9 ms·

Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. (rental) houses are losing color because they have to design it in the least offensive way. Better be "ac

by BLanen 4y ago

Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. (rental) houses are losing color because they have to design it in the least offensive way. Better be "acceptable" for 1000 people than "beautiful" for 10. That mcDonalds is also a prime example. That building can be used for anything now. The old McDonald's building is specifically a McDonald's or some sort of "fun" eating establishment. If the McDonald's leaves the building, the "boring" one will be worth more/ can extract more rent.

Steltek 4y ago
Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. McD's has been chasing modern fashion and trying to distance themselves from your childhood's nascent obesity crisis, with salads on the menu and apple slices instead of fries in happy meals. Hence you get this "McCafe" look so they can camouflage themselves next to the Starbucks next door. That said, the article is good at highlighting a huge cultural trend. Resale value might be only partially a driver of it. A lot of my monochromatic purchases will never be resold to anyone.
- dmd 4y ago
  Salads are gone. https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfaits-and-salads-because-of-the-labor-shortage/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfai...
  - _abox 4y ago
    Here in Spain they've never gone. The breakfast menu has been cancelled here though since Corona and never returned :'( I miss my sausage and egg muffin.
    - rhino369 4y ago
      Gone entirely or just no longer served all day? In America, Covid killed the "all day breakfast," which is a shame. Sausage and egg muffin is better than all their lunch/dinner food.
      - grogenaut 4y ago
        We still have all day breakfast out in Seattle, just not the full menu. My go to is sausage patty, round egg, yellow cheese.
        _abox 4y ago
        Yum yeah... That's the one I miss! I always wondered how they get the eggs so round but one time I saw them make them.. They fry the egg on the burger plate but in a metal ring. Cool idea.
      - FractalParadigm 4y ago
        Meanwhile in Canada we got to keep all-day breakfast, but lost out on a handful of only-at-breakfast items. McGriddles were gone, but came back around January of this year. Breakfast McWraps were also taken away but haven't yet returned (far superior to Tim Horton's farmers wraps, IMO). Otherwise I don't think the lunch/dinner menu changed at all.
      - helloworld11 4y ago
        what the hell does COVID have to do with the all-day breakfast though? How does cancelling it in any way mean anything for COVID policies or spread?
        frosted-flakes 4y ago
        It doesn't. For a while the Mcds near me had a reduced menu, probably because they had less business and a reduced menu was easier to maintain. But it's back to normal now, including all-day breakfast (Canada).
      - GekkePrutser 4y ago
        Gone entirely. Here in Spain it was never served all day. Until 10:30 or so they served only the breakfast menu and after that only the regular one. So now it's the regular menu all day. Big mac for breakfast? Hmmm. No. In fact I've never seen all-day breakfast at any McDonald's in Europe and I've traveled a lot for work (so a lot of hit & run breakfasts at airports)
    - bbarn 4y ago
      Ah, that explains it. We went to Mallorca last year (from Iceland where I've lived for a few years after leaving the US) and I was SUPER excited about McD's breakfast, only to find they sold nothing but burgers :(
      - GekkePrutser 4y ago
        Yeah it's sad, I agree. Their breakfast is lovely, and it was one of the few places to get something like this, most places serve more Spanish style stuff like a sandwich with a potato omelet in between. In fact McDonald's even had their own version of this one too. But they also did the usual ones.
- bko 4y ago
  > Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit This is a commonly repeated trope that is just wrong. Corporations are very forward looking. Consider the price earnings ratio of the S&P500. It's been on a general upward trend since the 80s, only disrupted by recessions and stock market crashes [0]. That means stock holders are willing to invest more money for future earnings. Discount rates are also very low historically which means future earnings are discounted at a lower rate. Similarly the number of companies that earn no profit is very high: > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). [1] Private R&D spending is also on an upward trend since the 50s as a percentage of GDP, displacing much of federal spending in R&D. [2] Everywhere you look you'll see long term thinking is rewarded. The only place you hear complaints about "short term profit" is corporate managers that want cover for bad results. They can always say they're "investing for the future" and their investments will take a decade to pan out, but conveniently they won't be around by then. I doubt you can find any Excel valuation template that's used in business school that does not include resale value. You can bet the people in charge of purchasing McDonald's real estate look very closely at resale value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-earnings_ratio#/media/File:SP_500_Price_Earnings_Ratio_(CAPE).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-e... [1] https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ [2] https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-landscape-of-private-investment-in-science/ https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-lan...
