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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 08:51
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And of course you're right when you say "If sales go down, the ad budget will decrease along with the other cost-cutting measures, and eventually, may disappear altogether". Sorry? I don't think so. When Coke lost to the Pepsi challenge what did they do? Reformulated Coke and piled millions into advertising. When a product loses popularity advertising increases, unless the product is one of those 'faddy' items. Big brands will step up when market share goes down (whilst laying people off). I still love the CEO of Ford quote: I know half my advertising is pointless, but no one can tell me which half .. (slight misquote, but it says the same). It is because of this that you will see different phone numbers on different TV channels for the same product ... real-time market research. When advertising fails, without careful research on consumer groups etc the advertising increases.
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ratcni01 916 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 09:00
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soz jim .. here I disagree, thats right i'm gonna move out of the city, nup! That's right get myself sorted and escape, fuck the rest of them living in inner city misery - soz .. not my way i'm a subvert, not always a good one but thas me. I have been caught up in an illusory/too materialistic thing for a quite few years, and am just waking up again to my responsibilities beyond my kids (although it wasn't as if i did nothing anti-deportation campaigning/support and some other "good" stuff *justifying selfnow * *methinks the .. protest too much*) and am taking steps to start being genuinely more useful and doing stuff I want to do too Going out to the country, who does it help? how does it contribute? nice peaceful life i suppose - if you're a writer (you write well enough to be one along with a couple of others on here - who ought to collaborate on a book, if you aren't already) certainly not a solution that can be offered to everyone so what do the rest do? anyway the city is great - loads to do, the country feels wierd and monocultural, although visiting beddgelert on saturday and walking in the forestry land with the kids was lovely experience, so peaceful (if that is the right word for walking with 4 kids under 9, and dealing with the i'm tired/hungry/where's my sister/don't push/can i have..) and a great battery charge being there but the problems aren't there, well no so much, the city is where the problems are remember the sleaze sisters - chuck yer telly out yer window! you lot are great - what a debate for a shit start to the week (my shit, my work over the weekend went wrong, shit fuck bollocks, bugger, damn)
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:22
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Well ratcni01, it all comes down to how bad you perceive the problem to be, i guess. I wasn't proposing "moving to the country" as a solution to blanket advertising, or even as a tactic to combat it. That was the root of my disagreement with Citizensmurf. I was thinking more of the wider-scale problem presented by western culture... i.e our unsustainable resource consumption. And living a sustainable life is, in fact, the only rational response to *that* problem. Let me put my cards on the table, and state this in perhaps the starkest form i have yet. Barring as yet unforeseen technologies (the development of energy-positive fusion power*, as a for-instance), my view is that western culture - as we know it - has 15-20 years left. Maximum. There is a rising global demand for oil. This is generated by a rising global population and the rapid industrialisation of Asia, coupled with ubiquitous western capitalism which is predicated upon continual growth. At some point, evidence will emerge that world oil production has begun to go into permanent decline. Current thinking sets the decline at between 2.5% and 3% per year. There is no current consensus as to when this will occur, but the people who appear most convincing to me personally, place it in the last half of this decade (possibly as early as 2005, possibly as late as 2012). Given how _essential_ cheap oil is to the systems which currently feed and support most of the world, the consequences of an oil shock will be calamitous and set off uncontrollable chains of events. Those dependent upon the crude oil infrastructure will not fare well. So when you ask: > > Going out to the country, who does it help? > how does it contribute? > It helps you. It helps your family. It helps society at large by lessening our overall reliance upon cheap oil. It helps those around you by demonstrating the possibilities of a genuine alternative. It helps the planet you live on, and it helps your own relationship with that planet. I honestly believe, that there is simply no more "helpful" thing that an individual 'westerner' can possibly do at this moment in history. If there is a chink of light to be found anywhere here, it is in those people who reject western consumerism, reject our dependence upon unrenewable resources, and embrace a sustainable lifestyle. But so long as you live in the city, then i believe direct opposition to mediated culture via ad-busting (amongst other things) is a worthy activity. Or something. * Fusion would not avert an oil crisis. It would delay it significantly however; and might provide us with the tools to avert it. Maybe. However those i've corresponded with who are researching fusion are not optimistic about it arriving any time soon.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:27
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Actually i agree with you there by and large. Marketing budgets are rarely cut to zero until the day the company goes completely bankrupt. But ten years of sustained losses will put a big dent in it. Watch AOL. If they've not sorted themselves out pretty soon, i suspect we'll see a BIG drop off in those annoying free CDs. Well, we can but hope.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:32
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"However those i've corresponded with who are researching fusion are not optimistic about it arriving any time soon." You mean there are some scientists out there who do expect it happen at all? Flabbergasted! I had assumed they were just after the research grants.
