This is why I live in California. I want to prefer the outside to the inside. I want fast food to be non-existent. I want walking/biking to be quicker than driving.
Anything that nudges me towards a better lifestyle is a bonus.
To be fair to them, taking a great picture at a pumpkin patch is an American tradition. They often go on the Christmas Card. I was out there attaching a tripod to a fence and trying to get a good family portrait for my daughter’s first year walking.
If they spent the majority of the day outside, I feel like they have a leg up on many kids who never leave the house.
I was trying to do similar things on MySpace when I was their age; Or spending similar amounts of time chained to my desk chatting with girls on AIM; Or more frequently losing 8 hours at a clip to playing an FPS.
I had one staying in my house this weekend. They’re not as bad as we think they are. Most of my concern sits with the way the parents behave.
My evidence is only anecdotal, but as someone who grew up in, and lived all over America, and lived abroad, I couldn’t agree more with OP. My friends in London, and their friends, many of whom grew up quite wealthy, were nearly indistinguishable from anyone else in London. They rarely bought anything (except drugs), even on vacation (I traveled with a few a couple different times).
In America, people proudly declare shopping a hobby.
In the rural Pennsylvanian I grew up in, the multimillionaire family that owned the town plant went to the same church as most of the rest of the town (excepting catholics), sent their kids to the same public school, and generally socialized freely with the rest of the town. One of their daughters was the same age as me and, although not a friend, was a close acquaintance for as long as I can remember up until the end of highschool when I moved away. That family was as you describe, 'nearly indistinguishable' from the rest of the town. Nearly indistinguishable, except there was no mistaking who they were because the plant was named after them, as was the highschool's football field (which they apparently paid for.) Also, the nearest "shopping mall" was about half an hour away. Shopping as a hobby was alien to me, nobody I knew did that until I went to college.
Point is, America is a big place. If you think you understand America after watching a bunch of American movies and TV shows, you probably don't.
> In America, people proudly declare shopping a hobby.
In America, some subset of people declare shopping a hobby. And in the social media era, that subset amplifies that preference via their online presence.
To be clear, I’m not saying consumerism doesn’t exist; it clearly does. But if we’re going on anecdotes, I’ve generally experienced the opposite of what you describe. Not because what you describe doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t seem to play a major role in the lives of most people I come in contact with.
The wealthy people I do know don’t flaunt it, and would prefer to just live normal lives. They see wealth as a path to freedom, not stuff & things.
Social and news media both skew our perspectives on the world.
I agree with most of what you’re saying here, but something that I didn’t communicate well is how far reaching this consumerism is.
‘Everything is bigger in Texas’ is actually a legitimate characterization. Bigger portions, bigger houses, bigger vehicles, etc. (I grew up there, live in NorCal now)
Bigger => more consumption. You naturally buy less when you run out of places to put things. Europe is tighter. Public transit is better. Groceries are walkable, so you buy less more often, and only what you need => less waste.
Paper towels aren’t even really a thing over there. Of course they exist, but no one buys 24 packs. They use rags. Same story for toilet paper. They use bidets.
Most Europeans grow up playing football (soccer) or rugby and take up running as later life exercise. Americans are much more likely to exercise in ways that requires a bunch of purchases. They have space for home gyms that Europeans wouldn’t dream of, often even if they’re not wealthy.
There are fewer public spaces, so people seem more likely to consume during leisure time in whatever way suits them (like aforementioned shopping, nails, bowling, movies, gun range, etc).
Anyway… all of that to say my original comment was light on content, but there are massive cultural differences that go way beyond the way a few wealthy people present themselves that contribute to my sense that Americans are generally much more consumptive.
Did I make claims about entire countries, or did I readily admit that I was only sharing my own small taste, explicitly stating that it shouldn’t be sufficient for broad conclusions?
> The biggest culture shock I had coming to North America, how materialistic, exhibitionistic and keeping-up-with-the-joneses *the whole culture is*
And you replied
> My evidence is only anecdotal, but as someone who grew up in, and lived all over America, and lived abroad, *I couldn’t agree more with OP*
You then went on to share your anecdote, seemingly to back up your opening statement. Maybe it wasn't your intent to make broad claims, but when reading your comment in the context of the parent comments, it's easy to conclude just that.
That’s fair. I appreciate the effort you put into the clarification.
I do agree with OP, but I do not believe either of us have provided sufficient evidence to establish our assertions as indisputable, and wouldn’t have expected my comment to be convincing.
It would be impossible to communicate the life experience that has led me to my belief in a written comment, so I guess a better response to the person who responded to me would’ve been: “I did not arrive at my conclusion in the way that you have suggested, but I do stand by my broad belief.”
"Good results" is a subjective measure. The guys winning capitalism are a lot more likely to think the results are good than the people they're standing on.
Who in the world, without some flavor of capitalism, is doing better? China needed to let individuals own companies to get where they are, even if they reserve the right to disappear those individuals at any time.
There’s a bit of a difference here, in that the landlord is also coming out the other side with an appreciating asset, not pure costs and the consumer coming out of the transaction with the asset.
The landlord gets 100% of the appreciation as well as 100% of the equity being built by the mortgage payments while the tenants are forced to pay for everything except the initial investment. It's extremely unfair and hurts the most vulnerable people in society.
Sorry but this is an ignorant take of someone who I presume does not own property. I would have thought similar until we bought a house. Some costs that a renter never thinks about: property taxes, home insurance, flood insurance, leaky roofs, flooded basements, mold remediation, HVAC system replacements, the list goes on. If you think a landlord buys a house and never has to put another dollar in, you are on crack.
If you are a landlord you face plenty of other risks - time between tennants, you incur all the expenses and none of the revenue. Ditto if your renter stops paying and it takes you months or years to evict them. Or your tennant does damage to your property that their security deposit doesn't come close to covering.
