The Great Digital Swindle...

[Roger Hicks]

... I find more interesting the question why, with a preponderance of joint stock corporations and the hegemony of global capitalism one would have to consider that the large brands no longer exist to make cameras, cameras are just a byproduct part of the core process of making money

That's the point of "large brands" -- or arguably, "brands" at all. Many companies set out to meet a need: Leitz microscopes, for example. Of course they wanted to make money but they wanted to make it from the product, not the brand.

In the 1960s I saw the rise of the "designer label" but as far as I recall it wasn't until the 1970s the label was put on the outside: I remember being most amused when my girlfriend (in about 1969) used to carry her Louis Féraud raincoat "casually" over one arm, having carefully folded it so that the label (on the inside in those days) would show.

As for "core requirements", that's the whole point of the difference between an economy of superabundance and an economy of scarce resources. Once superabundance is achieved -- as it was 50 years ago in many of today's rich countries -- it is extremely curious that people just keep "churning" (buying & replacing) consumer goods and working very hard or going into debt (or both) in order to stay on the treadmill.

The cynics among us would argue that this is indeed, as Stewart suggests, mainly to put money in the pockets of the technostructure (the managers for whose benefit the corporations are actually run); the product is completely secondary. Kodak furnishes a woeful example.

As for how I earn/earned my living, the answer has mostly been by journalism and writing and illustrating books: wants instead of needs indeed, but not goods that are readily sold meretriciously. Except perhaps cook-books. And for a few years I was a teacher, which I suppose supplies a genuine need.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Sorry Roger, just trying to get a handle on what is consumerism, so if you buy a new car that's cheaper than the more expensive one you could afford then it doesn't count, and antiques are exempt as well? Interesting stuff.

The key lies in the root of the word "consumerism": it's "consume", viz., constantly replacing things. Antique furniture (or silver, or pewter, or anything else) has by definition not been consumed, and you do not consume it yourself. Compare this with (for example) a fitted kitchen. A friend of mine is a small builder and he assures me that many people have a new kitchen fitted every 4-7 years. My favourite piece of furniture in my kitchen (and in the kitchen before) is a Kitchendom cabinet made in the 1920s or 1930s -- http://twicsy.com/i/QSYLSb but mine is nicer because it's in the original unpainted oak.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

... I find more interesting the question why, with a preponderance of joint stock corporations and the hegemony of global capitalism one would have to consider that the large brands no longer exist to make cameras, cameras are just a byproduct part of the core process of making money

Was there a time then when the large brands purpose was to make the best cameras and making money was a byproduct? Sorry if I've misread the question.
I've followed this thread with interest and the question I'd like to ask those who feel swindled, how do you, or did you make a living? I would imagine the vast majority of us do so from something that is not a necessity to anyone's core requirements, and ultimately we mostly live by other peoples consumption one way or another.[/QUOTE]

... at twenty as a radical art student my brand purpose was revolution, drink and making beautiful things

... at thirty as a designer my brand purpose was to make beautiful things the management could sell

... at forty as design director by UK law my brand purpose was to maximise shareholder value, luckily I was also a shareholder so I could moderate the boards definition of shareholder value, but I don't think that is the case with the camera industry.

As with Roger I value things by value I still grill in a cast-iron pan that's been in the family four generations, and if I were to consume cookware I go for Cuprinox or Le Creuset confident that it will be a while before they have a mkII version out ...

 

[DominikDUK]

Nice would love to have such a cabinet (drool), my former girlfriend's mother had a Kitchen from the 1940's that was built for american military personel (officers) apartments it was one of the most functional Kitchen designs I have ever seen plenty of storage space, good looks, just great especially compared to most modern Kitchen designs. What your friend told you about constant redesign of kitchen also applies to complete apartments and houses (the later is often a sign of the nouveau rich, little taste but lot's of money and always after the latest fad).
Regarding design brands I never understood why people pay more to be walking ads. YSL, Louis Vuitton bags, with large brand logos the company should pay the owner of such luxury items for the free advertisment not the other way around.

 

[icebear]

...
As with Roger I value things by value I still grill in a cast-iron pan that's been in the family four generations, and if I were to consume cookware I go for Cuprinox or Le Creuset confident that it will be a while before they have a mkII version out ...

ROFL .... 😀 😀 😀.
One of my favorite pans is a forged heavy piece of metal that will also be around for generations. It's being cleaned with brush and water only, afterwards heated up to dry and oiled. There for shure will not be anything like a "new and improved version" of this kitchen tool. There is no plastic and no coating that can possible break off or be scratched.