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). Please stop posting this. It only makes Marx's falling rate of profit[1] look correct. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...
- cowpig 4y ago
  > Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. This kind of blanket statement is almost always wrong about anything in the messy real world. But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. [0] https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...
  - nickelcitymario 4y ago
    > But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. I don't think this contradicts the contention that McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking to be worried about resale value. Yes, they're a real estate company. But most of that real estate is never sold or rented to anyone other than McDonald's franchisees. I think they designed the stores this way because they believe -- and probably have troves of data to support them -- that this style of architecture is better for their restaurants too.
    - queuebert 4y ago
      Maybe just cheaper to build and only loses 5% of the brand recognition when the giant arches are still on a sign out front.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking It's not credible that a corporation that grows from one restaurant into world dominance is guilty of "short-term" thinking.
      - sophacles 4y ago
        It's equally un-credible to pretend the people who were making decisions 30 years ago are the same people making decisions today. Or to pretend that the type of thinking required to grow a restaurant into a juggernaut is the same type of thinking that maintains the juggernaut. Or that a corporation beholden to the desires of shareholders won't change behavior as the desires of those shareholders change.
- BLanen 4y ago
  You understand that the operators of the McDonald's don't own the building? The owners of the building have obvious incentives. It's not even a long-term vs short-term thing. The boring building increases your capitalization as a holding more, allowing you to financialize it more.
- aetherson 4y ago
  Happy meals have both fries and apple slices. Source: have children.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Red Delicious?
    - dathmar 4y ago
      I think they are Grannies. Taste pretty good. But there is an option for fries and apples or double fries. So pretty much it's almost always double fries.
      - swayvil 4y ago
        Good. My friend grew up with a hatred for apples because her school cafeteria served only Red Delicious. Best apple I ever had was a Pippin.
        fmajid 4y ago
        Could be worse, they could have been the cardboardy golden delicious.
- fezfight 4y ago
  Dont just open your argument with 'Nope'. It makes you sound like an ass. Like the people who start with 'sorry' and then go on to demonstrate that they're not in fact sorry. You could say, 'Ive always thought' or 'I have evidence that demonstrates that your point isn't totally correct' or something that respects the original poster a bit more than outward dismissal.
  - kidme5 4y ago
    It's also possible they're both correct.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    Nope is more attention-grabbing, the real question is whether it is better to optimize for civility or attention.
ghaff 4y ago
You see this with auto dealerships, etc. as well. There's a real tendency to stock the neutral white, silver, black, grey colors rather than brighter colors which I assume are more polarizing. If someone needs a car, stock cars that pretty much everyone will live with given the need, as opposed to cars that some may love but others wouldn't be caught dead in.
- bombcar 4y ago
  They'll stock the reds and yellows, but usually in the convertible, and the one parked out on the corner of the lot where it catches your eye. The vast majority of the vehicles are ordered in colors that will sell. Some auto companies assign vehicles to dealers, others let the dealer pick the options on the ones they're getting, and the dealers know what will sell (and upsell).
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Plus it's a huge computational problem, there's huge worth in having the car the customer wants configured just right for her, the day she walks into the dealership. It's an easier sell that much is true, but it's a better sell for her because she gets everything she wanted when she wanted it, which is worth more to her in money. End up splitting the difference. Otherwise it's like, order it (I think there's a paper options menu you tick boxes off of) and wait, wait two weeks, and maybe it won't even arrive in two weeks because of delays (more common now in the twenties) so it's a huge CPU-intensive task. Then also they rent a lot of GPUs to get real-time pixel-something...like rendering a car with all the options the tire-kicker wants so he can see the whole car when buying online. That's cool, that's tech, that's computationally difficult.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >wait two weeks You wish. The situation is slowly improving but I had to wait 6 weeks for a car earlier this summer that was "in transit" (which I guess was to say it existed in the manufacturer's database someplace). This wasn't even a build to order vehicle. I suspect that would have been months. I'm not sure where computational power enters into it. It's just that dealers want to mostly have cars on their lot which are acceptable to the greatest number of buyers who want/need a car right now which the model in hot pink isn't going to be for a lot of people.
