The Consumer is always right (1 Viewer)

[Long Ball Larry]

I read a book many years ago called One Market Under God where Thomas Frank talks about ""market populism"—the widely held belief that markets are a more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments."

I am reminded of that in a few threads of late (below), as well as the book Audience of One, in which James Poniewozik describes the Trump presidency as " almost inevitable. Of course he won. This is the United States we’re talking about. The same way Boris Johnson tapped into Britain’s inner erudite buffoon, so Trump tapped into our inner core, which all too often turns out to have comprised midnight cheeseburgers and hormonal TV childhoods...[in which] Trump is TV, the mere simulacrum of a human being projected onto a flat-screen. He grew up with the dawn of television and a TV-watching mother ... Trump “achieved symbiosis with the medium. Its impulses were his impulses; its appetites were his appetites; its mentality was his mentality.”

https://forums.footballguys.com/forum/topic/780992-a-new-dark-ages-in-art-and-entertainment/?do=findComment&comment=22217706

 lot of it is, as i say a LOT in the Politics Forum, is because we've gone from being citizens to customers. 

https://forums.footballguys.com/forum/topic/777677-the-foreign-policy-and-geopolitical-grand-strategy-thread-in-which-we-solve-the-world/?do=findComment&comment=22042377

And I’m unabashed in saying there is one solution to this: democracy.

Is it?  Interesting wapo article today: https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/20/how-trashy-tv-made-children-dumber-enabled-wave-populist-leaders/%3foutputType=amp

“Young people who watched Mediaset during their formative years would, Durante said, grow up to be “less cognitively sophisticated and less civically minded” than their peers who had access only to public broadcasting and local stations during that period.”

And I know there was a thread in which someone asked about what is the deal with cable news or news being biased or having an agenda or something like that, and I said the reason was capitalism.

I guess I don't have a fully fleshed-out conclusion here yet, but it's definitely something...

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

So, a mixture of Mac Headroom, Archie Bunker, Morton Downey Jr. and the horny neighbor on 3's Company?

 

[rockaction]

I live for this.

I cleared it with my handlers.

I'd be nowhere without my entourage. I ####in' LOVE 'EM like Pacino does.

That is all.

 

[Long Ball Larry]

https://forums.footballguys.com/forum/topic/781139-were-in-a-permanent-coup/?do=findComment&comment=22228662

It is a popularity contest. That’s all democracy has ever been. 

related

 

[wikkidpissah]

By the 80s America was ####ed out, the Land of Opportunity had turned over on itself and the country was bitter & confused. Ronnie Raygun came along and said "Screw opportunity. Let's be the place where anyone can be a millionaire". America picked it's head up and, for good or ill, said "####, yeah! That's what we want." Home media was burgeoning at the same time and more than happy to say, "Have this. Do that. Even when you can't be a millionaire, you can at least look like one". That's when this nation, that middle class created by WW2, found its identity and never looked back.

Now that's ####ed out (sry for profanity, but it's the only word for this), we are almost all unholy pretenders and along came the last bastion of selfishness, the cold pizza & warm beer of the party that did us more harm than good. The spoiled rich bully, the Christchild of living beyond one's means, the kid who has said "i want that" since he could speak and managed to always get it. And we indulged one last blast of envy before end of empire. Democracy's rigged, the markets, too. We should have cared about each other but, no, we were gonna have this. I was bored with it when y'all started. Enjoy that bloated, useless feeling - you've earned it. nufced

 

[rockaction]

There's an interesting case to be made that the price of something is not its value. That is, the cost that people are willing to bear to pay for something is actually factoring in a million inefficient thoughts or pernicious ones. If what we seek is knowledge, then price contains information beyond that of a fixed absolute, but if we seek value, it may very well be not what the market bears at the time.

Does that make any sense?

In other words, worth is not equal to price, demand and supply are not the points at which merit is transferred from one entity to another.

eta* I was unaware that Frank was behind the Baffler and wrote The Conquest of Cool. I've sporadically read The Baffler and read pieces of Conquest. I knew he was the What's The Matter With Kansas guy, but not those other two. 

 

[Long Ball Larry]

There's an interesting case to be made that the price of something is not its value. That is, the cost that people are willing to bear to pay for something is actually factoring in a million inefficient thoughts or pernicious ones. If what we seek is knowledge, then price contains information beyond that of a fixed absolute, but if we seek value, it may very well be not what the market bears at the time.

scarwildestampofapproval:

 

[rockaction]

scarwildestampofapproval:

I consider that quite a compliment. He was my favorite writer and moralist (yes) in my post-collegiate years. I think I read everything he ever wrote and can't remember a bit of it due to the fact that I was completely sodden through it all. 

 

[Long Ball Larry]

I consider that quite a compliment. He was my favorite writer and moralist (yes) in my post-collegiate years. I think I read everything he ever wrote and can't remember a bit of it due to the fact that I was completely sodden through it all. 

From Lady Windermere's Fan:

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

 

[Leroy Hoard]

There's an interesting case to be made that the price of something is not its value. That is, the cost that people are willing to bear to pay for something is actually factoring in a million inefficient thoughts or pernicious ones. If what we seek is knowledge, then price contains information beyond that of a fixed absolute, but if we seek value, it may very well be not what the market bears at the time.

Does that make any sense?

In other words, worth is not equal to price, demand and supply are not the points at which merit is transferred from one entity to another.

eta* I was unaware that Frank was behind the Baffler and wrote The Conquest of Cool. I've sporadically read The Baffler and read pieces of Conquest. I knew he was the What's The Matter With Kansas guy, but not those other two. 

I am one of those who walk by clearance racks as a hobby. Few things make me happier than paying ten bucks for something that originally listed for 5-10 times that number.

 

[rockaction]

I am one of those who walk by clearance racks as a hobby. Few things make me happier than paying ten bucks for something that originally listed for 5-10 times that number.

I find myself feeling that, only in reverse. I think things long neglected that are now so ingrained and integrated into our lives that it would be unthinkable not to have them is where it's at, at least emotionally for me. 

But the converse is also cool.