 

[Range-rover]

It's amazing to me that no camera company has even tried to make a full frame camera
for under a grand yet, now that's marketing for the big bucks. I'm sure if you take all
the unneeded crap out of them you can do it, Come on Guy's

Range

 

[semi-ambivalent]

It's amazing to me that no camera company has even tried to make a full frame camera
for under a grand yet, now that's marketing for the big bucks. I'm sure if you take all
the unneeded crap out of them you can do it, Come on Guy's

Range

Quite. Nikon has revised their $ outlook down. Elsewhere people say doing what you suggest will cannibalize sales of high-end cameras. It would appear the world economy is cannibalizing sales, not the D4 et al.

 

[willie_901]

It's amazing to me that no camera company has even tried to make a full frame camera
for under a grand yet, now that's marketing for the big bucks. I'm sure if you take all
the unneeded crap out of them you can do it, Come on Guy's

Range

I feel as you do.

But all the unneeded crap is practically free. The R&D costs were recovered years ago. The circuit boards are not a major cost; neither is the firmware.
Adding the extra stuff keeps the factory production and assembly lines responsible for the extra stuff cranking out product.

The brand product managers and marketing executives are the problem. They choose to ignore the minimalist market demographic.

 

[hepcat]

That's the point of "large brands" -- or arguably, "brands" at all. Many companies set out to meet a need: Leitz microscopes, for example. Of course they wanted to make money but they wanted to make it from the product, not the brand.

In the 1960s I saw the rise of the "designer label" but as far as I recall it wasn't until the 1970s the label was put on the outside: I remember being most amused when my girlfriend (in about 1969) used to carry her Louis Féraud raincoat "casually" over one arm, having carefully folded it so that the label (on the inside in those days) would show.


Cheers,

R.

I think you've hit on the core issue, Roger... the marketing and sale of a brand rather than a product is the heart of consumerism. That's what I was actually getting at in my half-facetious post about Keds and U.S. Rubber. Many companies produced tennis shoes, but U.S. Rubber marketed the Keds brand and it's still a recognized brand today.

In the photo industry, Leica marketed and sold durable and useful cameras for about seventy-five years, and nearly went broke in the '80s. It wasn't until after they started selling the Leica brand with their first forays into digital cameras that they became successful again as a luxury brand.

The difference for me is that I'm still buying cameras and lenses (durable goods,) hence my very happy mix of E. Leitz and Leica bodies, and E. Leitz Canada and Voigtlander Cosina lenses. It seems that other folks here are now buying the Leica brand, which is what Leica is really marketing. The differentiation of who is buying durable goods and who is buying a brand becomes pretty clear in these forums, I think.

And frankly, I have to admire Leica. They were one of the last companies to sell durable goods. Their changeover to brand marketing really didn't happen until they had no other choice.

 

[DominikDUK]

You can't escape the brand in Austria we have an ad campaign that says buy brands and the ad is partialy founded by the state. Interestingly not a single local brand is mentioned in the ad only large multinationals.

It's the same in the art world you no longer buy a work of art but a brand say Damien Hirst the actual art has become irrelevant. I somewhat miss the middleages no brands everyone knew that painter x was good no branding necessary. Quality should speak for itself unfortunately this is no longer the case.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I've come to the conclusion that this all comes down to the assertion:

- I am a discerning purchaser of only the best and most essential goods or services
- You are a buyer of bargains
- He, she or it is a victim of the evil multinationals' contemptible marketing practices.

It seems to me that we are worrying over living in what, I think, earlier ages would consider a paradise.

 

[hepcat]

I've come to the conclusion that this all comes down to the assertion:

- I am a discerning purchaser of only the best and most essential goods or services
- You are a buyer of bargains
- He, she or it is a victim of the evil multinationals' contemptible marketing practices.

It seems to me that we are worrying over living in what, I think, earlier ages would consider a paradise.

Well, yes we are. The real problem though, is that it is an unsustainable paradise. I fear that our insatiable avarice (consumerism,) leads to the irresponsible consumption of resources that should (and could) be conserved (with the corollary being that we're filling our paradise with waste products.) We are rushing at breakneck speed toward paradise lost.

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . It seems to me that we are worrying over living in what, I think, earlier ages would consider a paradise.

This is precisely the point. It could be a good deal more paradisiacal without consumerism, as we would have the opportunity to enjoy our goods instead of merely accumulating them [SECOND EDIT: Or worse still, constantly replacing them]. As it is, many people are running in a hamster-wheel of consumerism.

What is worse, consumption is defined as "the good life" while other aspects of "the good life" are dismissed. For a good example, consider the practice of photography versus the consumption of cameras. I'm not talking about collecting, which is a form of stewardship, but about effectively "throwaway" cameras with a very short life in use.

EDIT: And of course the post immediately above well describes the unsustainability of this sub-paradise or pseudo-paradise.

Cheers,

R.

 

[thebelbo]

It seems to me that we are worrying over living in what, I think, earlier ages would consider a paradise.

Very interesting discussion overall, really enjoying reading such diverse point of views. Guilty as charged myself with more things than I probably need.

