/u-s-stores-are-too-big-too-boring-and-too-expensive Great reads, thank you! This part from the Bloomberg article is particularly interesting: quote:All of the retail construction reflected a very ’90s shopping perspective, one that’s considerably different today. It is more than just the rise of the internet: Sport shopping, retail therapy, and conspicuous consumption offer less prestige today than they once did. This aligns with my anecdotal experience, but I'm curious how widespread it is and what the causes are. I definitely feel when I walk into a mall, which is only once or twice a year now, that it's filled with stuff I couldn't imagine anyone buying, let alone me. There are things I want to buy, even frivolous things, but mall stores don't carry them and I'm not really sure why. Sell me a cork yoga brick, Macy's. You can charge me at least twenty bucks for it and it'll make me cooler than all the other girls. Completely pulled out of my rear end, but it kind of feels like the smart phone was the death knell for conspicuous consumption much the way the internet was for buying things in physical stores. Once you've got a smartphone, half the contents of Best Buy are immediately pointless and cumbersome. It kind of killed the "big ticket item" on most peoples' holiday wish lists - definitely no point in asking for a music player or a camera now, the use cases that necessitate owning a computer shrank (I have one and probably always will, but that's because I like to write long treatises like this on the internet. Normal people seem to mostly only use the internet for social media and shopping, where a phone is fine) - physical media's dead, TVs are just iterating now and you can get one as big as you would ever reasonably want for under a grand and use it for at least a decade. I'm leaving video game consoles out because that's not my scene, but it certainly seems like they aren't causing mass shopping hysteria like they did when I was a kid. I know shopping wasn't ever all about electronics, but for a good stretch there they functioned as Toys for Grownups and juiced the retail economy that way. What do people really dream about owning now, that they could see in a mall and pine after the display model? High-end kitchen appliances, maybe? But declining home ownership is hitting that sector hard. Handbags and women's shoes kind of worked for a while but that's cratering now. The good menswear that people camp out for isn't available in mall stores. Sporting equipment's so specific you're often better off buying it online, and people are trending away from gear-intensive sports like golf. I dunno, maybe I'm just old, but lately it feels like even if I had more money I wouldn't really buy more stuff, and I don't think I'm the only one. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 22:15
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:What are you trying to say with this? Urban living brings the inherent class conflict of capitalism into sharp relief, as you stated in your post. Suburbs, as planned for the new Lebensraum of the third reich and implemented in post war America were designed to blunt class consciousness and push the body politic further right. To this aim they have been immensely successful. http://ushistoryscene.com posted:Indeed, the very charters of Levittown and suburbs across America were closely intertwined with the preservation of the capitalist American way in the face of growing Soviet international influence. Though the government attempted to address the severe housing shortage by launching some public housing programs, those programs were viciously vilified by right-wing politicians as a form of socialism. Senator Joseph McCarthy himself called public housing projects “breeding ground[s] for communists.”
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Jun 21, 2017 22:32
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Jesus Horse posted:Urban living brings the inherent class conflict of capitalism into sharp relief, as you stated in your post. Suburbs, as planned for the new Lebensraum of the third reich and implemented in post war America were designed to blunt class consciousness and push the body politic further right. To this aim they have been immensely successful. The suburban office park is an example of this as well. I'll try to dig up a really good article I read about it a while back. Employers benefit from divorcing workers from any sense of belonging to a community. An office park puts an employee's life on rails - commute from home to work and exist in a bubble with no distractions, nowhere to go for lunch, no one to see but people in exactly the same circumstances as you.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:35
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Yeah that's my problem with 99% of retail, even if I had a lot of disposable income I don't want any of that poo poo, not even for free. It's store after store selling weird useless crap I don't want, no one I know wants, and although I logically understand other people are buying it, I can't understand why. The few things I do waste my money on all end up having to come from online shops because retail doesn't carry them.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:52
