8 Responses to “1,000 Words”

1. 

   tim said on May 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 am

   How? : Except for the religious perverts, somebody is selling this shit.

   You mean “Lots of people are buying that shit.”

   No one sells for very long where there is no market.

2. 

   Justin said on May 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm

   And nobody buys what isn’t for sale. It’s definitely a two-way street, but I definitely lean toward blaming companies that should know better than consumers who’ve shown repeatedly and consistently that they don’t.

3. 

   Rev. Bob said on May 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm

   Customer demand isn’t the bottleneck, sales are.

   If little Britney shows up for 2nd grade with a padded bra and if her teacher is a regular reader of this blog and sends her to the bathroom to take that damn thing off, or if she shows up for her swim lesson and the instructor is also a regular reader and sends her home to change her thong swimsuit for something more sensible, then you have a 2 or 3 in 50 million chance of affecting the nationwide and worldwide problem. We know from the success of right-wing pressure groups that a handful of people can affect customer-driven businesses.

   So our next question who are our allies. This is a terrific issue for feminists. More later

4. 

   tim said on May 2nd, 2008 at 9:35 pm

   Customer demand isn’t the bottleneck, sales are.

   Point taken. (Tally one up for Bob.)

   But I’m not sure I agree with Justin. There are certainly cases where sellers create demand. But there are also cases where sellers rush in to fill a market need.

   I mean, do you really think people drink alcohol because of the Budweiser frog? I’m not saying they might not be deluded into drinking Budweiser instead of beer by the ads, but I am a little dubious that advertising beer does more than channel the existing demand toward a particular brand.

   (Demand for alcohol didn’t go away when the legal market did.)

   There’s probably a subtle distinction here: prior to cell phones, no one had one, and everyone lived just as happily as they ever did. And I suppose you could (wrongly) argue that inventing the cell phone was followed by manipulation of the masses into imagining a need that they didn’t really have. But I suspect it was more that the desire was latent because it had no solution, and once the solution emerged, so did the market to fill the need.

   That’s not the same kind of thing that you imply above, Justin, that people are deluded by corporations into thinking they want a cellphone.

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6. 

   Justin said on May 5th, 2008 at 7:44 am

   And I wouldn’t make that claim, Tim. Instead, I might make the claim that people are duped into thinking they want a cell phone that has the ability to watch TV. This is just an example; I can think of reasons a commuter on mass transit might find something like that useful. However, for the “average” cell phone user, there really isn’t much use for it, and my point comes into focus.

   Similarly, I believe firmly that people are deluded into thinking they need an SUV to be safe on the roads/drive in bad weather/compensate for something lacking in their lives (or on their bodies). Have you ever tried talking someone out of one? It never works once they’ve figurately bought what the auto manufacturers are selling.

7. 

   tim said on May 5th, 2008 at 11:22 am

   I’m not arguing that it isn’t the case that demands are sometimes (or often) manufactured. There are whole industries who exist to manufacture demand. They call it “marketing.”

   But not all demand is manufactured, and this entry is not about general case.

   Do you think demand for hypersexualized children is manufactured?

   For that matter, “hypersexualized children” is broadly an issue of cultural context. 14 yrs old has a long history of being a marriageable age.

8. 

   Justin said on May 6th, 2008 at 8:33 am

   Largely, yes, I do think that, but it’s only one part of the situation. If PR reps didn’t feel the need to tart up their teenaged charges, maybe other teenagers wouldn’t feel the need to try to look like them. At the same time, I understand that, on some level, the teenagers are trying to look older not for older guys but for the other teenagers, and I have no idea how to combat that. It’s an issue that goes well beyond simple supply and demand economics and into one of hormones, body image, and the media’s depiction of the so-called “ideal” female form.

   And this is all territory I don’t feel comfortable covering, to be quite honest, mainly because I came equipped with different parts. Granted, guys have certain similar issues, but typically not as severe, and we have a much greater tendency to ignore the stereotypical ideals anyway.

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