Live data from Hacker News

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

raptitude.com

241–250 of 256 posts

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#241
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow... this is maybe the best counterpoint I've ever seen on HN.

Did you buy anything this year in response to Pantone's color of the year?

Well since it's not a direct response advertising campaign, of course no one buys anything "in response to" it.

I did repaint my bedroom with an accent wall that's just about the exact shade of blue that is their 2020 color of the year. Not because Pantone told me to, but maybe because their selection of that color led it to be more prominently placed/advertised when I started picking new paint colors.

Tough to say, and your question is too oversimplistic to make sense as part of the discussion.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#242
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

It's really not that simple. Fashion is an industry where hundreds of individual designers, some with the backing of megacorps and some without, try to meet popular interest (or to lead it), with production times measured in weeks to months, and with seasonal variation. There is no "fashion cabal" where designers get together for drinks and to anoint "cerulean blue" as the color of 2023 and then pull their customers…

Color Marketing Group's whole business is proposing new color palettes to embody the anticipated zeitgeist. Behold their dreamlike prose:

"Color Marketing Group’s North America 2022 Key Color, New Day, is the color response for a time still in transition. New Day suggests confidence and familiarity to greet 2022 with a sense of comfort.

"A light, fresh blue with red influences, New Day is an inspiring color designed to convey the classic connotation of hope and new beginnings. …

"As calming as New Day may appear, its red undertone is a stimulation aspect of the color, making it ideal for practically any product application. From commercial to residential spaces, consumer goods to fashion, and graphic design, New Day is a color that stands for truth and hope."

https://colormarketing.org/2020/11/20/key-color-new-day/

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#243

As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my…

And yet you decided to get a dog, which binds your time and resources

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're having a different conversation? I was arguing that fashion trends are ultimately driven by consumers, not by companies (as GP was arguing). Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale. Whether people are purchasing more than they need, or whether that's wasteful, is a totally orthogonal conversation. But pretty sure most women need bags. And a lot of guys use backpacks too. They're not some ar…

> Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale. But of course they are. This is the case not just in fashion, but pretty much everywhere (and particularly visible wrt. hardware and software). Consumers are given a bit of a choice to get completely confused by it, but ultimately they pick something from what's for sale. They can't just go and say, "I want these trousers, except cut like these other ones, and wi…

You're missing the point which is that vendors are making the products they think people will buy.

Vendors aren't arbitrarily setting "trends", they aren't inventing things in a vacuum.

They literally do market research, interview consumers, figure out what people want, and then try to give that to them.

Of course any single individual doesn't always get exactly what they want (the pair of pants, the phone but with a headphone jack), but collectively we do trend strongly towards that. Manufacturers aren't perfect, they don't always get it maximally correct, but they're generally trying their best, because, you know, competition.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#245

As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my…

And yet you decided to get a dog, which binds your time and resources

Sure did. Would do it again, too.

Living for others, at the end of the day, is vastly better than living for yourself.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#246
post #5

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of suc…

Yes. The planned directive is a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for shareholders in combination with a lack of protection for those who face the externalities of these incorporated entities. We are maximizing for capital growth rather than happiness, and undervalue life.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#247
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopping for the four of us in this house takes about three man hours a week. Cooking about 15. That is much less than an hour a day per person. If we felt like it we could optimise the shopping even further by only shopping when we were already passing the supermarket on the way to or from work. If we felt like it we could do the shopping online and cut it down to a few minutes a week. Cooking Sunday dinner for four…

18 hours per week, and a lot of that is spent whether you are cooking for 1 or for 4, so those that live alone are talking about 15-16 hours per week. A whole waking day.

I think my mother realized this implicitly when I was a kid. She wasn't so motivated to cook when it was just for herself, but was when it was for the entire family.

I guess in the end, it needs to become a team effort for a team result to become efficient.

I'm interested in the recommendations here to help solve that problem, there are some new ones I haven't heard before: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/ost9hc/folks_in_vh...

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale. But of course they are. This is the case not just in fashion, but pretty much everywhere (and particularly visible wrt. hardware and software). Consumers are given a bit of a choice to get completely confused by it, but ultimately they pick something from what's for sale. They can't just go and say, "I want these trousers, except cut like these other ones, and wi…

You're missing the point which is that vendors are making the products they think people will buy . Vendors aren't arbitrarily setting "trends", they aren't inventing things in a vacuum. They literally do market research, interview consumers, figure out what people want, and then try to give that to them. Of course any single individual doesn't always get exactly what they want (the pair of pants, the phone but with…

>Vendors aren't arbitrarily setting "trends"

You're right in that trends aren't arbitrary, but you've jumped from that idea to the idea that consumer needs are the reason. That's not the case. A large proportion of the time the reason why a particular trend is set isn't 'consumers want this'. It's 'the commodities to make this product are going to be particularly cheap this season - so margins should be healthy'. The McRib is a great example.

As a crystal clear example, do you think any consumer in their right mind wants their products shrinkflated? Do you think misleading packaging is based on satisfying consumer desires, or manipulating them?

The competition is for dollars, not for goodwill.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#249
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. Yes. But it's a shallow real world interface, for shallow groups and facile identities, mostly used to associate with teenagers and juvenile group forming. I dont say it's not a thing, or don't have a use. I say the use is bad.

You’re expressing your opinion as if it’s a cold hard truth.

Which part? That fashion/clothing industry is not the leading cause of pollution in the world (aka. bad ecologically)?

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#250
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the FIRE person just delaying it's consumption? At some point the saved up money will be spent, therefore I wouldn't expect it to have a huge negative impact on economic growth

FIRE, or any retirement strategy tend to rely on smart investment to generate income, and investment only makes the difference between how much worker is getting paid and how much they generate. If we all become full time investors, who do we invest in?

There'll always be generational differences. FIRE is no different from normal retirement, only it's taken to greater lengths.

Normally people in generation X spend the first 40 adult years producing goods & services, partly consumed by themselves, partly exchanged for credits with old retired people of generation X-1.

After generation X is done with this working period, they retire, now holding credits. They exchange their credits for goods & services produced by generation X+1.

And so on and so forth.

FIRE simply shifts the lengths of the working periods and generations. Instead of working from 20 til 70, it may be from 20 til 60, or 50, depending on how successful you are in accumulating credits.

The credit system ensures that this doesn't really turn into a big issue. After all, if people are hugely successful accumulating credits and stop producing, and the population of producing people becomes small enough, then the exchange rate of goods&services to credits will worsen. The demand of goods & services will be lower than the supply, such that goods & services cost more credits. This is a natural incentive for people to start producing again, as the value of their accumulated credits goes down, but the value of them spending their time earning credits goes up.

Of course credits is money and the worsening exchange rate is inflation.

In short, we could all FIRE (i.e., every generation can retire at some point). But we cannot all FIRE at extremely early ages. The FIRE movement is essentially exposing the 'true' retirement age possible if we were more deliberate and intentional about our production & consumption. In a world where we all consume as much as we can, it makes sense we may need to work many years till an old age. A world in which we consume much less means we can produce much less, and thereby work less and retire sooner (or retire partially, i.e. parttime work).

Post reply on HN