I will have to disagree with the above statement: Paradise has nothing to do with owning MORE things or changing them often for that matter. This has been proven over & over again by studies that showed that people in developing countries with much less buying power are significantly happier than people in the Western world. I don't believe materialism enhances happiness in any way but even Photography for that matter. New and more equipment means time spent investigating, deciding on what to buy and learning instead of actually mastering your art with what you have at hand. Unless there is a barrier (ie. you need 35 MP because you need to print bigger) just adding items and features in your life just complicates things...

 

[Rodchenko]

This is precisely the point. It could be a good deal more paradisiacal without consumerism, as we would have the opportunity to enjoy our goods instead of merely accumulating them. As it is, many people are running in a hamster-wheel of consumerism.

...

R.

Quite. And our 'paradise' currently depends on the distinctly sub-paradisaical conditions in which a great many others live and work.

That in itself is as unsustainable as it is unjust.

OK, so I'm not going to throw away my cameras, or my bikes. But I don't own a car, an iPhone, a TV, or many other consumer items. And my cameras and bikes are, on average, more than twenty years old. Even one of my tents is vintage (though the others are not, even if they weren't bought new).

I've tried, with greater or lesser success, to live with a relatively small footprint since the early eighties, when Mrs Thatcher decided on my frugality for me. It's been pretty much optional since then, though.

 

[Sparrow]

I've come to the conclusion that this all comes down to the assertion:

- I am a discerning purchaser of only the best and most essential goods or services
- You are a buyer of bargains
- He, she or it is a victim of the evil multinationals' contemptible marketing practices.

It seems to me that we are worrying over living in what, I think, earlier ages would consider a paradise.

... personally, I suspect if we were reclining in our respective triclinia dissolving pearls in wine and scoffing our larks harts and oysters it would seem perfectly ordinary

 

[Michael Markey]

Paradise has nothing to do with owning MORE things or changing them often for that matter. This has been proven over & over again by studies that showed that people in developing countries with much less buying power are significantly happier than people in the Western world. I don't believe materialism enhances happiness in any way ......

Which makes it all the more curious that this activity is often referred to as "retail therapy".

You keep on taking their money , promote dissatisfaction and insecurity whilst at the same time convince them that its beneficial.

That`s what I call a swindle.

 

[Sparrow]

... too long out of the service I fear; opinions now ... 😉

... but yes where is the goal in all this, the better photo or the better camera

 

[Roger Hicks]

Quite. And our 'paradise' currently depends on the distinctly sub-paradisaical conditions in which a great many others live and work.

That in itself is as unsustainable as it is unjust.

OK, so I'm not going to throw away my cameras, or my bikes. But I don't own a car, an iPhone, a TV, or many other consumer items. And my cameras and bikes are, on average, more than twenty years old. Even one of my tents is vintage (though the others are not, even if they weren't bought new).

I've tried, with greater or lesser success, to live with a relatively small footprint since the early eighties, when Mrs Thatcher decided on my frugality for me. It's been pretty much optional since then, though.

A further point here is that those on the treadmill are less and less secure. "A flexible job market" looks very different, according to whether you are hiring and firing, or the one being hired and fired.

I also get heartily sick of the myth of the job-creating entrepreneur. The vast majority of jobs are for mature organizations run by professional managers for the benefit of professional managers (the technostructure). Shareholders are interested only in short-term returns and have little or no say in the running of the company: the concept of "ownership" of a mature company is all but meaningless.

Cheers,

R.

 

[bobbyrab]

We are living through a period of increasingly open world markets where large companies are able to manufacture with the lowest cost pool of workers they can find, and register their tax centres in the lowest taxing port they can find. It's what capitalism does without legislative curbs, at the moment it's difficult to govern these companies as it has to happen with broad international agreement, but that surely has to be the way forward.

Getting back to the original question, if viewed ethically cameras would seem to me to be a lesser evil as far as unnecessary consumption goes, the primary costs are R&D, manufacturing infrastructure, and a highly skilled workforce with all the perks and recompense you would expect from a first world manufacturer. The actual material cost, or put another way, the carbon footprint, is probably not too high for a given purchase price.

Personally I have far more problem with shopping at Primark, for those not in the UK, Primark has been one of the fastest growing retailers in the UK of the last decade, and they specialise in reasonable quality clothing at rock bottom prices, they look like, and probably not coincidentally, a cheaper Marks & Spencer. I've only bought form the store once, a jacket and some t-shirts, but it just seemed to me wrong that I could buy a perfectly good cotton t-shirt for £3, I figured somebody must be getting screwed to be able to turn a profit at these sort of prices, I should add that the factory in India that collapsed in April with the loss of over a thousand lives, was unsurprisingly a manufacturer for Primark, but consumers don't really care, it's so cheap they view it as a throwaway product. A few days ago they announced record profits at the same time as Marks & Spencer announcing another downturn.