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To what extent are our preferences shaped and ordered by the range of our available choices and our perceptions thereof?
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If to a great extent, is the manifestation of rationality in consumer purchases and other expressed choice ultimately and irreducibly tautological?
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If so, what can we do about it?
Immense IMO.
In the case which it doesn’t have to be, yes.
Propose cheaper, more private, more transparent, more secure and more efficient systems. If the change is discouraged, you know you found yourself a group of ‘villans’. The rest lies in the distribution of knowledge.
So long as people don’t retro-actively condemn these people who have been system violators, the transition should be relatively smooth absent a few ego hits.
I find it extremely interesting that a concrete market of entrapranuerism is illegal in regards to both sex and suicide.
I also find intellectual property law increasing this abuse, even though it is intended to stifle it… it still advocates wealth concentration in small bands; by discouraging the freedom to earn it in a way which promotes distribution.
This is precisely where the abuse is occurring.
Both of these resources should be abstracted into a tax supported format of consumerism. Taxpayers pay for the medical check-ups, server costs, national employees to facilitate the system operates and that data is retrievable in instances of crime.
Other than that, the rest of the market runs with less over-all stress and corruption on behalf of all involved. It’s a matter of placing all areas of economy which are being used as non-transparent resource funnels into public ownership; while not controlling how the public uses these communication resources.
Place the pressure on transparency whenever possible while collapsing the capacity for the motivated operator to corrupt the system. This is achieved through the recognition of law and the dissemination of basic knowledge.
You can’t deny something once all your options are gone, as everybody else knows there are no options. The solution is to eliminate these options through a use of law that is consistent with all avaialble data and inference from the axioms used to establish that law. It effectively creates a very strong pressure to be honest or to forake life.
-Justhink
In instances where knowledge or intelligence is used to virtualize consent, we have to be hypervigilant in regards to collapsing the resource which allows this occur. The resource is always a law, which allows a black-box - the law itself must be replaced in such a manner that a person who possesses this knowledge or intelligence has no further advantage in regards to the abuse of that system - effectively collapsing the space with which one seriously ponders taking that advantage.
-Justhink
Well, ask an incomprehensible question, get an incomprehensible answer.
I’m more inclined to think the incomprehensible answer is a result of a generally incomprehensible poster. Justhink seems to have a language all his own. He sounds like someone who’s mixed together bits of rhetoric from existential philosophers and cultural deconstructionists. I have a friend who sounds almost like that when he talks about consumerism, there must be something about the topic that inspires arcane lingo of no fixed meaning or purpose.
A quick look at the OP’s question #3 shows that he thought the questions weren’t meaningless. He’s presupposing that the situation described by an affirmative answer to the first two questions is one that can (and from the phrasing of the question, should) be changed. So whatever it is, he has an opinion on it. Gadarene, care to clarify and include your own views, so as to facilitate some discussion?
I appreciate your confidence in me, RexDart. You’re right that there’s actual sense to be made of the OP. I was in a hurry when I wrote it and, as Bryan points out, it’s very poorly worded. Sorry 'bout that. Here’s another try:
We tend to believe that people’s preferences are reflected in the choices that they make. If I have an apple and a nectarine in my refrigerator and, in a moment of hunger, eat the nectarine, it can be fairly inferred that at that moment my preference was for the nectarine over the apple.
I’m just making the observation that in a broader consumer context, our preferences are shaped by our range of available choices. That is, if my preferences are ordered 1) orange, 2) nectarine, 3) apple, and all I have to choose between is the nectarine and the apple, I’ll eat the nectarine. And while it may then be fair to assume that I like nectarines more than apples, it doesn’t follow that, given my choice, I like nectarines more than all possible fruit. Furthermore, my perception of the choices may not match up with reality. The orange may be available, unbeknownst to me, and my choice of the nectarine might thus signal a false preference for nectarines over oranges. Or, conversely, maybe the reason I prefer nectarines over apples is that when I was five, I had an apple with a worm in it, spat it out, and haven’t eaten an apple since. In that case, it may be that I’d prefer apples to nectarines today, if only I tried apples again, and therefore even my choice of nectarines over apples is not a “true” preference.
sigh This is a dog’s breakfast of an analogy. I’m just saying that there are ramifications in both political and consumer culture if it’s true that the preferences we express change depending on the information we have, the advertising we see, the range of candidates on the ballot, et cetera.
