YOU ARE NOT SO SMART di David McRaney - selling out
- Teoria standard: il capitalismo è sostenuto dalla creazione di bisogni indotti da parte delle multinazionali...
- Comportamento classico: prendiamo le misure al mondo dove siamo capitati e ci "ribelliamo" ad esso x costruire la ns identità...
- Il ribelle è la linfa del consumismo: senza stili altrrnativi il magazzino non si rinnova
- ......
- THE MISCONCEPTION: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising. THE TRUTH: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status.
- Il ciclo. you started to realize who was in control, and you rebelled.
- you sought out something real, something with meaning.
- Think about an archetypal punk rocker with chains and spikes, gaudy pants and a leather jacket. Yeah, he bought all of those clothes. Someone is making money off of his revolt.
- Every niche opened by rebellion against the mainstream is immediately filled by entrepreneurs
- Fight Club, American Beauty, Fast Food Nation, The Corporation, etc. The creators of these works may have had the best intentions, but their work still became a product designed for profit.
- Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Cobain, Christopher Hitchens— once their output fell into the marketplace, it found its audience, and that audience made them wealthy.
- Il libro. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, The Rebel Sell.
- Tesi: you can’t rage against the machine through rebellious consumption.
- La posizione ortodossa: All the interconnected institutions in the marketplace need everyone to conform in order to sell the most products to the most people... you must turn your back and ignore the mainstream culture.
- The problem, say Heath and Potter, is the system doesn’t give a shit about conformity. In fact, it loves diversity and needs people like hipsters and music snobs so it can thrive.
- Now people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and observe what the counterculture is into... The counterculture, the indie fans, and the underground stars—they are the driving force behind capitalism.
- This brings us to the point: Competition among consumers is the turbine of capitalism.
- You attain status by having better taste in movies and music, by owning more authentic furniture and clothing...
- so you reveal your unique character through your consumption habits.
- your desire for authenticity is what moves these items and artists and services and goods up from the bottom to the top— where they can be mass-consumed.
- trying to run counter to the culture is what creates the next wave of culture people
- The value, then, is not intrinsic. The thing itself doesn’t have as much value as the perception of how it was obtained or why it is possessed.
- Competition for status is built into the human experience at the biological level. Poor people compete with resources. The middle class competes with selection. The wealthy compete with possessions.
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