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah that's my problem with 99% of retail, even if I had a lot of disposable income I don't want any of that poo poo, not even for free. It's store after store selling weird useless crap I don't want, no one I know wants, and although I logically understand other people are buying it, I can't understand why. The few things I do waste my money on all end up having to come from online shops because retail doesn't carry them. Yeah, I'm certainly not immune to marketing or consumerism, but I think I'm pretty typical for my generation in wanting a small amount of expensive poo poo over a large amount of cheap poo poo. 20 years ago my bathroom cabinet might have been full of Bath & Bodyworks' whole range of cloyingly scented and luridly colored goops, but as a millennial I instead have about half a dozen grooming products, each exhaustively researched online. It's about having The Very Best thing, which might be a three-dollar tube of drugstore moisturizer or a forty-dollar hair styling cream from Sephora. It adds up to less spending, which is bad for retail, but more disastrously, my purchasing decisions were shaped by a complex tapestry of marketing, including word of mouth, consumer reviews, and wordy writeups in fashion media. It's a lot more complicated to get my money out of my wallet than it was when some colorful packaging and a coupon in the local paper could get the job done. I also shut out as much advertising from my life as I possibly can, which I think is also becoming more common. Aggressive adblock online, commercial-free streaming, and I even decant packaged goods into reusable containers just so I don't have breakfast cereal boxes shouting at me every time I open my kitchen cabinets. I can easily go days without thinking about wanting to buy something, and I don't think the American economy was set up for things to work that way.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:00
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Where'd you get your cereal decanter? I can only find plastic ones.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:03
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HEY NONG MAN posted:Where'd you get your cereal decanter? I can only find plastic ones. Mine are uh... mine are vintage glass apothecary jars I got from a boutique in Santa Monica because I'm BASIC, OKAY, ARE YOU HAPPY So yeah it's not at all that consumerism is gone, but upper-middle-class conspicuous consumption kind of interrupts the marketing treadmill because you're bragging more about your taste and the free time you can devote to finding The Very Best Thing, rather than having purchased the correct brand at the correct store.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:07
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Yeah, I'm certainly not immune to marketing or consumerism, but I think I'm pretty typical for my generation in wanting a small amount of expensive poo poo over a large amount of cheap poo poo. 20 years ago my bathroom cabinet might have been full of Bath & Bodyworks' whole range of cloyingly scented and luridly colored goops, but as a millennial I instead have about half a dozen grooming products, each exhaustively researched online. It's about having The Very Best thing, which might be a three-dollar tube of drugstore moisturizer or a forty-dollar hair styling cream from Sephora. There's a lot of poo poo coming together and that's part of it; advertising and marketing run on "you need more stuff. Always. No amount of stuff is ever enough" but now that people are seeing the problems that come with affluenza and stuffitis they're going "...but WHY?" With wages stagnating, credit being harder to get, and things like student debt or old boomer debt looming over everything people are getting more frugal. Somebody making $25,000 a year while paying of student debts has a real drat hard time engaging in conspicuous consumption. Even people that are making decent money aren't bothering with it. People are also jumping jobs and moving around the country far more. You generally can't just get the job, buy the house, and maybe move once more in your 40 year career then leave the house to your kids and retire. Now you'll probably change jobs at least twice a decade, especially if you're in tech. Loans are harder to get so fewer people are buying. More and more people also don't even want to get nailed down like that and having more stuff means moving more stuff. Advertising and marketing have also become absolutely loving obnoxious. The strategy of "make a garbage product -> wrap it up pretty -> aggressive marketing -> profit" doesn't work anymore thanks to the internet. American capitalism isn't sustainable and we're seeing it all fall apart right now. This idea of "higher prices, cheaper costs, more consumption, and bigger margins than last quarter, every quarter" absolutely can't last forever. Retail is seeing that; it turns out when you deliberately impoverish your employees and the people that make your stuff they can't go buy it and they're the ones you need to be buying. Americans are increasingly loving broke. Even people who normally would go out and buy 500 varieties of soap just plain can't afford it. Plus what you're saying there; people are wising up to the bullshit and you can find out if a product is garbage or not through your phone while you're standing in the store looking at it. Coupled with online shopping making it so you can safely order your soap at 2 a.m. in your underwear while so drunk you can't stand up retail stores are hosed. The whole system, top to bottom, is falling apart while the shareholders are asking the wrong questions.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:08
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Yeah a good example of that is with movies - first capitalism's usual bullshit turned opening weekend box office into the be-all-end-all of a movie's success, and then whoops, smartphones came out and people started posting reviews of lovely movies before they even left the theater, so you couldn't even guarantee a decent Friday night take for a bad film if it got a midnight Thursday release. Instead of learning the lesson "maybe we should stop making lovely movies," studios instead shifted to targeting consumers they think they can still fool, in the foreign markets. Coca Cola and fast food are doing the same thing, but they're only buying themselves time, and probably won't get to enjoy as long of a period of uncritical garbage consumption internationally as they did in the states, because it turns out foreigners aren't actually rubes, and a lot of them have access to the internet.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:17