bombcar 4y ago
Significant numbers of commercial buildings like that simply get razed to the ground when the tenant leaves. It's cheaper for the new tenant to build the building they want than adapt to the older one. Which is why you only find "reused iconic buildings" in parts of the city that are now more run-down.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > Which is why you only find "reused iconic buildings" in parts of the city that are now more run-down. This isn't true at all - city centres often have protection for their historic iconic buildings. In somewhere like central London the majority of buildings are reused iconic buildings. You'll find McDonalds locations in Georgian town-houses for example.
  - delecti 4y ago
    Isn't your example the opposite situation? You're talking about an active McDonalds in a non-McDonalds structure, you replied to a comment talking about a non-McDonalds in a visibly McDonalds structure. In your example, the McDonalds had to make do with the existing building which they aren't allowed to change. In the other example, non-McDonalds have to make do with an un-renovated McDonalds structure which they can't afford to change. You aren't providing a counter example, you're just talking about something different.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      I don’t think any purpose-built McDonalds could be described as ‘iconic’ architecture?
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Iconic as literally being an "icon" of the company - the same as the Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc "unique building silhouette". Things as documented by: https://twitter.com/utbaph?lang=en https://twitter.com/utbaph?lang=en A McDonalds that is built into Westminster Abbey may be part of an iconic building, but the McDonalds isn't Iconic (nor is the one on the Champs-Élysées).
drewcoo 4y ago
McDonalds is more of a real estate company these days, so that might actually be their plan. https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...
CTDOCodebases 4y ago
I agree with this. If a rental doesnt have white walls wood floors or dull tiles I wont rent it. White walls makes a place feel spacious and I want my white furniture to match.
drstewart 4y ago
>Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. I'd frame it alternatively: optimization incentivizes uniformity. Inefficiencies are ruthlessly filtered out of the system. A wacky color scheme reduces might reduce profits by x%, so all fast food restaurants will tend towards the same boxy boring structure. Another example of this for me is sports. Take baseball for example: in the past, you had so many different styles of players. Pitchers had unique and funky delivery types. It gave the game character. Now? If you're not optimizing your style of play to deliver the highest value according to the stats, you're costing yourself tens of millions of dollars. All the character of the game is slowly being wrung out. This pattern is obviously being played across every domain in every part of life. It's pretty sad but entirely rational from every individual actor's point of view. And furthermore, it seems like an issue that's impossible to fix in a world of infinite information.
- meowkit 4y ago
  Your framing is a piece of the general principle as far as I am aware. It's a multipolar trap that is hard to see because we're embedded in it, and in the short term a lot of actions appear rational, but have externalities that are only felt in the long term. SSC's Meditations on Moloch is one of the best (and longest) essays I've read on this maximization issue. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://www.worldanvil.com/w/parastellis/a/multipolar-trap-article https://www.worldanvil.com/w/parastellis/a/multipolar-trap-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
thatguy0900 4y ago
I don't know. Even things that won't be resold arnt colorful anymore. All the parks near me with children's playground equipment in Ohio, city/school all of them, are now a olive green, tan, and gray color scheme. The actual quality and variety of the installments are leaps and bounds ahead of what I had as a kid, but they look more like military obstacle course training than a place for preschoolers to run around in
swayvil 4y ago
Nothing says adequate dining like that big beige M.
frostirosti 4y ago
re: Housing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies) In San Francisco there's the tradition of painting your home as a "painted lady" which means you painted the home using 3 contrasting colors. Also there are some that have painted in this matte black painted as well which are definitely a striking appearance
pdpi 4y ago
> Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. Ironically, one of the places where you can reliably find colourful stuff is Ikea, which commoditised furniture and household items in general.

