Vodkapundit - Late Night Rambling

Late Night Rambling

Posted by Stephen Green · 12 May 2004

This isn't a book review, but it's going to sound a lot like one at first. So bear with me.

I read Virginia Postrel's latest book, The Substance of Style last week, and had one of those wonderful Ah-Hah! moments in the middle of the last chapter. If you aren't familiar with the book, go out and buy it immediately. If you aren't familiar with Virginia's work, then buy it even sooner. I'm not kidding.

Virginia (yes, Santa Claus, there really is a Virginia) was editor of Reason magazine during its best decade. You could always tell when she wrote a piece – if it was charming, forceful, and subtle enough to effortlessly and painlessly slip big ideas directly into your brain. Her new book is no different – I read it in two nights, and came away not only educated and entertained, but with that Ah-Hah! moment, too. But we'll get to that shortly.

Anyway. The premise of the book is, "How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness." What interested me most, being the capitalist pig that I am, was the commerce angle. Postrel tells the story, from back when pagers (remember those?) were still the big thing, about how Motorola was, for a time, able to charge a $15 premium for their pagers. Why? Because instead of being the same dull black as everyone else's pagers, Motorola's were a cool toothpaste green color.

No extra features. No extended range. Just different plastic – green plastic which didn't cost them one dime more to manufacture than the plain black stuff.

Cool matters. Aesthetics matter. Look & feel matter. Motorola discovered it a decade ago. In her book, Virginia explains how those things are reshaping everything in the postmodern economy.

As a married man who wants a family, part of my job is protecting my assets. We need enough to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, ensure our retirements, and leave something to pass on to any VodkaPundit Jrs after we're gone. Naturally then, I read what all the doomsayers have to say about the economy. And the American economy in particular. Part of why I enjoyed Postrel's book so much, is that she's an optimist – an American optimist.

But Rosy Scenario is famous for stealing nest eggs. Whom to believe – those who claim that Americans are borrowing their way to oblivion, or Rosy?

How about: Neither of them.

The doomsayers tell you that Americans don't produce anything anymore. We borrow money against our inflated-value houses to buy Chinese imports we can't afford. Our government borrows even more money, against tax revenues they're unlikely to ever collect. Soon, they tell you, the whole house of cards will collapse.

That's what is always in the back of my mind: Do my as-yet-unborn children have no future? Then came the Ah-Hah! moment.

Thanks to modern methods of production, the expanding umbrella of free trade, and low-cost shipping, most anyone can produce most anything, in most any country.

Let me repeat that, because it's a vital economic fact: Most anyone can produce most anything in most any country. The profit margins – hence wealth – in manufacturing are nothing great, and will get smaller. Oh, whatever is the latest and greatest in high tech will still earn big fat margins, but nothing else. Cars, home electronics, power tools, you name it - anyone can make them, everyone will make them, and nobody will be making big bucks doing so. If, that is, they make the plain vanilla versions.

So are we doomed to be poor, what, with our ever-shrinking and out-sourced manufacturing base? Hardly. When everything people need to live is cheap, then there will still be lots and lots of money to be made selling things people want.

And what people – wealthy people, like even lower-middle-class Americans – want, is something cool. Something hip, something pretty, something special. And look and feel – or "hip & cool" – is what Americans excel at designing and marketing.

So long as our melting pot keeps stewing, so long as the Cool Factor is more desirable than tradition, so long as novelty and aesthetics reign supreme – then so, probably, will the American economy. The money isn't in the making, it's in the designing and the marketing. From movies to music to toothpaste-green pagers, it's what we're better than anyone at doing.

The Cool Factor is our competitive advantage in the global marketplace, and one not easily duplicated by the ethnically- and religiously-defined nations which make up almost the entire rest of the world. Whether Americans make the products matters less and less, as how the products look and feel -- as dictated by the American sense of cool -- matters more and more.

With all that in mind, I can't help but think that our futures look very good, and increasingly hip.

And on that happy note, I'm going to go get a very good night's sleep – and dream of the very bright and oh-so-cool future our children will share.

Comments

Your post reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash:

"There's only four things we do better than anyone else music, movies, microcode(software), high-speed pizza delivery."

You hit the first two (after all, what's hipper and cooler than music or movies?), the third is questionable, and I'll leave the last for historians.

