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Is everything an MLM

annehelen.substack.com

221–230 of 297 posts

Re: Is everything an MLM

#221
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thats a bad cliche. If I break down my spending, most goes on food (I have no rent/mortgage), the next biggest item are essentials like utilities/council tax/bills, then car bills (insurance, petrol, repairs), then the kids then personal luxuries for me and my wife. Marketers might shape how I spend my food budget (ie on which brands/products) but I still need food. Marketers influenced my choice of car, but…

A lot of marketing efforts in various forms are designed to subtly persuade you that owning a car is cool, that driving it is a pleasant experience, that it signals respect and social status. Even people who don’t need cars are influenced by that. Same techniques are used in real estate advertising. Keep in mind that marketing also influences other people, including those whose opinions you value. If PR/advertising/m…

I guess I’m saying, marketers aren’t persuading me I need a car. I made a fairly practical choice that I needed a car (maybe I’m not typical?).

But perhaps instead of buying the cheap Japanese one, I bought the expensive German one. So marketers persuaded me to spend 20% more?

The idea that marketers are somehow controlling people’s lives assumes that without marketers, we’d all be living some kind of radically different lives. I doubt we would.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#222
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry that this is your world view, because it is deeply flawed and focusing on such cynicism leads to depression. Most of HN lives in a tech bubble where everyone is focused on building semi-useless software like you describe. However the majority of society still does “normal” things like construction, manufacturing, sales, etc. and some sort of fundamental reorganizing of society on non-market principles doesn…

"If I make more money there is not someone else losing." Actually, that's exactly how it works: we can't both own the same dollar. Duh.

> Actually, that's exactly how it works: we can't both own the same dollar. Duh.

I’m guessing you’ve never taken an economics course. Or if you have, you didn’t understand it.

“Making the pie bigger” (growth) is a thing, and it’s a thing that happens quite frequently. “Getting a bigger share of the same size pie” (zero sum) leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#223
post #125
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to letting the individual determine what they want is to let someone else choose for them. I’m arguing on fundamental principles because the parent commenter is advocating a reorganization of market-based economies. I don’t care how complex the system is. If you aren’t letting me, the individual, determine what is best for my life, then you are coming from a place of superiority and belief that you kn…

How can you be that naive? On the large scale, marketing (which includes paid for by industry, biased scientific studies) is what shapes people’s desires. Vast majority of people are perfectly happy with letting someone else choose for them, and even smart people fall for it. It has truly became a fundamental principle of our society.

Nope. People's desires shape marketing. Not the other way around. Marketing caters to people's pre existing desires to convince them. Desires have always existed and always will.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#224
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't you arguing directly that we should all live in soviet-style housing blocks? Concrete is good enough, right? Then we'd all be equal.

soviet-style housing is a bit extreme. But what's wrong with being equal ?

Imagine you take a million humans and you give them a million absolutely identical plots of lands. And each plot of land is, with work, capable of fully sustaining its owner. And you also gave each and every one of them all of the initial tools, training, and resources they'd need to achieve this. And we're also going to assume that these individuals will never experience any health issues or random catastrophes such as weather events, to minimize randomness in our little real life simulation.

And now we set these people free to live as they will. How long will the complete equality last? It'd more likely be a matter of months than years. Some would work harder and produce more enabling them to grow in resources which could then be traded for other things - giving them more than others. Others would go in the opposite direction and behave irresponsibly, such as by indulgence in drink or drug, and find themselves falling further behind. Others would make decisions such as having more children than they could afford to provide for and find themselves in severe issues. Others would simply make better or more astute decisions in general leading them to pull ahead.

It wouldn't take long before our entirely equal society was riddled with inequity. The point of this is that it's impossible for humans to be equal unless somebody enforces that equality. And this brings up two issues. The first is that the enforcer of equality is generally a group or organization that is going to be inherently unequal. Even a completely social system would require 'enforcers' of some sort lest the over achievers dare keep the fruits of their labor for themselves. The second is that you end up with radically warped reward scenarios. If you do better than average, you get stuff taken from you. If you do worse than average, you get stuff given to you. Failure is rewarded, success is punished.

