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Archive for the ‘consumers’ Category

Business: Fulfilling a Need or Creating a Want?

30 Jul

I think the hardest aspects of a business are deciding whether to answer a need, such as food, shelter and clothing, or creating a want for something people don’t necessarily need bottled water (if you already have clean, filtered tap water), gym membership, nail salons and the like. Now, people will say the gym and nail salon have some beneficial qualitites that could improve someone’s life, but they are not necessities.

Our needs are rather basic. Food, shelter, clothes, companionship (with or without sex) and mental / physical stimulation. We need friction to survive. Life without stress is worse than one with a wee bit too much stress. Extremes are not good for us.

Most of today’s businesses look to create a want to drive an increase in sales. We are bombarded with ads that will show us humor or humiliation for not selecting their product. A company has to look for enough resources to drive the demand for their product be it TV, radio, Internet social media, and print media.

I believe companies that make a dent into Internet social media, when they launch a successful campaign, have several things going for them: media connections (TV exposure), money, much much money, and reporters eager to pretend that their “news story” is not a PR campaign. For an individual to pierce this wall they have to be incredibly savvy in exposing their material, have lots of energy, patience, and an ability to follow through with their initial message or offering.

Follow-up is key.

I think the second most important aspect of a business in getting this message across to generate a want, which may fulfill a need, is to have the infrastructure in place to answer the demand. If people want your product or service, there better be the means to answer this demand.

 
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Posted in advertising, business, consumers, making things, marketing, money

 

Pessimistic Outlook: US Government Is Broke(n), It Will Never Be Fixed

22 Mar

I remember when Katrina hit the south back in 2005. I followed the hurricane tangentially. It didn’t  hit me until the news media started calling American citizens “refugees” that I realized how bad it was.

I had a conversation with friends afterward, and they were surprised by the gross incompetence of the local, state and federal government. I looked at them, wanting to know: Where have they been the last 5-to-30 plus years? Haven’t they noticed that the US has been in a slow and steady decline since the inflationary, decrepit, corrupt and stagnate 1970′s?

Despite the celebratory big-talk of the Reagan years, I would say that when he helped usher in the we’re-going-for-broke-sorta-war against the country formerly known as the USSR, it would likewise take us down. When the government decided to have a mano-a-mano battle with the USSR, it drained a number of internal well-thought-out strategies for keeping our country whole, solid, and well functioning with it.

A rising stock market doesn’t contrast well against jobs that evaporate from the industrial US to overseas. A rising top 1% making more money than ever doesn’t contrast well against white collar jobs that evaporate from the service economy to overseas. A society cannot survive on consumption alone, it must make durable goods as well.

Every job lost is a tax payment lost. Every job lost is a Social Security payment lost. Every job lost is a Medicaid/Medicare payment lost. “Economists” love to say that the loss of a US job to someone overseas due to slave wage labor is something we benefit from, because we can purchase “cheap” goods. I wonder why they never mention that lower paying jobs here mean people could only afford cheap goods, buy less higher-end products, and contribute less to the taxes that are necessary to keep the US afloat. It is no accident that to finance its grand entitlement schemes the US is borrowing nearly every dime.

In the future, when good and excellent historians look at this country, they will draw a line from whatever took place in this country in its attempts to keep its supremacy, and what it lost in the balance. The founders had it right: let’s mind our business, and stop trying to micromanage the rest of the world.

A man fighting fires in other people’s houses will not notice that his own home is burning down to the ground.

9/11 didn’t happen due to any conspiracies within the government. It happened because of gross indifference, incompetence, and negligence. Bureaucracy exists only for the bureaucracy. It took over 40 years for that to happen. It will take another 30 plus years for the country to entirely collapse.

In nearly every facet of our lives, if it’s not Corporate America, then it’s an officer, agent, or bureaucrat of the government(s) watching, spying, monitoring, and cataloging everyone. Everyone is “guilty” of everything. Everything is illegal. Everything is restricted. Every time a “crime” occurs the sheeple request more interference, monitoring, and watching. I bet no one feels “safer” either.

