There is also no evil corporation ordering people to give up subsistence farming and move to cities. Why do people, all around the world, still do it?
I find its theory compelling that a lot of advertising works by cultural imprinting: corporations use their power to create a presence in the public sphere which changes the underlying culture of society, and we as individuals have no choice about that.
Obviously individuals can in principle just ignore and go against the prevailing culture (in sufficiently free countries, at least), but even in free countries, that's a lot harder than just going with the flow. That's just how humans are wired, and the likely fact that corporations - i.e, non-human intelligences - have such influence over us by changing the very fabric of society is a cause for concern. Like all influence it can turn out to be good or bad, but ignoring it is not an option.
Good luck growing modern plants, they're mostly hybrid and massively drop in yield if you decide to plant part of your harvest next year. Not to mention that Monsanto will be all over your field if they get wind of you violating their copyright by doing so.
There's that whole big-corporation medical care business, but if you're willing to forego it, the dream can be yours - for much less then the cost of a small suburban home.
Housing is not cheap, no matter where you go in the US. Sure, the land it sits on may be cheaper in some places, but the cost of building materials is the same everywhere, and houses have to be built to code, and old houses that aren't maintained well enough get condemned so you're not allowed to live in them. Of course, you can always just get an old trailer home or something.
>and gasoline is very cheap in the US.
Yes, and distances are far when you're talking about living in "the middle of nowhere", and if you have an old vehicle, it's probably going to have terribly fuel economy, so you're still looking at a significant fuel bill just to get to the grocery store. No, you're not going to succeed in getting yourself a proper diet with your home garden. And you still need some kind of income to buy that land and whatever structure you live in, and that gas for your car/truck.
>There's that whole big-corporation medical care business, but if you're willing to forego it,
That's not allowed unless the ACA is repealed. Of course, with a low enough income, you might qualify for Medicaid, but that really depends. I believe a lot of states won't allow you to enroll if you're an adult, saying you should just get a job.
My parents do part-time homesteading (My father works - he will retire in a few years) - and they only need to go into town once a month for staples - supplemental chicken feed, milk, fertilizer, etc. Fuel economy isn't that big a deal.
The ACA tax is based on your income. If you have no income, the tax is tiny.
No, of course you can't start all that having nothing. However, most of the posters on HN are more then able to save up to afford this life.
As with Linux, this is only true if your time has no value.
Please.
It's in a corporation's best interest to give the customer exactly what he wants.
We still have "our abilities to take care of ourselves and our communities," but we also have the option of a corporation providing for our every whim.
I think you have misinterpreted what the parent comment was saying. He wasn't saying there are limited options, just that we choose to have corporations take care of things for us, and now that we have chosen this we are more dependent on them. He wasn't stating that you could not take care of yourself if you want to. Just that it's easier to let the corporation do it for you.
In many many cases, it's more cost effective to modify the customer's wishes than it is to change the corporation and what it produces.
A corporation's main goal is to drive up profits and if it's more convenient for them to manipulate a populace into acting a certain way than it is to give the populace exactly what they want then that's what they'll do.
There is probably not a conspiracy from corporations or government to undermine people's freedom and what not but it doesn't mean that it isn't the end result.
We don't watch broadcast TV at home. 30 mins in front of a friend's TV and our kid suddenly 'need' a ton of new stuff. At the cinema "you should get that car Dad", etc..
It's psychological manipulation, it's rarely ever a helpful synopsis of a products comparative specifications.
You may want something with accomplishes some goal without knowing exactly what. If a person thinks "I have to go out but I'm waiting for a call", they may not imagine the cellphone as an object, but they still want something that solves their problem.
That said, 73.6% of all statistics are made up. Many ads in fact are designed with both goals in mind.
It's in a corporation's best interest to instil in the customer an idea of what he or she wants.
...and then yes, your version.
Comcast comes to mind here. Or Better Business Bureau and the sole reason for its existence.
I recall that Mao Zedong tried to get every farmer to smelt his own iron, which rather predictably led to a lot of poor-quality iron, and a food shortage.
I get the appeal of self-sufficiency, I really do (one of my dreams is to grow all of my own food), but I think it's a luxury for the rich and inescapable misery for the poor. Modern capitalism has made everyone richer.
Corporations provide those things because people want them.
Could you give an example of how you can't say no to advertisement?
Read "The Psychology of Influence" along with some of the stuff by, e.g, Kahneman and/or Tversky on behavioral economics and the various cognitive biases humans have that lead them to make poor decisions. I assure you that corporations have read all of this and are taking advantage of it to part you from your money, selling you products that they make you think will increase your happiness. Another resource on this would be Robert Shiller's book "Phishing for Phools, The Economics of Manipulation and Deception".
This isn't about taking personal responsibility. Even when you become fully aware of the insidious way in which our culture works, it's impossible to entirely avoid being taken advantage of by marketing and advertising. We humans are made to think in certain ways, our brains have evolved in a way that gave us cognitive biases we can't escape, even when we're aware of them. Being aware can motivate us to change the culture itself (and its laws), though, so in the future people are less affected by corporate deceit and greed. Yes, this would likely mean lower corporate profits. (Question how we're conditioned to think of lower corporate profits as a bad thing.)
I want the best returns out of the corporations I invest in.
> Question how we're conditioned to think of lower corporate profits as a bad thing.
Perhaps it is my neoliberal worldview, but I think most people are like "corporate profits can go down" for <my cause>. People think that corporations are owned only by billionares.
Lower corporate profits are a bad thing for shareholders.
Why don't we just take poor people's money since they're so greedy for wanting money? Most of the arguments against excess wealth can be used against many first-world people including HNers.
> This puts you almost directly at odds with all non-shareholders who are negatively affected by increasing profits.
Economics is not zero-sum. Few people such as competitors will be negatively affected, but for the average person there will be little impact. For example, if Google makes more profits I am hardly impacted.
On a (somewhat) related note, this conversation reminded me of a George Carlin routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
'In its 1947 strategy plan, the advertising agency strongly emphasized a psychological approach. "We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology." '
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
That's an interesting thought. I was thinking that probably UBI won't come to pass (politicians corruptible, corporations greedy and short sighted) thus people will have to rediscover self-reliance in order to improve their situation.
You say that like local musicians are somehow a good thing... I'm quite sure there's none in my little area that I'd have any interest in listening to. Whether local musicians are good depends on your taste in music and the local culture where you happen to live.
This is just one specific example of the broader phenomenon, which is corporations seek to remove all of our abilities to take care of ourselves and our communities, so that they may resell those things to us as products. Requiring cars to move around is just the surface.
We go to coffee shops and restaurants to see our friends.
We purchase MP3s or concert tickets to hear music.
We order food instead of cooking it let alone growing it.
And of course this is all a luxury to some: many of us would be happy to never have to walk significant distance, cook, or listen to a local musician ever again.
But it's in the corporations best interest that children aren't really given a choice. And that serves nation states' best interest, which is to grow the GDP. But the result is a world of people who, without a credit card, are babies unable to care for themselves. Short of someone putting food in our mouths and maintaining the grounds around us, we would be lost. Luckily we have the cash to afford these things.
And those who fall through the cracks of being able to hold a job are eaten up.
All hail GDP. All hail capital. Thank you Gates, Koch, Slim, Walton, for providing us with internet connectivity, petrol, and toilet paper this day.