6 ms·

Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. The very

by andrewvc 10mo ago

Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. The very wealthy did to varying extents. When we look at the past we always imagine ourselves to be the ones in Downton Abbey, but most people were lucky to inherit some furniture. I would argue that the reverence for real wood and craft you espoused (and I share) is in part possible due to living in a consumerist society. For what it’s worth it is still possible to buy those same quality goods today, and certainly at lower cost . However, I would balk at paying the historical fraction of my income (or multiple if we go back to the 1700s), for a new bed. In short cheap dishonest crap is what we ultimately want. It lets us focus our time and resources elsewhere

directevolve 10mo ago
A good depiction of the gritty realities and the meaning of material striving for the very poor in turn of the century farm life is the novel Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, an Icelandic nobel laureate.
- AlotOfReading 10mo ago
  Keep in mind that Halldor's book is depicting a situation fairly specific to Iceland: people recently freed from debt bondage, in a desperately poor and isolated area caught between much larger forces. It's not an attempt to accurately depict what it meant to be working poor for American laborers, like say grapes of wrath.
echelon 10mo ago
A lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes". The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced. There's a reason everything in America was super sized for so long. Things have averaged out a bit now, but if you look at the trendline, we're still doing remarkably well. The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.
- roenxi 10mo ago
  > The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild. Yes and no. It is very impressive what humans can do and the US is a remarkable country for managing to achieve what they have. On the other hand, if we're talking GDP it is basically just a trendline [0] of whether you let people better their own lives or not. The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administrator chooses to make people fail and the US does the best job of resisting that tendency. To me the mystery is less why the US succeeds but more why polities are so committed to failing. It isn't even like there is a political ideology that genuinely wants to make it hard to do business [1]. It mostly happens by accident, foolishness and ignorance. [0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation - see the figure, note the logarithmic axis [1] I suppose the environmentalists, maybe.
  - arjie 10mo ago
    I think you have one big piece of it: economic progress has a lot of search problems and it is impossible to master-plan it; consequently free intelligence beats centralized regulation. It's a bit out-dated now[0] but The Fifth Discipline distinguishes between 'detail complexity' (things that have a lot of bits you have to figure out) and 'dynamic complexity' (systems that have feedback loops and adaptive participants). It might simply be that handling systems with dynamic complexity is out of the reach of most humans. Economic regulation strikes me as something that can be particularly like a thing that modifies a dynamic system. In fact, creating good policy in a modern economy might be so dynamically complex that no mind alive today can simultaneously comprehend an adaptive solution and act in such a way as to bring it about. Perhaps, given this, we are simply spoiled by the effectiveness of certain economic actors (e.g. the Federal Reserve) in maintaining an monetary thermostat. Their success is not the norm so much as it is extraordinary. 0: which is humorous given this, because the Seinfeld Isn't Funny effect applies to things that become mainstream - insight and humor both disappear as the spark or joke become common knowledge
  - nerdponx 10mo ago
    > The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administrator chooses to make people fail and the US does the best job of resisting that tendency. Every component here is ill-defined and doubtful, especially the claim that lower regulation is the "main" reason.
ip26 10mo ago
My first exposure to this - tired of $40 particleboard bookshelves and tables, I went looking for solid wood furniture, reasoning it was fine to spend a little more for something that would last. I found it- and discovered humble, small tables were a months pay. I don't want cheap crap, but I suddenly appreciated why we've moved away from tables that can support a car.
- p1necone 10mo ago
  This is true of basically everything people complain about having gotten worse over time. Whiteware and kitchen appliances are the same - you can absolutely buy a fridge, or a stand mixer or whatever that will work well and last forever. It's just the value proposition compared to cheap crap that will still likely last for a few years but at a 1/5th of the price is not great unless you're going to use it really heavily.
  - gtowey 10mo ago
    Last time I had to buy a refrigerator it seemed like the choice was between one that cost around $1k and one that cost $10k. I really couldn't find a mid quality option. There wasn't a price point at around 2x the cheap ones for better quality. Those price points exist, it's just that they're usually the same cheap fridges crammed full of pointless features that actually make the whole thing less reliable because it's more stuff to break. What I wanted was a refrigerator with a reliable compressor. That's where it really seemed like the only options are cheap and astronomical.
    - M95D 10mo ago
      Compressor is replaceable. Also, how do you judge reliability of a compressor before buying it? Instead, try to find a refrigerator with access to the cooling pipes. Last fridge I threw away had a leak that couldn't be patched because the pipes were all embedded in the plastic walls of the fridge.
      - Qwertious 10mo ago
scott_w 10mo ago
> Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. This reminds me of being a kid excitedly repeating the trope I’d just learned: “Back in your day it was nice because you didn’t need to lock your doors!” To which she responded “Because none of us had anything worth stealing.”
- throaway123213 10mo ago
  Illuminating point but quite a lot of people live in 1st world countries where you still dont need to lock your door. Even in a major city.
  - scott_w 10mo ago
    It’s very time and place dependent. Burglaries are less common these days because the valuable stuff is iPhones now, rather than televisions.
watwut 10mo ago
> because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally Poor people always decorated and still do. There is basically no larger human culture where decorations dont take a place. The only ones I can think of are small religious orders that dont decorate to deprieve themselves. You go to any poor area and see dirt, mess, issues and people showing off decorations in their houses or on themselves.
- andrewvc 10mo ago
  You are misquoting me. I wrote: > to decorate intentionally in the way we do today Most people not so long ago did not have the luxury of saying “that shirt is so last last year” , or “that living room set is a relic of the 90s!”. Of course people always find ways to decorate and show off, but that’s different than what OP talked about WRT quality furniture. In the past that stuff was so expensive you bought it and lived with it, possibly across multiple generations. If the style changed you probably couldn’t afford to just swap it out.
  - 1718627440 10mo ago
    > luxury of saying “that shirt is so last last year” , or “that living room set is a relic of the 90s!”. I do not think that luxury is a good thing. We are able to afford it, by having wage slaves in other parts of the world. Also now these kinds of shirts have become of so low quality that you need to throw them away. It is simply an enormous waste of resources, mostly of human work and lifetime.
Aeolun 10mo ago
> However, I would balk at paying the historical fraction of my income (or multiple if we go back to the 1700s), for a new bed. It’s probably fine if you are going to use it for the rest of your life. Or you can pay just for the nails, and do the rest yourself.