On top of all that, there are real risks of asset decline. Just because that hasn't happened recently in most places doesn't mean it won't happen. I can name 5 plausible scenarios under which my house ends up never being worth what I paid for it.
It seems to me that you and others claiming that being a landlord is free money just have zero idea of what it actually takes.
I don't understand how anyone can view this as unfair. It's as basic as basic economics gets. It is obviously the case that downstream consumers of goods and services pay more than upstream suppliers. The initial investment is an enormous risk for the landlord, not something to just shrug off.
I guess if you view housing as somehow exempt from market dynamics, then this view holds water. I'm sympathetic to that view, honestly.
Housing market dynamics are strongly influenced by federal policy and the National Association of Realtors is one of the biggest spending lobbyist groups in the country so I would say that by design the housing market is unique and I believe that landlords are abusing that situation, intentionally or not, in a way that harms vulnerable people.
Many markets are strongly influenced by federal policy and have enormous lobbying groups, and capitalism by its nature harms vulnerable people. I don't see what makes housing unique in this sense.
The restaurant isn't disassembled when you leave, when you eat a meal at a establishment you pay for the upkeep of a building that will grow in value over time and yet receive no upside. If you take an Uber, you pay the auto loan of the person driving you. I guess a pure service like housecleaning doesn't leave behind a productive asset, although the business itself is one.
Obviously you get a hard product when you get a meal. You get someone's labour when you ride and Uber and consume gas and car.
When you rent, you basically are buying someone else a house. You don't get any service in many cases, as the landlord can contract our 100% of maintenance and repair and still make massive amounts of money.
When you eat at a restaurant you are in the very same way also buying them a restaurant. That food will only satiate you for a few hours and eventually you will have to eat again, having nothing to show for the service. In the same way you can rent a house from someone, have shelter from the elements for a time and once that business has concluded have nothing to show for it.
I don't' advise eating out too much or renting long term if you can avoid it. I also don't advise living in a major city. You can more easily take the first two pieces of advice if you take the third first.
No, you're absolutely not buying them a restaurant. They are fundamentally making money because they provide labour in exchange for it.
A landlord is not providing labour. They are acting as a middle-man between you and the bank. They provide no service to society. A restaurant is, as they provide cooked food. One is a zero-sum game, the other is actually producing something.
Your advice is frankly shit on the societal level. There is no way for everyone to avoid long-term rentals unless we do things you are opposed to. Equally it's impossible for everyone to avoid living in big cities, the entire economy would collapse. It's senseless to punish people for doing things that are necessary for our common prosperity and interests, such as living in major cities.
‘ A landlord is not providing labour.’ All built structures undergo entropic decay so maintenance would count as labour being done in both cases, the apartment and the restaurant using the textbook definition. These costs would be packaged into the rent and the price of meals.
Plenty of landlords subcontract maintenance, actually. There is landlording, and there is maintenance, some landlords do both, many do no maintenance themselves.
So through market calculation we can deduce that maintenance is only a small part of rent, the majority of rent is derived from being a middleman with the bank.
This is not the case for a restaurant, you'll find that all of the value in takeout comes from the labour and the capital necessary to make that labour efficient.
Would any landlord sign an agreement stating that you would do all the maintenance and then allow you to live there for free? Of course not.
That's not what work done in lieu of rent means. Work done in lieu of rent will only replace part of rent. For example I might get annoyed that repairs aren't getting done and offer to do them instead of paying on month of rent as part of a yearly lease, but no one will allow you to only do maintenance and never pay rent.
Show me someone who, on the open markets, offers to allow you to live in a property in exchange for nothing else.
>no one will allow you to only do maintenance and never pay rent.
> Show me someone who, on the open markets, offers to allow you to live in a property in exchange for nothing else.
Property caretaker
A property caretaker is a person, group, or organization that cares for real estate for trade or financial compensation, and sometimes as a barter for rent-free living accommodations.[0]
Those are borderline, but they’re pretty close to being fully in the Tenderloin. That’s the roughest and one of the cheapest parts of San Francisco proper.
Not terrible? The first link is a modern 80m2 flat (sounds huge for 1 bedroom to me) with great facilities right on the sea front. Do you have example of what you would consider good, because it already sounds pretty luxurious to me?
To be fair, much of what you describe is just part of becoming a mature company. At some point, flat can't work anymore. At some point, the impact of individuals is diluted and the number of people needed is so high, that outsize rewards become impossible or risk being sure signs of inequality.
As much as I appreciate equality goals (what role, level, value ranges are there for), and believe their benefits outweigh their costs, they function by lowering ceilings and lifting floors. The only way to earn outsize bonuses these days is to be directly tied to outsize earnings (e.g. commissions), and that's hard to do with engineers.
The engineers route to that kind of risk/reward dynamic is by founding / joining something early (that actually grants options) and trying to make it huge.
"mature" is the wrong word here. We were "mature" for a decade before this expansion. We had no debt, big profit margins, and our customers loved us so much we didn't need advertising to have exponential growth.
Our decision to "grow up" was more a decision to try addressing non-email markets, and hire so many people and buy so much real estate that profit then depended on that choice.
Now they have half the talented staff because of boneheaded management decisions, half the loyal customers because the team stopped being able to address their needs, etc. If that's "mature" to bankers or VC's then I'd call them over-mature.
That’s fair, but you have to recognize that couldn’t have lasted forever. Your space was on its way to heavy commoditization, like software spaces almost always are.
Ignoring the shifting sands would’ve likely meant a more gradual decline, instead of an unpleasant growth, and would’ve almost certainly yielded less than the chosen path.
The talented people and half the customers would’ve likely bailed either way.