Posted by: Don at May 12, 2004 05:49 AM

I hate to rain on your parade, but I am afraid your outlook is not backed up by facts. This is America's biggest failing and will stop us from exceling as we should.
Your thesis: America is the hippest. Surely you jest! Asain cultures are obsessed with what is hip and market and create many items we think are hip and eventually imitate (I could site 100s of examples from movies to clothes). Have you ever walked down a street in the US midwest and down a street in France or Spain? And if so, was the difference not depressingly obvious? The only style America has either comes from the black population or from immigrants or NY/LAers. Get real. America has to stop telling itself it is the best regardless of fact. We should strive to be the best, not say we are the best.

Posted by: bobber at May 12, 2004 06:45 AM

Alvin Toffler told us this about 20 years ago in his Future Shock series. Basically he predicted that technology will allow manufacturing to return to America because people will demand customized, made-to order products and not want to wait 6 weeks for it to sail it's way over from China or Indonesia.

If you can pay $35 for a cookie cutter imported dress shirt, or $50 for one tailored to the specifications you email into a small business in the neighboring state and shipped directly to you a few days later, which do you choose? Not everybody will of course, but enough would there will be a market for this sort of small industry.

And if this model holds up, we'll all have cool custom designed shades to protect us from our bright future.

Posted by: Mike M at May 12, 2004 06:55 AM

"And look and feel – or "hip & cool" – is what Americans excel at designing and marketing."

To a degree. But mostly the Japanese do it better.

If we're so cool at all this designing and marketing, why is it that, after all this time, MT can't remember my name and facts?

I hear BMW is a good car. Etc. This is really a very limited thesis. I'm unlikely to want to raise my hypothetical children on this sort of airy nationalism; airy nationalism is, in general, kind of typically wrong.

Of course, the examples that prove us wrong are that we're living in Rome, er, Greece, er, China, er, England, er, whatever.

Comforting tales to tell ourselves, to be sure.

Posted by: Gary Farber at May 12, 2004 08:29 AM

The Japanese are great at inventing trends and pop culture flashes in the pan, but not so much at inventing legacy.

Everyone knows what a pair of 501's are, who John Wayne was, and what Rock n' Roll is. By comparison, very few people know (or care) what Iron Chef is/was or what neon-colored cartoon lint ball is taking the asian market by storm this week.

There are cases in which the flip side is true (Japanese supercar era of the 90's), but for the most part, the reverse is much more common.

Case in point: Apple Computer vs. Sony. I'll rest my case on that one alone.

Posted by: Mr. Lion at May 12, 2004 10:06 AM

Stephen:

Virginia recently wrote an article in Innovation magazine where she uses recent examples from Afghanistan to assert the desire for aesthetics can trump more immediate needs (thus invalidating a rigid interpretation of Maslow's hierarchy).

My point being: cool matters even more than we originally thought - further reason for optimism for VP Jrs.

On Japan vs the US in coolness:
For better of for worse, the majority of the world has been largely Americanized. So we hold numerous structural advantages over coolness competitors who might try to enter the cool market. While it would be incorrect to assert that the US holds a perfect monopoly on coolness (as there's some cool stuff from almost everywhere), we do hold an imperfect monopoly on cool.

I think an apt analogy is the the market share Microsoft has in operating systems. Yeah, you can get Linux, and Solaris, and OSX, but the vast majority of machines are running windows. Similarly, yeah, anime and Baliwood are cool, but the vast majority of worthwhile aesthetic products are American.

Posted by: Jody at May 12, 2004 11:53 AM

Jody,

Virginia's article on Afghanistan was adapted from her book -- which I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up.

Posted by: Stephen Green at May 12, 2004 12:04 PM

I did not know that (well lookie a statement that it's an adaptation is in the upper right on the first page - that's what I get for speed reading the article).

I've been meaning to purchase the Substance of Style for some time now (as well as some other books like the Power of Productivity), but procrastination has had the better of me. Maybe my exposed ignorance will give me sufficient motivation.

Posted by: Jody at May 12, 2004 12:58 PM

Yes,
Apple Computer vs Any PC
I have to say that the British make better music than the U.S. IMHO. Everything from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, to The Beautiful South and The Smiths, to The Coral and The Stone Roses.
-G

Posted by: Glendon at May 12, 2004 02:52 PM