directevolve 10mo ago

A good depiction of the gritty realities and the meaning of material striving for the very poor in turn of the century farm life is the novel Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, an Icelandic nobel laureate.

AlotOfReading 10mo ago
Keep in mind that Halldor's book is depicting a situation fairly specific to Iceland: people recently freed from debt bondage, in a desperately poor and isolated area caught between much larger forces. It's not an attempt to accurately depict what it meant to be working poor for American laborers, like say grapes of wrath.

echelon 10mo ago

A lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes". The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced. There's a reason everything in America was super sized for so long. Things have averaged out a bit now, but if you look at the trendline, we're still doing remarkably well. The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.

roenxi 10mo ago
> The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild. Yes and no. It is very impressive what humans can do and the US is a remarkable country for managing to achieve what they have. On the other hand, if we're talking GDP it is basically just a trendline [0] of whether you let people better their own lives or not. The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administrator chooses to make people fail and the US does the best job of resisting that tendency. To me the mystery is less why the US succeeds but more why polities are so committed to failing. It isn't even like there is a political ideology that genuinely wants to make it hard to do business [1]. It mostly happens by accident, foolishness and ignorance. [0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation - see the figure, note the logarithmic axis [1] I suppose the environmentalists, maybe.
- arjie 10mo ago
  I think you have one big piece of it: economic progress has a lot of search problems and it is impossible to master-plan it; consequently free intelligence beats centralized regulation. It's a bit out-dated now[0] but The Fifth Discipline distinguishes between 'detail complexity' (things that have a lot of bits you have to figure out) and 'dynamic complexity' (systems that have feedback loops and adaptive participants). It might simply be that handling systems with dynamic complexity is out of the reach of most humans. Economic regulation strikes me as something that can be particularly like a thing that modifies a dynamic system. In fact, creating good policy in a modern economy might be so dynamically complex that no mind alive today can simultaneously comprehend an adaptive solution and act in such a way as to bring it about. Perhaps, given this, we are simply spoiled by the effectiveness of certain economic actors (e.g. the Federal Reserve) in maintaining an monetary thermostat. Their success is not the norm so much as it is extraordinary. 0: which is humorous given this, because the Seinfeld Isn't Funny effect applies to things that become mainstream - insight and humor both disappear as the spark or joke become common knowledge
- nerdponx 10mo ago
  > The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administrator chooses to make people fail and the US does the best job of resisting that tendency. Every component here is ill-defined and doubtful, especially the claim that lower regulation is the "main" reason.