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Joanna 658 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:38
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Sustainable living is possible in an urban enviroment - not much like the current one, OK but - if all the 'singletons' got together and went for even a modicum of communal living, grouped together their gardens and grew some veg, shared transport, shared sustainable power eg the cost of going solar, then urban living would be less unsustainable, less selfish and perhaps less socially isolating, difficult and lonely than it now is. Whereas if each single person goes out to the country and gets a big plot of land to build a sustainable home on, then we soon run out of country. Stay urban - many cities are joys to live in with things on hand the country could never provide. You just have to get our priorities away from buying as much individual personal space as possible.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:40
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You'd be amazed actually. In the past 30 years they've actually got to the point where the fusion reaction itself is almost at break-even. That's huge progress. However getting the whole system to break-even requires orders-of-magnitude more energy-returned. Even more importantly is the issue of plasma-stability which has yet to be adequately addressed (seen by some as "The Big Problem") which means that the break-even reaction can't be sustained for more than a fraction of a second. A guy i write to has been working on fusion research for 15 years. He's in his 40s now and has said "I'm under no illusions about ever seeing commercial fusion in my lifetime." But he firmly believes his work will be of use to a future generation of researchers (which i believe is his motivation - not grants).
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 14:48
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The research i've been reading of late (and i can't provide it just now cos the archives of the mailing list it was posted to appear to be offline) suggests that sustainable urban living is a pipedream. It can work for individuals only so long as the vast majority of city-dwellers are living on imported (brought from outside the city) food and power. The almost 9 million people in London simply cannot all grow food within the city limits. There's not enough physical space. And regarding the solar-power solution you propose. I've still yet to find evidence that solar panels are an energy-source as opposed to an energy-sink. Check out: http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm under "RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS" close to the bottom of the page.
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Joanna 658 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 15:12
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Don't know anything bout solar power just have always been told it was a good thing so will not comment there. Yes OK urbanites will have to have food bought in but I don't see sustainable living as each person growing all their own stuff. I see trade etc occuring. So city people will be doing other stuff, in return for food and power. I accept that this bringing in will cause environmental and power stress of some kind, but it will cause less than the current arrangement. For me, sustainable is different from self sufficiency, so that's my angle (have tried SS it is also a pipe dream the first time you have to call a vet but anyway)
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ratcni01 916 posts |
Feb 24, 2003, 15:22
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i did get off the original thread a bit - certainly i was relating the move to the country in a much more general sense, rather than advertising. yay for unsustainable western culture, "when the system starts to crack we'll have to be ready to give it all back" - 15-20 years maybe, they'll all go nuclear though and soon to put off the final hour, i reckon, france generates 75% of it's power from nuclear, mind you don't know what leak/contamination stories there are over there, you'd have thought if there was our press would have loved it!! going out to the country helping bit you: the kind of work i do now doesn't happen in rural areas, there aren't offices with 1000+ computer users in. and the kind of work i'm a going to be doing is also generally urban related anger/stress management training your family: apart from the fact that my kids live with their mum, they are black (or share their mums jamaican AND my white/jewish heritage) so living in any community where they are the only non white or even in a dramtically differentiated minority is not on and as soon as you get out in the country that is the way it is in this country. i may use less fossil fuels if i lived in the country, but i can try to do that wherever i am. I totally agree this does help society, the planet wherever you do it! I think though i make a +ve impact in my community (those i work and spend time with) by relentlessly undermining the idea that money, the acquisition of a "nice" home and colour tv is the cheif aim of man - which i do try to do, except when eastenders is on or i have to pop out to b&q for some new home improvement quality durables! yeah, live in the city, subvert the masses - mind you we are all different, you have a real passion for the oil related and other stuff you do, my passions lie in a different direction so it's natural that we think differently but seem actually to agree a lot too, which is cool about fusion that's what i've heard too but i like said above i think they'll go nuclear, nasty but could be the only option the governments can actually manage to deliver which delivers big amounts of power in a relatively small sites, despite other renewable sources being viable there will still be loadsa nimbyism over wind farms, wave thingy bobs etc. and they can also make loadsa bomb materials too to sell to terrorists (under the counter) and then in turn try to terrorise us into supporting the oppression of the countries to whom they sold the stuff (same old, same old really, just different technology behind the imperial masque) lovenpeacenick agreed on the or somehting too!
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