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Mine are uh... Every time my old team started on Handbag chat I had to put on music to avoid having an aneurysm every time they described a purse as an "investment". ToxicSlurpee posted:There's a lot of poo poo coming together and that's part of it; advertising and marketing run on "you need more stuff. Always. No amount of stuff is ever enough" but now that people are seeing the problems that come with affluenza and stuffitis they're going "...but WHY?" With wages stagnating, credit being harder to get, and things like student debt or old boomer debt looming over everything people are getting more frugal. Somebody making $25,000 a year while paying of student debts has a real drat hard time engaging in conspicuous consumption. Even people that are making decent money aren't bothering with it. I'm really hesitant to blame everything on advertising because it just absolve the populace at large. There is plenty of failed products that had huge advertising behind them. And it isn't like ads are mind control. People still took time out of their busy lives to plop down their hard earned cash to buy something. They wanted it.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:23
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Isn't there also some indication that status dynamic behind consumption is changing now? I've been coming across articles about how people seem to be spending more on lifestyle and experiences as opposed to the kind of concrete stuff one used to use to show off wealth: https://qz.com/1000565/from-silver-spoons-to-fresh-vegetables-why-have-elites-signals-of-status-totally-shifted/ https://qz.com/999078/the-new-conspicuous-consumption-is-a-lacrosse-playing-child-and-an-npr-tote-bag/ http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170614-the-new-subtle-ways-the-rich-signal-their-wealth Maybe that's also affecting retailers too. You can't just buy a bunch of name brand clothes or electronics anymore and be better than other people, which maybe affects who is going shopping and how money's being spent.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:53
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Freakazoid_ posted:I can understand why a boomer would get hella upset, but they don't know about the current economy and a lot of people are forced into service jobs when they have no service skills or can't develop proper service skills, so lashing out at them doesn't help.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:56
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Yeah a good example of that is with movies - first capitalism's usual bullshit turned opening weekend box office into the be-all-end-all of a movie's success, and then whoops, smartphones came out and people started posting reviews of lovely movies before they even left the theater, so you couldn't even guarantee a decent Friday night take for a bad film if it got a midnight Thursday release. Instead of learning the lesson "maybe we should stop making lovely movies," studios instead shifted to targeting consumers they think they can still fool, in the foreign markets. What the entertainment industry has been doing is focusing on anything safe. They're avoiding making as much garbage but they're not taking the kinds of risks that need to be taken to make truly great things either. They have some formulas and are sticking to them; this is also why so many garbage nostalgia cash ins or comic book movies are coming out. An action movie with a whole lot of explosions and some favorite comic book characters getting in fights is basically guaranteed to make money so expect to see a thousand of them come out every year. It's fine that that gets made and a lot of people obviously like that but they're ignoring everybody that doesn't. They're wondering why another Citizen Kane hasn't happened when it's really their own damned fault. This is also a major component in why mainstream music is failing to evolve. Every decade up until the 90's had its defining genres. Now it's primarily stuff that all sounds about the same; simple, catchy, sugary pop music. Now, I'm not going to say that it's wrong to enjoy that; people can listen to what they want. The thing of it is that catchy, simple pop music isn't the only thing that exists but it's the safe thing so it gets the focus. Nobody is going to take a risk on a Pink Floyd, a Tool, or a Primus these days. Xae posted:I'm really hesitant to blame everything on advertising because it just absolve the populace at large. There is plenty of failed products that had huge advertising behind them. And it isn't like ads are mind control. People still took time out of their busy lives to plop down their hard earned cash to buy something. They wanted it. I'm not blaming advertising. Not by itself; it's just part of a whole. I'm not blaming any one, singular thing either. It's a great many things coming together. The whole system was just plain unsustainable. Now it's imploding. Meanwhile the shareholders are demanding value and putting enormous pressure on adverts and marketing to SELL SELL SELL!!!!! Millenials aren't buy figure out what they want! Find marketing that works on them! loving none of it does because millenials are broke. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 01:16
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:This thread keeps going on and on about how superior urban shopping and urban living is but completely ignores the fact of how expensive it is. Why would i want to raise a kid in this lovely doomed world? Why would i not blow my brains out if i had no choice but suburbs the rest of my life?