This is surely no clearer; I’ll take a whack at it tomorrow when I’m less wiped out.
Absolutely agree, but I’m not sure what can be done since the only solution would be for all people to have every option permanently open to them, and to have full information on each. If the range from which I select an option is limited by my experience and knowledge, then the only way for me to exercise a truer choice is for me to have both full knowledge of every option and the ability to exercise each one. That’s not an option in this world.
Example: I might like bananas in gold leaf more than oranges, nectarines and apples, but if I don’t know they exist, and can’t afford one, then it’s impossible for me to consider that.
I think the only real way to address these limits is on a low-level, case-by-case basis. Electoral choice might be increased by compulsory voting; compulsory education on the electoral system; mandated tests on the policies of each and every candidate (and so on, although these are obviously in themselves highly debatable actions). You can only start at the bottom; Gadarene, did you have a particular area in mind?
The final problem is that people don’t often want to be fully informed, and in my opinion any move to forcibly increase people’s knowledge of available options may also be limiting their freedom.
The trouble is that it takes time and effort to educate oneself. And different people will put different values on that effort. I have a friend who never makes a purchase without researching each and every brand, comparing prices, functionality, warranty, reading consumer reports, etc. After a few weeks, she finally feels confortable buying the DVD player or what have you.
You could argue that her research enabled her to make the best choice. But what about the cost of that research? Suppose the DVD player cost $100.00, and she spent 10 hours researching, and she makes $25.00/hour at work. One could argue that she cost herself $250.00 doing the research. If she had bought a crappy DVD player and threw it in the trash she would have only lost $100.00.
And then consider that even if someone can’t explictly charge for their time, there are still other opportunity costs. She has a young daughter. Maybe it would be worth more to spend those 10 hours with her daughter?
I think most products available are generally of decent quality at a decent price, if only because some people take the time to figure out what the good deals are. So most people are generally pretty safe picking out a brand at random. You may not get the best or the cheapest or the one you wanted, but you generally get something that works well enough that you didn’t waste your money completely.
Hmm… ok. I’ll add more incomprehensibility to illustrate the first replies.
“A” is used to sustain life and is non-addictive hypo-allergenic to 99% of the population.
“B” is designed as a cheaper solution to “A”, yet reaveals itself to be allergienic and addictive to most of the population.
“B” in this sense backfires and is labelled “C”: “That which is outlawed”. The emergent “B” which takes the place of the old “B” (which is now “C”) is designed to make product “A” addictive to most of the population, yet places “A” into being too expensive for most of the population because “B” is suddently so cheap and acts almost like “A” to those who use it. Now A, B and C all create dependencies; except “A” when “B” is not ever used.
Only 1% of the population can afford product “A” inspite of it being just as discernable as “B” in effectiveness, excepting that all individuals who are successful use product “A” exclusively. This is used to shame those who cannot afford product “A” and those who cannot be as effective when using product “A”. The population is taxed to debt by trying to attain product “A” exclusively, while using product “B” as the default to arrive there. After debt has been incurred, this population returns to the use of product “B” and “C”, completely susceptable to the scorn of those who have only used product “A” exclusively; and crimillized to the degree that product “C” is used at all; even though the distribution of “C” is key to the cenration of work resource. The use of “C” ‘uncriminalized’, creates shame and fear in order to subsist even half as effectively as being on product “A” without ever having had used product “B”.
Some astute observers notice this inspite of evidence that a small portion of people can use “B” without becoming addicted to “A”.
To discourage the profitability “B” is causing, also in the mindsets of those who now have addictive patterning; these individuals point out this dynamic.
To offset this, product “D” is developed to appear precisely like product “A” except that it is a combination of “A”, “B” and “C”.
Product “A” is then moved underground, at which point it can survive behind the veil of the law as another form of product “C”.