by BLanen 4y ago

Steltek 4y ago

Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. McD's has been chasing modern fashion and trying to distance themselves from your childhood's nascent obesity crisis, with salads on the menu and apple slices instead of fries in happy meals. Hence you get this "McCafe" look so they can camouflage themselves next to the Starbucks next door. That said, the article is good at highlighting a huge cultural trend. Resale value might be only partially a driver of it. A lot of my monochromatic purchases will never be resold to anyone.

dmd 4y ago
Salads are gone. https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfaits-and-salads-because-of-the-labor-shortage/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/09/mcdonalds-is-scrapping-parfai...
- _abox 4y ago
  Here in Spain they've never gone. The breakfast menu has been cancelled here though since Corona and never returned :'( I miss my sausage and egg muffin.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    Gone entirely or just no longer served all day? In America, Covid killed the "all day breakfast," which is a shame. Sausage and egg muffin is better than all their lunch/dinner food.
    - grogenaut 4y ago
      We still have all day breakfast out in Seattle, just not the full menu. My go to is sausage patty, round egg, yellow cheese.
      - _abox 4y ago
        Yum yeah... That's the one I miss! I always wondered how they get the eggs so round but one time I saw them make them.. They fry the egg on the burger plate but in a metal ring. Cool idea.
    - FractalParadigm 4y ago
      Meanwhile in Canada we got to keep all-day breakfast, but lost out on a handful of only-at-breakfast items. McGriddles were gone, but came back around January of this year. Breakfast McWraps were also taken away but haven't yet returned (far superior to Tim Horton's farmers wraps, IMO). Otherwise I don't think the lunch/dinner menu changed at all.
    - helloworld11 4y ago
      what the hell does COVID have to do with the all-day breakfast though? How does cancelling it in any way mean anything for COVID policies or spread?
      - frosted-flakes 4y ago
        It doesn't. For a while the Mcds near me had a reduced menu, probably because they had less business and a reduced menu was easier to maintain. But it's back to normal now, including all-day breakfast (Canada).
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Gone entirely. Here in Spain it was never served all day. Until 10:30 or so they served only the breakfast menu and after that only the regular one. So now it's the regular menu all day. Big mac for breakfast? Hmmm. No. In fact I've never seen all-day breakfast at any McDonald's in Europe and I've traveled a lot for work (so a lot of hit & run breakfasts at airports)
  - bbarn 4y ago
    Ah, that explains it. We went to Mallorca last year (from Iceland where I've lived for a few years after leaving the US) and I was SUPER excited about McD's breakfast, only to find they sold nothing but burgers :(
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Yeah it's sad, I agree. Their breakfast is lovely, and it was one of the few places to get something like this, most places serve more Spanish style stuff like a sandwich with a potato omelet in between. In fact McDonald's even had their own version of this one too. But they also did the usual ones.
bko 4y ago
> Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit This is a commonly repeated trope that is just wrong. Corporations are very forward looking. Consider the price earnings ratio of the S&P500. It's been on a general upward trend since the 80s, only disrupted by recessions and stock market crashes [0]. That means stock holders are willing to invest more money for future earnings. Discount rates are also very low historically which means future earnings are discounted at a lower rate. Similarly the number of companies that earn no profit is very high: > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). [1] Private R&D spending is also on an upward trend since the 50s as a percentage of GDP, displacing much of federal spending in R&D. [2] Everywhere you look you'll see long term thinking is rewarded. The only place you hear complaints about "short term profit" is corporate managers that want cover for bad results. They can always say they're "investing for the future" and their investments will take a decade to pan out, but conveniently they won't be around by then. I doubt you can find any Excel valuation template that's used in business school that does not include resale value. You can bet the people in charge of purchasing McDonald's real estate look very closely at resale value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-earnings_ratio#/media/File:SP_500_Price_Earnings_Ratio_(CAPE).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to-e... [1] https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ https://money.com/stock-market-companies-no-profits/ [2] https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-landscape-of-private-investment-in-science/ https://cglife.com/blog/recent-trends-in-rd-spending-the-lan...
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  > Of the largest 1,500 companies by market capitalization today, around 200 weren’t profitable during any of the last three years. But instead of punishing them, investors have rewarded them with a total market value of more than $2.3 trillion. Wall Street hasn’t been willing to attach such high market values to unprofitable companies since the late 1990s (and even then, the total market valuation of the unprofitable companies wasn’t even half of what it is now). Please stop posting this. It only makes Marx's falling rate of profit[1] look correct. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...
cowpig 4y ago
> Nope. Resale value is way too forward thinking for a corporation these days, it's all about short term profit. This kind of blanket statement is almost always wrong about anything in the messy real world. But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. [0] https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...
- nickelcitymario 4y ago
  > But it's especially wrong in this case. McDonald's is effectively a real estate company[0] that has been growing over ~80 years. I don't think this contradicts the contention that McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking to be worried about resale value. Yes, they're a real estate company. But most of that real estate is never sold or rented to anyone other than McDonald's franchisees. I think they designed the stores this way because they believe -- and probably have troves of data to support them -- that this style of architecture is better for their restaurants too.
  - queuebert 4y ago
    Maybe just cheaper to build and only loses 5% of the brand recognition when the giant arches are still on a sign out front.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > McDonald's is too short-term in its thinking It's not credible that a corporation that grows from one restaurant into world dominance is guilty of "short-term" thinking.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      It's equally un-credible to pretend the people who were making decisions 30 years ago are the same people making decisions today. Or to pretend that the type of thinking required to grow a restaurant into a juggernaut is the same type of thinking that maintains the juggernaut. Or that a corporation beholden to the desires of shareholders won't change behavior as the desires of those shareholders change.
BLanen 4y ago
You understand that the operators of the McDonald's don't own the building? The owners of the building have obvious incentives. It's not even a long-term vs short-term thing. The boring building increases your capitalization as a holding more, allowing you to financialize it more.
aetherson 4y ago
Happy meals have both fries and apple slices. Source: have children.
- swayvil 4y ago
  Red Delicious?
  - dathmar 4y ago
    I think they are Grannies. Taste pretty good. But there is an option for fries and apples or double fries. So pretty much it's almost always double fries.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      Good. My friend grew up with a hatred for apples because her school cafeteria served only Red Delicious. Best apple I ever had was a Pippin.
      - fmajid 4y ago
        Could be worse, they could have been the cardboardy golden delicious.
fezfight 4y ago
Dont just open your argument with 'Nope'. It makes you sound like an ass. Like the people who start with 'sorry' and then go on to demonstrate that they're not in fact sorry. You could say, 'Ive always thought' or 'I have evidence that demonstrates that your point isn't totally correct' or something that respects the original poster a bit more than outward dismissal.
- kidme5 4y ago
  It's also possible they're both correct.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Nope is more attention-grabbing, the real question is whether it is better to optimize for civility or attention.

