F
@IcooIey @DanielMReck @SRLevine
I think my point about seat-belts must not have been clear. When I say " To the auto industry seat belts represented public responsibility for the overall safety of their product." The product I'm talking about is the car.
I'm talking about the public expecting cars to be safe and holding the manufactures responsible in part for the harm that cars do.
This would lead to the public expecting even more safety features.
@RowanH @DanielMReck @SRLevine
...or they assume someone else will rebuild once they get out with their pile of loot. Because they've watched their peers do it and dammit it's MY turn to get my slice of the pie!
I used to think this. But, I think they might just be THAT miserly.
Look at the seat-belt example again and it'll make more sense. It's not just the cost, although that is part of it.
It's what it *represents* ... it represents an expectation that the government should have a role in preventing plagues. The for-profit world is unable to solve the problem. Do your own research, purify your own water, make your own seat-belt!
Sorry for ranting but this is a lot to process. I don't like to think people are evil cheapskates, but some people are. You can learn this by studying history.
If we get to look back on this it will teach the same lesson.
This is the only way to understand how President Trump deserves a prize for the rapid development of the COVID vaccine, but also COVID was fake, but also it was a bio-weapon, but also it's the vaccines... all of them now, that cause disease.
It's not coherent, it's fear of responsibility.
Why?
They don't want to pay for it. All of these clowns were first in line for the damn shots and I don't know why that didn't tell everyone exactly what was going on.
I can understand the scared and confused antivaxer mom more easily than I can understand those in insurance, government who look at the modest (relatively speaking) cost of a vaccine, or clean water, or public toilets or seat-belts and quail because they think "What else will the rabble demand?"
After all, there are so many simple things we could do that could save many lives.
And so they muddy the waters, keep the "debate" rolling just to save a blood-soaked dollar.
No, but I should check that out. I was just watching RFK in his congressional hearing.
And thinking about how, even to me, it seemed implausible that this could just be about not wanting to pay for universal vaccines for everyone. That there are people who are alarmed and horrified by people getting yearly vaccines for the flu because if they admit it saves lives ... what else will the public demand?
Better for every mother to "do her own research" and feel frightened.
To lose that battle wouldn't just cost them in nylon and the cost of steal buckles, it would represent ... creep. Creep towards the notion that they were in part responsible for the thousands who died in car crashes each year.
How much do you think it cost automakers to add seat-belts to their cars? Probably not that much, when compared with the overall cost of the car. This made it seem incredible to some of the public, for a time, that car manufacturers would be fighting legislation to force them to add seat-belts in bad faith.
But, there was, and always is, a lager issue at hand. To the auto industry seat belts represented public responsibility for the overall safety of their product.
Excellent advice Tom.
I think they were 1/3 scale size swords, so kind of silly and pointless, but if you let them upsell you enough they'd send you a stand so you could mount them all on your wall and each one came with a little booklet about it's role in history.
Why do I remember all of this?
I should bring it up when I see my mom again just to see the face she makes LMAO.
The human mind evolved to listen to and mostly trust other people. I don't really think the average person is set up or well placed to be the sophisticated research-driven type of person you'd need to be to be immersed in advertising all day without being influenced and at times tricked.
The simplest way to avoid being tricked or manipulated is to not see ads whenever possible.
... I still kind of want those "Swords of History" ... *eyes ebay furtively*
I'm really susceptible to ads and so is my husband. I suspect this is true of many people but what makes us rare is we are willing to admit it? It's one of the things we bonded over.
Show me a shamwow commercial and I'm amazed. "Look at all the things it can do!" And just 19.99! (for three installments, plus shipping, terms and conditions may apply)
This is why I avoid ads whenever possible. They work. Even if you watch them thinking "this is trying to manipulate me"
I would have enjoyed that. Such an odd business, though I did have a moment when I was about 13 and got convinced that we needed to get that "Swords of History" subscription bugging my poor mother until she gave me a lecture about advertising.
Apparently the quality of their products varied wildly. And in some ways they almost seem quaint and honest compared to Temu.
But, they did pave the way for the "business model"
Have you made any positive progress? Their app, and I also didn't know this, is "gamified" it has timers that say "buy now or miss the deal" it has lootboxes and reward points. It slurps up your contact list from your phone and tries to rope in everyone you know like Farmville or one of those Maffia Boss facebook games.
Gambling addict treatment programs ask that their participants abstain from Temu because it's got gambling elements and can trigger people.
I remember an episode of "hoarders" where most of what packed the house of a deceased elderly woman were products bought mail order from "dial 1800" commercials. Almost nothing was even opened... but even unopened and brand new all of the junk was still too worthless for the distressed children to even bother with selling. By the time the items arrived she often didn't remember what she ordered.
Their mother died in debt buried in worthless junk.
Call your mother. Call your uncle.
The most frequent shoppers on Temu are over 59 years old. That wasn't what I expected. Based mostly on their marketing, which often seems to involve younger female influencers I would have thought they were selling to young people, but this isn't the case.
The people they are making money from are old. Much like those "dial 1800 commercials" for civil war chess sets from decades ago.
It's just targeting people who are struggling to take care of themselves.
And this hasn't totally ended.
