Cut-throat Competition is Not Good For Everybody

Yesterday and today are the days of Homemade Days, an annual festival that takes place in Brandon Park, close to where we live.  On the face of it, it's just a neighborhood festival for our town, but has also the features of an arts festival.  We have other things sort of like it: a First Friday monthly event, and a Saturday morning Farmers' Market.

This year, Homemade Days were poorly attended, but consider that last year, we didn't have Homemade Days at all, due to COVID.  I don't quite know what the psychology of the vendors and the customers is, but I have noticed that there was quite a good attendance at the morning's Farmers' Market, which is a place where folks who grow produce in their small farms or their homes bring them into town, to this space set up in a parking lot, and sell their produce direct to the customers.  Some of us have suspected that some of these vendors don't actually grow this stuff, but get it wholesale from other vendors, and bring them in, so they're effectively shopkeepers, with mobile shops.

These are not the products we would have looked for in the Homemade Days (often spelled Homade Days), but rather the fun things to be found in a fair, e.g. funnel cakes, lemonade, music in the band-shell, ice cream, deep-fried cookies, hot dogs, and . . . handicrafts.  You can buy anything from necklaces, sea-shells, items made of wood, paintings, potted plants, jewellery, and so on.

However, over the years, the quality seems to have declined.  I think the problem is that the vendors are now focused more on trying to identify what sort of things will sell, what sorts of things are easy to make, and not at all on what sort of things they can make really well.  Making things really well takes a lot of work, and understandably, nobody want to spend a lot of time making something well, when people just won't shell out the money for it.  The customers know the value of money, and would rather keep it to spend later on a quarterpounder, rather than some delectable work of sheer handworked beauty.

Handicrafts are not the only things that have become slaves to market research.  The survey kings have taken over everything from TV to movies to politics, to conspiracy theories.  The New York Times, too, wants to know "How are we doing?"  Fair enough; they would like to know whether I think they suck.  "What sorts of articles would you like to read?"  YouTube wants to know "Is the video above a good suggestion for you?"

There's no going back!  Polling, or market research determines what people are going to do.  Even health systems decide on which departments they would invest their money in, based on customer surveys.  (Shall we create a department of Asthma, or a department of Athlete's Foot?  These are the decisions that will make or break them.)  Meanwhile, Geisinger Health Systems play a vicious game.  They look for any location where the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center takes over an existing health facility, and immediately acquire land close to it, and put in a facility of their own, to compete with it.  (I have heard, on the grapevine, that this is sort of an economic war between Aetna on the one hand, and Geisinger Insurance Corp on the other.  I hope it is false.)

The only people who have the luxury of completely ignoring marketing are those, like me, who are retired.  But even we sometimes worry whether the Home Insurance we have is the best according to recent surveys.  And of course, you probably know well---those of you who are also retired---the volume of junk mail that comes to your house.  In addition, because my wife sends money to charities, all sorts of charities hound her continually to send more.  I don't blame the charities themselves; they hire fresh graduates for their direct mail departments, who have earned pestering by mail degrees which are precisely focused on this particular job for accredited non-profits.

Anyway, this is the greatest country in the world, and our junk mail is the best.  Let that thought give you consolation.

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What Barack H. Obama delivered to us

I'm going to talk about all sorts of things, and if I lose track of what I'm saying, my apologies in advance!

Five years before Obama arrived in the Senate, nobody would have thought seriously of the possibility of a Black president.  But it's a lot deeper than just that Obama made it into the White House.

Imagine a little 5th grader, who was seeing the elections on TV.  This kid is about 9 or 10.  But eight years later, when this kid watches elections once again, the kid is now 17 years old, and has his or her own opinions, and Obama has been in the White House for eight years, half the lifetime of this kid.  So when people talk about women and minorities running for national office, if they talk scornfully about it being unimaginable that minorities should run for national office, this kid is thinking: whyever not?  Wasn't Obama president?  And wasn't he one of the more effective ones?

Kids who might have been a little older, would have had similar opinions, especially when they hear Trump boast about what he did for unemployment.  Some of this explains what happened during the mid-term elections.  The point is that race is much less of a factor among people just coming into being eligible to vote than it might have been before Obama.  For older men, whose self-images depended on their being able to boss Black folk and minorities around, race was even more of a factor.

Let's not be too critical.  For people whose jobs had been managing mostly Blacks and minorities, this could have been a huge deal; for instance, prison guards.

 

But that is not the main point I am making, actually, though none of this would have come about if not for Obama's ground-breaking presidency.  If you would like to see the article that sparked my thinking: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-barack-obama.html  (I'm not sure whether the NYT will let you read that for free.)

For decades, the guys who ran for president were: George H.W. Bush; Bill Clinton; George W. Bush.  Then along comes Barack Obama.  When Obama gave a public address, you got the distinct impression that he was measuring his words very carefully.  And he was not doing it in real time, no; it had all been done days, even weeks in advance.  He had estimated---usually accurately---what the reactions of the public would be; in fact, all the possible reactions of everyone with different political leanings, and how important would be their reaction to the health of the Federal Government.  Now, to be sure, advisers to the presidents did this all the time, since the beginning of presidential advisers.  But in Obama's case, you got the impression that a lot more of these planned statements were from Obama himself.

In fact, there was a lot of belief that Obama was a lot cleverer than working-class Whites could tolerate.  If there was one thing worse than a Black in the White House, it was a clever Black.  (And the only thing worse than a clever Black in the White House, it would be a Puerto-Rican woman.  I just don't get it about Puerto Ricans and Americans; why is Puerto Rico still not a state, and why are Puerto Ricans so reviled?  It just does not compute for me.  And why did Trump toss rolls of paper towels at them?  Was there a sort of dog-whistle insult there?  I strongly believe so.)

Consider the 2020 elections, and the debates leading up to it.  Andrew Yang was a candidate, and there was no doubt that he was quite a clever gentleman, even if his grey cells might not have been up to up arm-wrestling those of Obama.  Let's face it: because of how complex our National problems are: health, economics, culture, environmental, social justice, you could expect only an at least moderately bright and highly-educated person running for president under the Democrat banner.  Under the Republican banner, you could expect either someone glamorous, someone who was a TV personality, someone who has had lots of illegal affairs with teenagers, but someone whose public face would be: 'I'm as Dumb as a Couple of Posts!'  That does not mean that the Republican candidate would not be guided by clever policies.  But they would be policies put together by behind-the-scenes guys that are designed to (1) get the Republicans elected, (2) make it very inconvenient for Blacks and minorities to vote, and if there's any time left over, (3).make it almost impossible to develop Clean Energy.  Then, of course, there is the almost irresistible desire to destroy any delicate peace deals that the Democrats might have put in place.  And ruining any plans to provide more affordable health care for poor Americans.  (One thing the Republicans just can't stand is poor folk who are too healthy, at low cost.)

Finally, I wonder whether the Republicans are thinking at all.  Every inane scandal they get into, every silly conspiracy theory they swallow, every instance of gullibility they exhibit, is one more reason, one more bit of evidence for the entire Republican ticket to be rejected by Millennials.

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