These distorted systems of motivation and the inherent control required to maintain equality are the very fundamental reason that the numerous systems of equality we've tried have all invariably ended up the same. Human society only functions by people spending a pretty good deal of their time doing x when they'd rather be doing y. It's not hard to see what happens when you remove any motivation whatsoever to actually do x. It even explains the ever recurring trend towards authoritarianism and cruel behavior - it's simply an effort to try to force people to do x after you remove all their motivation to do so, and it just doesn't work.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#225
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of marketing efforts in various forms are designed to subtly persuade you that owning a car is cool, that driving it is a pleasant experience, that it signals respect and social status. Even people who don’t need cars are influenced by that. Same techniques are used in real estate advertising. Keep in mind that marketing also influences other people, including those whose opinions you value. If PR/advertising/m…

I guess I’m saying, marketers aren’t persuading me I need a car. I made a fairly practical choice that I needed a car (maybe I’m not typical?). But perhaps instead of buying the cheap Japanese one, I bought the expensive German one. So marketers persuaded me to spend 20% more? The idea that marketers are somehow controlling people’s lives assumes that without marketers, we’d all be living some kind of radically diffe…

marketers persuaded me to spend 20% more

Exactly. There are basic needs and there are desires. I’m talking about the latter. Note that to afford that extra 20% you might need to modify your life in some way.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#226
post #219

> everything Article is just about CorePower Yoga and grad school.

It also contains this passage: > When I first suggested that yoga teacher training was an MLM, someone rightly responded: “it feels like everything today is an MLM.” That’s what happens when an industry is fully enveloped by capitalism: When a hedge fund buys a yoga company — or when universities are figured as money-making businesses, with actual consultants hired to lead them. That's the source for the title.

So you’re saying it’s clickbait.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#227
post #71

My goal is to extract as much money as I can out of the tech industry, without compromising on my values. While I'm doing that I'm trying to build up a small food forest which will help me avoid the pyramid altogether. My only hope for humanity is for at least 30% of the population to do the same, but I'm not holding my breath.

I don’t understand. You want 30% of the population of earth to farm their own food? Does economy of scale not apply to food production?

Re: Is everything an MLM

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mostly zoning laws, burdensome regulations and government subsidies, really. If housing, education and healthcare still cost in real terms what they did in 1950 then people could afford to work 20 hours a week if they wanted to, but they're stuck working 40 hours because of government policies that cause price inflation and cost disease. You arguing this is really ironic because the only reason they're working only…

Labor regulation has historically followed market trends rather than driving them. If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people had to work longer hours than that just to grow enough food to feed everyone. Then industrialization rolls around and we slowly get to the point that labor supply starts to outstri…

> If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people had to work longer hours than that just to grow enough food to feed everyone

This theory that in history the conditions for survival were so much worse as to require much longer working hours is a great myth. Long working hours came mostly at the time of industrial revolution.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

From the article:

... the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was "simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."

Re: Is everything an MLM

#229
post #70
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry that this is your world view, because it is deeply flawed and focusing on such cynicism leads to depression. Most of HN lives in a tech bubble where everyone is focused on building semi-useless software like you describe. However the majority of society still does “normal” things like construction, manufacturing, sales, etc. and some sort of fundamental reorganizing of society on non-market principles doesn…

>> It’s not on someone else to tell me what I should and should not want. That's true. >> If I desire it and a company provides it for a price, it doesn’t matter that the smart refrigerator is a waste in your vision. People are not good at knowing(or at least acting) on what will make them deeply happy, happier over the longer term, or even just happy. Psychological research tells us that. Add to that the power of ad…

People have other motives than their own happiness.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#230
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be that naive? On the large scale, marketing (which includes paid for by industry, biased scientific studies) is what shapes people’s desires. Vast majority of people are perfectly happy with letting someone else choose for them, and even smart people fall for it. It has truly became a fundamental principle of our society.

Nope. People's desires shape marketing. Not the other way around. Marketing caters to people's pre existing desires to convince them. Desires have always existed and always will.

You didn’t want to drive that bmw until you saw that ad. Perhaps you didn’t want to drive at all. Now you do.
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