Those who distribute product “C” are offered product “D” instead of “B” and lots of “C”. They believe they are recieving product “A” in it’s pure form, and move from underground to over-ground; discarding the use of product “C”. It is the job of those who recieve product “D” to control the localle where product “A” is actually distributed and authorized. They are also charged with denying the existence of product “E” and effectively seizing all traffic of it as another form of product “C (squared)”. Product “E” is the cure for the corruption of product “A”.
-Justhink
c’mon, why arent we more thankful for the “marketing” efforts our pals in commercial broadcast radio are doing for us by introducing us to the best in new music! oh, wait they’re not?
what really makes me laugh is when I hear that the music industry is going to basically force Internet radio out of business, but will not enforce the same fees for commercial broadcast radio since they serve a “marketing” purpose in bringing us “new” music.
I have been exposed to many many more new artists as a result of Net radio in the past year than broadcast radio, handily (actually since net radio has a few weeks to a months head start, ive heard of NO new bands on broadcast)
When the last appeals have ended, and net radio is taken down, I am going to turn off commercial broadcast radio and not listen to it. Furthermore, I will also make an effort to not even listen to any bands except the ones i got into as a result of word of mouth or indie stations.
Ludovic picks a big fat easy target for the phenom. posited in the OP. There’s theoretically a very wide range to the types of music individual listeners might enjoy, and the range of genres individuals and sub-groups might like. Music is not fantastically expensive just to make and distribute (at least with the internet) – unlike, say, special effects laden movies, where we shouldn’t be too stunned that as a practical matter, we have to take what the studios give us. So why do we often get mainstream music that is prepackaged, bland, etc.? In some cases, it doesn’t even seem like the labels are pandering to taste or blanding down the music by using focus groups to determine what “we” (or most of us) would like; they just seem to decide by fiat from the top down that everyone should be excited about, say, Sigur Ros in September, and then about, say, The Hives in January.
I don’t know that it’s shocking or nefarious that industry executives are tempted to do this; finding out what people want by trial and error takes a long time; developing niche markets is labor intensive; and – to be fair – consumers are lazy and risk averse. Many, many people want to hear “good music” – but, especially if your tastes are not too eclectic or readily expanded, the financial and opportunity cost of going out to small clubs, or buying lots of CDs, in the hopes that 1 out of 20 will prove really interesting to them. So, we let our friends, or critics, or the radio D.J., serve as our filter; even if we don’t like what they present as the next thing, at least we haven’t wasted too much time/money in listening to something bad; and every now and then (if my tastes aren’t too particular) their choices, whether made by focus group, random dart throw, cowardly middle-of-the-road pandering, will turn out to be . . . listenable enough that we won’t turn the radio off, or will even buy the CD. And this laziness makes a certain amount of sense – in politics, I it’s called “rational ignorance” – most people simply can’t go out and research every candidate or his positions or reliability; they wouldn’t get any work done, and there is little likelihood that even if their research enables them to pick the “right” guy, this “right” choice will lead to any tangible benefit to them that is substantial enough to outweigh the opportunity cost of all their research. So . . . they rely on secondary sources for judging candidates and issues.
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/01/rational-ignorance.html
A similar process holds true for music, and consumer products, and so on. An additional complicating factor is that, especially in subjective areas, there is no easy way to judge the “best” option available to a consumer – and we have a tendency to feel intimidated when trying to make subjective evaluations about these topics, especially when an aura of “taste” or the recherche or “artsiness” is involved – as with much entertainment. Who knows what the best music is, even if you have time to listen to each and every band yourself? All the more incentive to put yourself in the hands of the “tastemakers.” Even when the tastemakers start out as disinterested – that is, not directly benefiting financially from setting the popular taste (though they may have any number of other hidden agendas, nepotism, egomania, etc. as less-than-pure motives clouding their taste/judgment)., the very existence and acceptance of tastemakers setting the cultural agenda from on high opens the door toward corruption and exploitation by those who do have a financial interest in dictating, rather than attempting to gauge and then satisfy (or even to build upon and complement), the popular taste.