Nothing improves, and nothing will improve.

9/11 put the icing on the cake for the totalitarianism this government has always wanted to embrace and deploy. A permanent war with no ending. The never ending battlefield encapsulates the entire country. The US Constitution can be ignored, suspended, and deemed irrelevant. Travel has the same atmospherics as being in a prison. Yet somehow, millions of illegal aliens can easily enter the country.

We are a prison(er) society. We will be in a state of martial law, until foreign governments stop purchasing USA debt, the country collapses under the weight of illegitimacy and stupidity, or deliberate ignorance of basic governance, fairness, due process, and economics. Take your pick.

We are told that things are getting better, but they’re not, and they wont. We’ve reached the turning point, and since the country is already flying over the cliff, there is no going back. We’re waiting for the impact once we hit bottom.

The difference for me is that I used to care. Starting today, I don’t.

Prediction

They will come and confiscate your savings and all other assets, and they wont need a reason. You can count on it. There’s nothing restraining the jackals in DC.

 
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Posted in Barack Obama, IRS, US, US Congress, airlines, bully, consumers, consumption, consumptive, corporate America, globalism, politics, safety, savings, thief, usa

 

America: The Consumptive Society

31 Dec


Definitions of consumptive according to an online dictionary:

ADJECTIVE:
  1. Consuming or tending to consume.
  2. Of, relating to, or afflicted with consumption.

NOUN:

A person afflicted with consumption. An infectious disease producing lesions especially of the lungs.

Consumption is no longer used to describe a disease. However, I want to apply it to this topic.

America is a consumptive society; we are sick. We are consumers of the worst sort. What happened to saving for a rainy day? Where did this constant need to purchase what we want, and what we don’t need become the sole focus of this society?

Everywhere one turns there is a billboard, a radio ad, a television ad, magazine and newspaper ads, pre-movie commercials, Internet pop-ups, and everywhere else they can stick this intrusive medium, urging us to consume. We are not even referred to as Americans, but as consumers. It’s an ugly word. I can’t stand hearing it.

I see this constant cycle of digging into the earth to pull up precious metals and natural resources. This process leaves devastation, destruction, and unlivable conditions and habitats in its wake. These resources get molded and shaped into “stuff” also known as consumer goods, and at the end this “stuff”, aka pollution, gets shoved back into the earth as non-recyclable, non-reusable, non-treatable, toxic, and non-biodegradable garbage.

There are people in developing countries living atop of this refuse who, due to their poverty, accept our garbage. It is piling up around the world with nowhere to go.

If we didn’t consume so much, we would not produce so much pollution. I feel guilty every time I toss something out.

I appreciate and respect our capitalistic society. I appreciate and welcome new developments in technology, but somehow, somewhere, something has gone horribly wrong. I am hoping that we Americans get back to saving, that we get back to moderating our tastes and excesses. I hope that we learn to purchase what we need (with cash).

It doesn’t hurt to learn how to wait before we purchase what we want (without credit cards). I ask myself all the time: Do I need this item now? Why do I want it now? Do I already own something that would take care of my needs? If this new and improved item fails to make any kind of necessary difference, then I decide to pass. It’s just a passing phase.

I don’t like the way the media, our national brainwashing, propagandizing arm of consumptive industries, constantly re-enforces this delirium that we must buy, buy, buy, and shop, shop, shop. I cannot stand the words disposable income. It is your money to keep, save, invest, and enjoy, it is not disposable. We’ve worked too hard to treat it as something we need to immediately get rid of.

The economy will recover, because we are the economy. We will recover, but I wish for the sake of national (mental) health people will be encouraged to save, to moderate, and measure the impact of their lifestyles.

 
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Posted in consumers, consumption, consumptive, corporate America, disposable income, environment