ghaff 4y ago

You see this with auto dealerships, etc. as well. There's a real tendency to stock the neutral white, silver, black, grey colors rather than brighter colors which I assume are more polarizing. If someone needs a car, stock cars that pretty much everyone will live with given the need, as opposed to cars that some may love but others wouldn't be caught dead in.

bombcar 4y ago
They'll stock the reds and yellows, but usually in the convertible, and the one parked out on the corner of the lot where it catches your eye. The vast majority of the vehicles are ordered in colors that will sell. Some auto companies assign vehicles to dealers, others let the dealer pick the options on the ones they're getting, and the dealers know what will sell (and upsell).
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Plus it's a huge computational problem, there's huge worth in having the car the customer wants configured just right for her, the day she walks into the dealership. It's an easier sell that much is true, but it's a better sell for her because she gets everything she wanted when she wanted it, which is worth more to her in money. End up splitting the difference. Otherwise it's like, order it (I think there's a paper options menu you tick boxes off of) and wait, wait two weeks, and maybe it won't even arrive in two weeks because of delays (more common now in the twenties) so it's a huge CPU-intensive task. Then also they rent a lot of GPUs to get real-time pixel-something...like rendering a car with all the options the tire-kicker wants so he can see the whole car when buying online. That's cool, that's tech, that's computationally difficult.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >wait two weeks You wish. The situation is slowly improving but I had to wait 6 weeks for a car earlier this summer that was "in transit" (which I guess was to say it existed in the manufacturer's database someplace). This wasn't even a build to order vehicle. I suspect that would have been months. I'm not sure where computational power enters into it. It's just that dealers want to mostly have cars on their lot which are acceptable to the greatest number of buyers who want/need a car right now which the model in hot pink isn't going to be for a lot of people.