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Jun 22, 2017 01:21
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:smartphones came out and people started posting reviews of lovely movies before they even left the theater You're attributing too much to smartphones here. Roger Ebert used to exist with reviews of movies the morning they opened, because he saw it a couple days before you could. quote:Instead of learning the lesson "maybe we should stop making lovely movies," studios instead shifted to targeting consumers they think they can still fool, in the foreign markets. And the upshot for studios is, more people are actually paying to see these movies, because back in the "ten films every year" era the Chinese populace still knew every big name American film, they just paid a tiny fraction for a pirated copy. As far as Coca-Cola and fast food, those brands are already in some insular foreign cultures. Japan's KFCs are widely known for their ridiculous statues of Colonel Sanders. Foreigners probably don't consume as much as we do, but they aren't supremely more health-conscious than we are. Part of the reason we're so fat compared to people of many advanced cultures is that a lot of them are still smoking like it's the 80s. Over the past few generations many people in the US have quit, and as any woman who quit smoking can tell you it's difficult to do so in part because you're going to get fatter when you stop. A relative of mine basically thought the risk of lung cancer was worth keeping pounds off. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 01:21
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I'm not blaming advertising. Not by itself; it's just part of a whole. I'm not blaming any one, singular thing either. It's a great many things coming together. The whole system was just plain unsustainable. Now it's imploding. Meanwhile the shareholders are demanding value and putting enormous pressure on adverts and marketing to SELL SELL SELL!!!!! Millenials aren't buy figure out what they want! Find marketing that works on them! It's odd that the thing marketing people are having the hardest time accepting is that certain types of products have simply become uncool, which was inevitable and they should have known that since they had a hand in defining "cool" in the first place. Having a lot of packaged food in your house used to mean you're rich, now it means you're poor. Hitting up the mall for all your clothes used to mean you're trendy, now it means you're trashy. Sure there are justifications about sustainability, quality, virtue, but it's all just window dressing for the fact that rich people inevitably seek out luxuries that only they can obtain. Things are also streamlining in a way that was hard to predict, that the current marketing/retail apparatus isn't really geared to adapt to. This is a good example:  You used to be able to market a hundred different makes and models of car stereos based on how many buttons and blinky lights they had, but doesn't that just seem insane now? I want an aux jack so I can listen to Spotify, oh hey, my car comes with one preinstalled? Cool, stop talking to me. And another, admittedly small and fairly stupid, retail market sector vanishes. Like you could maybe hit my millennial quality-seeking button if you loaded me up on enough audiophile bullshit, but the other truth about my generation, that we are poor, is a built-in stopgap for that. I'll splurge on The Very Best Thing if it's under fifty bucks, but otherwise I'm content to live without. Like we yoots get tarred for buying frivolous luxuries, but what's a wood-grain-print stainless steel water bottle every couple of years compared to the bottle of soda 90s-era marketing expected me to buy multiple times a day for decades?
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Jun 22, 2017 01:28
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Craptacular! posted:You're attributing too much to smartphones here. Roger Ebert used to exist with reviews of movies the morning they opened, because he saw it a couple days before you could. I do this for work, there was a marked change in how word-of-mouth affected films pretty much the minute the iPhone came out. It's a known Thing.
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Jun 22, 2017 01:30
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's odd that the thing marketing people are having the hardest time accepting is that certain types of products have simply become uncool, which was inevitable and they should have known that since they had a hand in defining "cool" in the first place. Having a lot of packaged food in your house used to mean you're rich, now it means you're poor. Hitting up the mall for all your clothes used to mean you're trendy, now it means you're trashy. Sure there are justifications about sustainability, quality, virtue, but it's all just window dressing for the fact that rich people inevitably seek out luxuries that only they can obtain. More and more I'm convinced that for trend/fashion stuff people are stuck with whatever they liked in their late teens early twenties and never change.
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Jun 22, 2017 01:33
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Xae posted:People don't change. The people change. Really? I look back at those years and only cringe. I don't think I own a single stitch of clothing that's similar to what I wore in high school.
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Jun 22, 2017 01:36
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