ip26 10mo ago

My first exposure to this - tired of $40 particleboard bookshelves and tables, I went looking for solid wood furniture, reasoning it was fine to spend a little more for something that would last. I found it- and discovered humble, small tables were a months pay. I don't want cheap crap, but I suddenly appreciated why we've moved away from tables that can support a car.

p1necone 10mo ago
This is true of basically everything people complain about having gotten worse over time. Whiteware and kitchen appliances are the same - you can absolutely buy a fridge, or a stand mixer or whatever that will work well and last forever. It's just the value proposition compared to cheap crap that will still likely last for a few years but at a 1/5th of the price is not great unless you're going to use it really heavily.
- gtowey 10mo ago
  Last time I had to buy a refrigerator it seemed like the choice was between one that cost around $1k and one that cost $10k. I really couldn't find a mid quality option. There wasn't a price point at around 2x the cheap ones for better quality. Those price points exist, it's just that they're usually the same cheap fridges crammed full of pointless features that actually make the whole thing less reliable because it's more stuff to break. What I wanted was a refrigerator with a reliable compressor. That's where it really seemed like the only options are cheap and astronomical.
  - M95D 10mo ago
    Compressor is replaceable. Also, how do you judge reliability of a compressor before buying it? Instead, try to find a refrigerator with access to the cooling pipes. Last fridge I threw away had a leak that couldn't be patched because the pipes were all embedded in the plastic walls of the fridge.
    - Qwertious 10mo ago

scott_w 10mo ago

> Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. This reminds me of being a kid excitedly repeating the trope I’d just learned: “Back in your day it was nice because you didn’t need to lock your doors!” To which she responded “Because none of us had anything worth stealing.”

throaway123213 10mo ago
Illuminating point but quite a lot of people live in 1st world countries where you still dont need to lock your door. Even in a major city.
- scott_w 10mo ago
  It’s very time and place dependent. Burglaries are less common these days because the valuable stuff is iPhones now, rather than televisions.

watwut 10mo ago

> because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally Poor people always decorated and still do. There is basically no larger human culture where decorations dont take a place. The only ones I can think of are small religious orders that dont decorate to deprieve themselves. You go to any poor area and see dirt, mess, issues and people showing off decorations in their houses or on themselves.

andrewvc 10mo ago
You are misquoting me. I wrote: > to decorate intentionally in the way we do today Most people not so long ago did not have the luxury of saying “that shirt is so last last year” , or “that living room set is a relic of the 90s!”. Of course people always find ways to decorate and show off, but that’s different than what OP talked about WRT quality furniture. In the past that stuff was so expensive you bought it and lived with it, possibly across multiple generations. If the style changed you probably couldn’t afford to just swap it out.
- 1718627440 10mo ago
  > luxury of saying “that shirt is so last last year” , or “that living room set is a relic of the 90s!”. I do not think that luxury is a good thing. We are able to afford it, by having wage slaves in other parts of the world. Also now these kinds of shirts have become of so low quality that you need to throw them away. It is simply an enormous waste of resources, mostly of human work and lifetime.

Aeolun 10mo ago

> However, I would balk at paying the historical fraction of my income (or multiple if we go back to the 1700s), for a new bed. It’s probably fine if you are going to use it for the rest of your life. Or you can pay just for the nails, and do the rest yourself.