If you're going to bring in "Good to Great" then you have to consider the fact that some of his case studies (Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae) went down the tubes because of what Collins postulated made them successful (overfitting, unscientific).
Housing has been a bitter historical and cross-cultural source of class conflict and oppression. In its current form in America, the bourgeois accumulate as much as they can like any unethical entity, and leverage it to maximize personal utility at the cost of the living conditions of the masses. It's always interesting to see how people use capitalism to indirectly (which is no excuse) cause this natural brutal nature of existence, to cause the common man (or woman) to "groan and sweat under a weary life".
To be fair, a continual rent treadmill that forces everyone to work full time is the explicit overt policy of the Federal Reserve. But any candidate that brings this up gets memory-holed by the mainstream propagandas.
> The objectives as mandated by the Congress in the Federal Reserve Act are promoting (1) maximum employment, which means all Americans that want to work are gainfully employed, and (2) stable prices for the goods and services we all purchase
The qualifier "want" is a distraction, as everyone "wants" to work if that's what it takes to have a reliable bed to sleep in.
Furthermore, "stable" prices are untenable in the face of technological progress that makes everything less expensive. In order for the CPI average to keep going up, the price of housing has to shoot through the roof.
edit: Try drawing out the basic feedback loop. The Fed acts by creating new money. It doesn't simply give this money away to everyone (which would cause across the board price inflation), but it can only be accessed by taking on loans. Anything that can be financialized becomes awash in this new money - housing, cars, education. Consumers then have to settle for paying interest payments (rent) on sky-high asset valuations, rather than having smaller loans that can be paid off early to achieve economic bargaining power.
"That's why the same size house costs more in a city." This idea is actually debunked in the report; Singapore and Tokyo do not have a similar kind of problem in American cities because there's more construction of housing. In America, there are more restrictions around building and less tenant rights (compared to Germany/Switzerland) which causes American housing to be an asset for both wealthier/older US citizens and foreigners.
Given wages not increasing with COL in cities and availability of credit (student loans, rising rents, credit cards, low interest rates) I'd assume poorly
"...[I]s also why we invented the wheel, harnessed fire, founded fancy schools like Harvard" there's a huge false equivalency here; I'll let you figure out which one it is.
How much consumer advertising appeals to "good" aspiration and fills a need which is fairly priced (ie doesn't have brand/marketing/silly subliminal cultural messaging priced in).
When I talked about inventions, I was talking about aspirations. I.e. whenever we do anything it's because we aspire to something better. Someone was cold, stumbled upon fire and saw that it kept them warm, and aspired to harness that so they could be warm all the time. I don't see how that's controversial.
As for how much advertising appeals to good aspirations, I have no idea. Probably not a lot of it. I wasn't defending all of advertising; I was saying don't throw the entire industry under the bus. I, for one, try to do only honest work for companies that provide goods and services that I believe in. Not everyone in this industry gets that freedom, but most of us do our best.
I get it, though. It's easy to hate on advertisers, just as it's easy to hate on salespeople and lawyers and politicians and stock brokers. I happen to consider all these professions necessary to our economy, though. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most prosperous societies have the most of these professions, including advertisers.
"But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale?" Yes!
"And is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine?" Yes!
"Let us pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!" Perhaps it was childlike, not ancient, genius that was destined to fade as we matured.
I was able to rent a scooter from Bird for $25/month in a city and it cut my transportation cost from $170 to like $50. It eliminated ubers to/from events, public transit to/from work, bike rentals to/from gym. Definitely recommend owning a scooter
It was a specific one that was mine. I would open the app and only my scooter would show up (other users couldn't see it). I'd store it in my apt and what not