bombcar 4y ago

Significant numbers of commercial buildings like that simply get razed to the ground when the tenant leaves. It's cheaper for the new tenant to build the building they want than adapt to the older one. Which is why you only find "reused iconic buildings" in parts of the city that are now more run-down.

chrisseaton 4y ago
> Which is why you only find "reused iconic buildings" in parts of the city that are now more run-down. This isn't true at all - city centres often have protection for their historic iconic buildings. In somewhere like central London the majority of buildings are reused iconic buildings. You'll find McDonalds locations in Georgian town-houses for example.
- delecti 4y ago
  Isn't your example the opposite situation? You're talking about an active McDonalds in a non-McDonalds structure, you replied to a comment talking about a non-McDonalds in a visibly McDonalds structure. In your example, the McDonalds had to make do with the existing building which they aren't allowed to change. In the other example, non-McDonalds have to make do with an un-renovated McDonalds structure which they can't afford to change. You aren't providing a counter example, you're just talking about something different.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    I don’t think any purpose-built McDonalds could be described as ‘iconic’ architecture?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Iconic as literally being an "icon" of the company - the same as the Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc "unique building silhouette". Things as documented by: https://twitter.com/utbaph?lang=en https://twitter.com/utbaph?lang=en A McDonalds that is built into Westminster Abbey may be part of an iconic building, but the McDonalds isn't Iconic (nor is the one on the Champs-Élysées).

drewcoo 4y ago

McDonalds is more of a real estate company these days, so that might actually be their plan. https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...

CTDOCodebases 4y ago

I agree with this. If a rental doesnt have white walls wood floors or dull tiles I wont rent it. White walls makes a place feel spacious and I want my white furniture to match.

drstewart 4y ago

>Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. I'd frame it alternatively: optimization incentivizes uniformity. Inefficiencies are ruthlessly filtered out of the system. A wacky color scheme reduces might reduce profits by x%, so all fast food restaurants will tend towards the same boxy boring structure. Another example of this for me is sports. Take baseball for example: in the past, you had so many different styles of players. Pitchers had unique and funky delivery types. It gave the game character. Now? If you're not optimizing your style of play to deliver the highest value according to the stats, you're costing yourself tens of millions of dollars. All the character of the game is slowly being wrung out. This pattern is obviously being played across every domain in every part of life. It's pretty sad but entirely rational from every individual actor's point of view. And furthermore, it seems like an issue that's impossible to fix in a world of infinite information.

meowkit 4y ago
Your framing is a piece of the general principle as far as I am aware. It's a multipolar trap that is hard to see because we're embedded in it, and in the short term a lot of actions appear rational, but have externalities that are only felt in the long term. SSC's Meditations on Moloch is one of the best (and longest) essays I've read on this maximization issue. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://www.worldanvil.com/w/parastellis/a/multipolar-trap-article https://www.worldanvil.com/w/parastellis/a/multipolar-trap-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

thatguy0900 4y ago

I don't know. Even things that won't be resold arnt colorful anymore. All the parks near me with children's playground equipment in Ohio, city/school all of them, are now a olive green, tan, and gray color scheme. The actual quality and variety of the installments are leaps and bounds ahead of what I had as a kid, but they look more like military obstacle course training than a place for preschoolers to run around in

swayvil 4y ago

Nothing says adequate dining like that big beige M.

frostirosti 4y ago

re: Housing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies) In San Francisco there's the tradition of painting your home as a "painted lady" which means you painted the home using 3 contrasting colors. Also there are some that have painted in this matte black painted as well which are definitely a striking appearance

pdpi 4y ago

> Commodification incentivizes regression to some mean. Ironically, one of the places where you can reliably find colourful stuff is Ikea, which commoditised furniture and household items in general.