If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options
|
Posted by Warm Worm on October 31, 2007, 8:39 pm
Pat wrote:
>> "Warm Worm"> wrote
>>
>>> It does so in part because my derision for them stems from a mainly
>>> urban context.
>>
>> Thats what I suspected from the very beginning.
>> The word is *empathy*, trying to *understand* life from another's
>> perspective.
>> If I asked you to get rid of your rollerblades or your notebook you
>> would think I lost my mind.
If it meant something to you, I'd considered it.
>> But you have no compunction about expecting others to get up off
>> their rides, and it never occurs to you that peoples lives depend on
>> their rides.
Of course it occurs to me.
And come up with a good case against blades and books and see what I do.
You're also welcomed to dislike them-- hopefully for sane, rational
reasons. ;)
>> Ya know, now, when I buy laundry soap I get it in the big cardboard
>> box because I don't want to pay good money to have someone take the
>> empty plastic container, we used to get, away.
>> Now I just burn the box along with other burnable trash.
>> I wish we could purchase products *without* all the packaging but we
>> don't have that choice, so we make decisions that try to lessen our
>> footprint and extend our convenience.
>> (why can't I, for example, take my used empty plastic laundry
>> container back into the store and fill it up and pay only for the
>> contents rather than be forced to purchase a new container
everytime? >> I mean, its not like the plastic, with its million-year
lifespan, is
>> gonna wear out or anything.)
>> Find me a more convenient way to live my life in the absence of a
>> combustion engine powered machine and I'll be glad to listen.
>> I speak only for myself.
>
> I think you've hit the nail of the head. The reduce/recycle movement
> will take off when it makes economic sense.
As opposed to _actual_ sense?
> The market will drive it. For example, remember the boxes your
> toothpaste used to come in.
> They're gone. No more. That's because Walmart (that unAmerican org)
> ordered it's suppliers to get rid of it. You didn't want it and they
> didn't want to pay to have to make it or to truck it. It was an
> economic reason, not an environmental one.
Should doing something for the right reason prevail though?
...I again thought about a particular brand of ice-cream-- Breyers--
that apparently reduced the costs of production (changed the recipe and
perhaps manufacturing method), but kept the price essentially the same.
They also did a number of "marketing tricks", such as redesigning the
package, and changing the wording ("double-churned") in the ostensible
interest of attempting to fool the customer... Found this:
http://www.breyerssucks.com
"Unilever (the multi-national corporation that owns the 'Breyers', Good
Humor, and Ben & Jerry's brand names) recently started adding tara gum
(made from the seeds of the tara tree) [among other things] to the 'All
Natural' varieties of Breyers ice cream."
-- Wikipedia.org
http://adailyscoop.com/2006/09/11/breyers-natural-ice-cream-and-tara-gum-unilevers-response
If all things produced at a cheaper and cheaper cost (lower quality
too?) is _not_ passed down to the consumer in the form of cheaper
products or greater savings-- and even if it is-- then what happens when
the consumer asks for the older(-style) or better thing?
Is it more expensive for the customer, or less profitable for the
company? Should quality-of-life decide, or economic forces that often
seem to have little to do with the latter.
So what does this have to do with architecture or urban-planning?
Well, it has to do in part with the revival of _true_ quality, value and
price/cost, (ie., heritage architecture/design) and of what I feel has
been gradually eroded over time and that has less and less to do with
anything other than nothing-- even money.
|
|
Posted by Amy Blankenship on October 31, 2007, 9:02 pm
> If all things produced at a cheaper and cheaper cost (lower quality too?)
> is _not_ passed down to the consumer in the form of cheaper products or
> greater savings-- and even if it is-- then what happens when the consumer
> asks for the older(-style) or better thing?
Give it up. People on this forum will rush to tell you "it's obviously what
people want" (since they still buy it). Never mind that most people seldom
if ever experience quality in much of anything to know the difference.
-Amy
|
|
Posted by Warm Worm on October 31, 2007, 9:38 pm
Amy Blankenship wrote:
>
>> If all things produced at a cheaper and cheaper cost (lower quality too?)
>> is _not_ passed down to the consumer in the form of cheaper products or
>> greater savings-- and even if it is-- then what happens when the consumer
>> asks for the older(-style) or better thing?
>
> Give it up.
Ya I know... a little soap-boxy of me... It's just that I had a kind of
thought-process yesterday that went along the lines of about wanting old
stuff, or heritage, or replications/repro's-- that kind of thing-- and
how the gist of the responses are usually that it's too, or very,
expensive or no longer feasible or possible... and then wondering why--
I mean, if we're so technologically advanced-- and how could they then
do it in the old days, and what happened since then, and so on...
> People on this forum will rush to tell you "it's obviously what
> people want" (since they still buy it). Never mind that most people seldom
> if ever experience quality in much of anything to know the difference.
A culture, double-churned, airy, fluffy, syrupy, chemical tracts and
tracts of souless emptiness...
The profit-motive may eat itself for breakfast, but drag the rest of us
down with it. 'The costs of doing business.'
I've said that people are a necessary evil in the pursuit of profit...
I sense a paradox, but I can't put my finger on it.
|
|
Posted by Michael Bulatovich on November 1, 2007, 11:07 am
>
>
>> If all things produced at a cheaper and cheaper cost (lower quality too?)
>> is _not_ passed down to the consumer in the form of cheaper products or
>> greater savings-- and even if it is-- then what happens when the consumer
>> asks for the older(-style) or better thing?
>
> Give it up. People on this forum will rush to tell you "it's obviously
> what people want" (since they still buy it). Never mind that most people
> seldom if ever experience quality in much of anything to know the
> difference.
That's the rub, though, isn't it? It's both a cause and an effect.
There was a similar debate in the pre-modernist period about industrial
technology and craft, which led to the 'Arts and Crafts Movement' (my
personal favorite), that you are retracing in a way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
|
|
Posted by Michael Bulatovich on November 1, 2007, 10:56 am
> ...I again thought about a particular brand of ice-cream-- Breyers--
> that apparently reduced the costs of production (changed the recipe and
> perhaps manufacturing method), but kept the price essentially the same.
> They also did a number of "marketing tricks", such as redesigning the
> package, and changing the wording ("double-churned") in the ostensible
> interest of attempting to fool the customer... Found this:
>
> http://www.breyerssucks.com
>
> "Unilever (the multi-national corporation that owns the 'Breyers', Good
> Humor, and Ben & Jerry's brand names) recently started adding tara gum
> (made from the seeds of the tara tree) [among other things] to the 'All
> Natural' varieties of Breyers ice cream."
> -- Wikipedia.org
>
>
http://adailyscoop.com/2006/09/11/breyers-natural-ice-cream-and-tara-gum-unilevers-response
So, stop buying Breyers. We did...a long time ago. Someone else will fill
your niche if there is one...
|
Page 1 of 10 1 2 3 > last >>
| Similar Threads | Posted | | Internal Air Quality | November 22, 2007, 6:04 pm |
| Quality Construction Equipment | January 28, 2007, 1:12 am |
| One great source for solid quality timber | October 26, 2007, 5:03 pm |
| Supply all kind of high quality aluminum profiles | March 7, 2007, 3:25 am |
| Too good to be true? | October 1, 2007, 4:53 pm |
| True or Untrue Postulate | February 1, 2008, 1:47 am |
| True Wood Veneer MGT FSC LEED and PANELS TOO! | December 15, 2007, 12:09 am |
|
|
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap