Commenter Archive

Gentrification is a tricky issue. I think every neighborhood except one that I have lived in post-college was gentrified.

Here is where the trick comes in though: Where are young people supposed to live when they get out of college?

Imagine you are a 22 year old college graduate who was born and raised somewhere far away from a major city. You land a job in a major city at 45,000 USD a year. This is a decent but not great income. These 22-year olds can't afford to live in the already upper-middle class parts of the city so they head to said neighborhoods that you described above.

Do you think that kids who are born into the suburbs have a moral imperative to remain in suburbs as to not displace anyone? Should they live at home with mom and dad until they can afford an upper-middle class district of the city on their own?

These are serious questions.

I don't doubt it but this whole DIY/Artisnal culture makes me wonder:

What does it mean for a country to have a vast middle class?

The Industrial Revolution of the Victorian Era turned luxury goods like Chocolate and Soap and Tea and made them products available to everyone. When I was in middle and high school, the GAP was considered a great equalizer because most students seemed to get their clothing at the GAP.

The Mast Brothers seems to be indicative of a return to taking a product available to everyone and wanting it to be a luxury good again because big corporations make a bad product for whatever.

Politics creates strange bedfellows sometimes. I am not opposed to the Mast Brother existing or fancy hipster coffee places but I would like them to acknowledge that a 9 dollar chocolate bar is a luxury product.

This was a very good essay.

I don't know where I fit in on the Hipster milleau. I was born at the tail-end of Generation X in 1980. This probably makes me part of the first wave of hipsterdom. I graduated from one of those elite liberal arts colleges that are a hot bed of liberalism. Most of my cultural likes are firmly in the Brooklyn-San Francisco liberal category but I'd like to think this is out of sincerity and education over irony. And I can't wear skinny jeans! But I do have an MFA.

My thoughts are largely along the Thomas Frank line and that Hipsters are largely a continuing of the early-90s grunge and Generation X culture. In San Francisco and Brooklyn, you see some prime Generation Xers (people born between 1968-1973) who easily transformed from grunge into Hipster. And they can still listen to Wilco! Sometimes these prime Gen Xers have children and families and sometimes they do not. I think that Gen X is a bit different from the Baby Boomers in that there is a resistance against being seen as uncool. They don't want to become square like their parents and drop the Stones and Hendrix for Kenny G and Michael Bolton. Hence, Madison Avenue and the "rebel consumer". So you are right that this is partially status seeking, becoming a parent no longer means needing to drop out of the cool scene. The ultimate eptiome of this was a birthday party for a child I saw at the Brooklyn Brewery. The kids got to run around and the parents did not have to be anywhere uncool like a Chucky Cheese or something else more kid-appropriate.

I think there is a social status thing in the DIY-small batch economy but it is also born of economic privilege. A lot of these products are sold at premium prices: 9 dollars for a chocolate bar, 12 dollars for a jar of jam, 14 dollars for a four-pack of Dogfish Head beer, 95 dollars for a tie made of chambray, etc. It takes money to afford these products and the people buying them are wither white-collar professionals like me or people with independent sources of income. I am not sure where to put Community Supported Agriculture on this social status list.

I know a lot of people who qualify as hipsters. Some people might think I qualify as one (even though my body type rebels against skinny jeans and I dislike facial hair on myself), they are largely sweet and good people but some of them seem to be pre-empting their burnout (by announcing that they know it will come.) Only time will tell if these people stay hipster and rebel consumers as they get older (and as parents) or switch to being square suburban parents.
Only time will tell.

Though I do think straight, white, male is a bit wrong. I think straight and white is a better co-opter.

One thing I can't tell is how many hipsters come from working-class families and then escaped to the elite schools or big cities as compared to how many are children of the upper-middle suburban/urban class. The co-opting of blue collar culture is one of the most problematic aspects of hipster culture to me. A place like this is the ultimate hipster bar and one of my least favorite bars in SF:

http://buckshot-sf.blogspot.com/

The whole rural, working class hunting lounge in San Francisco seems odd to me. Plus they play their music too loud* What I can't tell is whether the appeal is because people come from these communities and miss it or they are just upper-middle class suburban kids co-opting working class culture. A bunch of the hipsters I know of do seem to come from rural and working class roots. I think the Mast Brothers (creators of ten dollar chocolate bars in Brooklyn) are from rural working class routes but can't remember where I got this information from. The creator of Dogfish Head is a farm kid.

One thing that is interesting about hipsters is that they seem to be marrying a lot earlier than their Baby Boomer parents and Generation Xers. A lot of Generation Xers I know did not get married until their mid-30s or later. Many are still unmarried in their early 40s. I seem to know many hipsters who married their college sweethearts right after college. This is intriguing to me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. When I was 25, very few of my friends and cohort were married. Now I see a lot of people who are 25 and married and they come from the same upper-middle class/education and career first background as me.

Okay this is not completely true. I have seen some regional differences in the price of things but not by much. A 2-liter bottle of coke costs a 1.69 in San Francisco and maybe 1.39 somewhere else expensive.

It is still called a suggested retail price but have you ever seen a store not sell something at the suggested retail price?

Not including coupons and sales of course.

Did someone really do that?

That is amazingly obtuse.

These places don't have coffeshops attached.

Sometime I go in and buy a 2-4 books at a time or more. Othertimes I go in and come out with a list of books.

Who doesn't?

So here is another ethical inquiry.

I buy plenty of books from my local bookstores. However, I write down the names of books on my phone and then take those books out the library because I don't have unlimited self-space and they looked interesting enough to read but not to buy for one reason or another.*

Is this unethical? Is it somewhat less unethical than browsing at a local book store and then going to Amazon?

Basically a manufacturer can say to a retailer: We won't give you our product if you sell it for below retail price X.

I am currently working in antitrust and took a course. I think you are looking at the wrong case.

The Supreme Court gave manufacturers the right to set the terms of the deal including refusing to deal with retailers who don't obey their price suggestions. This is called the Unilateral or Colgate doctrine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateral_Policy

My gut says unethical but I think a lot of the stereo stores now make their money by also doing installation stuff and creating full on sound systems for homes, so the guy has something else to sell.

"Actually, my real ethical concern here is the maker of this marvelous machine; that dictates it cannot be discounted. Retailers selling this are doing the manufacturer/distributor a service. I’m not sure I find it ethical that they can dictate the margin of profit the retailers can make of the sale."

I don't know if I would make this a consideration of ethics but I am curious about your logic.

The reason certain brands do this is largely for branding reasons and usually on the high-end for products. Not for big luxury companies that everyone knows like Prada, Hermes, Coach, etc but for luxury brands with a smaller and more niche appeal. Though I am not sure whether this normally happens in the coffee-maker industry.

There is a clothing brand I like a lot. They are fairly obscure and most people would consider them pretty expensive*. They make all their products in the U.S. and in much smaller batches than the GAP and even big luxury brands like Paul Smith and John Varvatos. This company has a rule that they do not allow their clothing to be sold on-line. Retail companies can show the product on-line but they always include a line about "We are not allowed to sell X on-line if you are interested please call us at...."

This is the interesting stuff about business to me. How do you maintain an elite status, how much of a product can you make and still be considered luxury. I largely like this stuff for the psychological reasons over anything else.

*And such reliable sellers than one store I know never puts it on sale. They will put every other company on sale but this one.

Good point. Most stores (especially large corporate ones) are very good at writing down all the fine print about what should and should not be included in a discount for this reason.

The grocery store mistake is clearly one of unjust enrichment. Even though you were horribly in need of the money, you were clearly making a benefit at someone else's innocent mistake. It was also a working stiff like you who could get fired for his harried but very reasonable mistake.

On the other hand, the Big Box store acted in a bit of negligence because not all employees were given knowledge about the no coupon rule. There did not seem to be any fine print on the coupon indicating that it could not be used for the Espresso Machine and I've discovered that large stores are often very good at having all the fine print on the coupon. Even if you had to argue with the manager, you probably could have made a strong and good-faith argument about why the discount should apply to the fancy coffee machine. You are not eating into the profits of either the manufacturer or the Big Box store by taking the discount that should not be applied, etc.

I have a similar story about trying to do good when a store clerk messed up. Way back in 1998 when people still bought movies on VHS tapes, I bought some anime at a local mall video store. Anime was rather expensive at the time. When I got back to my dorm room and looked at the receipt, I discovered that they only charged me for one of the two tapes. I went back to the mall, tried to explain the problem at the store, and got the biggest blank looks from the employees. They looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. And then I just walked out with my 2 for the price of 1 deal.

And I am still too much of a Yank to fit in anywhere else probably.

Though there were people in Stockholm who are amused/entertained by my New York accent. I apparently sound like I am "right out of a movie"

There are plenty of complainers on the left whose complaints I find valid and compelling in the United States.

Plus no other country has New York. Though I would not say no to an opportunity to live in London or Paris.

Veronique de Rugy?

I agree with you that people are allowed to complain about things they don't like in their country. It does not mean I need to find their complaints valid or compelling though.

The left is engaged in a bit of pushback with the right about moving to another country for not liking policies from the Obama administration. I think a lot of us are tired of being considered unAmerican for our liberalism. This has been discussed numerous times this week, the American Right wing (including a small percentage of libertarians like Dunderooo) have engaged in a decades (if not longer) war against liberals and claimed that our liberalism is a contradiction to being American. Contrary to their belief, we do not hate our country or are ashamed of being American (most of us anyway). We are fed up with being called unAmerican and are now fighting back.

I agree that they are fading but there are still plenty of young guns. Paul Ryan is only 40-something and I think will still be relevant. There are still plenty of people on the right who worship Reagan and got their far-right stripes as teenagers.

However, I do think that my generation (late Gen X people born from 1977-1982) and the next generation will be much more liberal*. Mainly on social issues, economic issues is going to be more interesting. Though I think we are more kind to the idea of beneficial government.

*There are plenty of people who say "Just wait until you start moving to the suburbs", I am not sure why this is going to make us more conservative. Why would moving to the suburbs turn us against social liberalism?

I would say that there is a small silver lining in that local crazy can become national news thanks to the Internet. The Maine GOP story from today is a good example. Previously he would have been able to make his racist remarks and not become a national story.

2012 does show plenty of the 18-30 or so crowd rejecting the GOP. So maybe there is hope. Only time will tell to use the cliche.

It is also tragic that this battle seems to be going on for so long. Basically since the post-WWII era and the start of the modern civil rights movement.

I wonder if 20-30 years from now if we are going to get two rival narratives on the Obama administration. One that covers it fairly and realistically, pros and cons, warts and all. And then the Fever dreams that are currently being presented right now by the Radical Right-Reactionaries.

The question I have is that can we truly say that these people are sailing to irrelevance? There are plenty of people who lap up this stuff and sincerely believe it. As far as we can tell, the narrators are not merely sellers of snake oil but true believers in their own product. We have no conclusive evidence that they are secret P.T. Barnums. There are also plenty of young people who grow up and remain in the cocoon. See all the teenagers who made racist tweets right after the election.

I wonder how Richard Hofstadter feels about being right on his most famous essay over fifty years from the initial publication:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html

No, we sound like social liberals.

But only one form of sex is ethically wrong in this case.

If they had oral or anal sex, Kyle's hypothetical becomes moot.