Showing posts with label Economic Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic Crisis. Show all posts
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Products and Services for the Permanently Unemployed Consumer - ClubOrlov
Does permanent job loss mean that someone is no longer a consumer? In some cases the answer is yes: (But) some people continue to spend as if they still had a job, and the inevitable result is eventual destitution. Once they run out of unemployment benefits, savings and credit, their purchasing ability decreases to the barest minimum provided by food stamps. I don't mean to sound harsh, but this makes them rather uninteresting from a new product marketing perspective.
Friday, February 12, 2010Also see: Closing The Collapse Gap by Dimitry Orlov (@ Energybulletin.net), a point by point comparison of the collapse of the Russian economy compared to what might happen under similar circumstances in the U.S.
Products and Services for the Permanently Unemployed ConsumerDeveloping and marketing products for a shrinking market poses an interesting set of challenges. Even if a company does an outstanding job and is able to steadily grow its market share, these gains are negated if the market itself continually shrinks by an ever larger amount. For instance, a company might have an outstanding electric vehicle design, but it is destined to fall by the wayside during a time when the number of consumers that qualify for a car loan is trending downward, the used car market is glutted by repossessions, and federal, state and municipal governments are unable to upgrade their car fleets because their budgets are far in the red.
Consumer product development caters to individuals who live in houses or condos, have jobs to which they commute by car, and generate a steady stream of disposable income. This is the group to which the business press often refers collectively as 'the consumer': one often reads that the consumer is retrenching, that the consumer's credit is tapped out, that the consumer's disposable income is shrinking and so on. The consumer is not growing.
What is there left to do except design and manufacture fewer and fewer products?
The answer is as simple as it is surprising...
In Full @ ClubOrlov
In full @ Energybulletin.net
Monday, December 21, 2009
Have A Clusterfuck (Nation) Christmas - Blue Christmas, James Howard Kunstler
Blue Christmas
By James Howard Kunstler
December 21, 2009As the end-credits rolled for James Cameron's new movie, Avatar, the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show -- but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march.
More to the point, the depiction of our national character through the whole course of the film was of a thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature. Nice.
And the final irony was that Cameron had used theatrical technology of the latest and greatest kind to depict America's broader techno-grandiosity -- as the army's brute robotic warriors fell to the spears and arrows of the simple blue space aliens.
Altogether, it was a weird moment in entertainment history, and perhaps in the American experience per se. No doubt audiences overseas will go wild with delight, too, but perhaps with a clearer notion of what they are clapping for than the enthralled masses of zombie Americans.
The infatuation with technology, and the disgusting cockiness that goes with it (so well-captured in Avatar), is but one facet of the psychosis gripping the nation -- and by that I mean the profound detachment from reality.
We have no idea what is happening to us and, naturally, no idea of what we are going to do.
I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy.
He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.)
There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land...
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Friday, September 25, 2009
Market Capitalism 101: Constantly Expanding Markets Are A Must, Despite The Cost To Your Society
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Economic crises are not natural disasters. They are brought about by the actions of bankers, officials, and developers, not to mention ordinary folks struggling to get by in a world we didn’t choose. They appear beyond our control, but they are not inescapable facts of life.
For all the talk of collapse, capitalism itself is as healthy as ever. The fundamental relationships remain unchanged: employers and employees, politicians and voters, police and policed. Our masters may loan us cars or houses to pacify us, but we still lack control over our own lives.
Crises like this are part of the protection racket that keeps them in business.
They profit on the industries that heat up the earth’s atmosphere, and when hurricanes destroy our neighborhoods they replace them with condominiums and sell us energy-saving light bulbs.
They profit on the invasions that secure more resources for the economy, and also on the occupations in which our friends and relatives die.
They profited from the subprime mortgages that contributed to the latest disaster, and now they’re profiting from the bailout.
Imagine another kind of crisis, one that could really pose a threat to their precious market: neighbors defending each other from eviction, workers seizing the goods they need, people building communities based on cooperation and self-determination.
Imagine a world in which we’d never be vulnerable to the whims of the market again.
As far as we’re concerned, it can’t come soon enough.
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