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Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

Today it's also the desire of the customers, as pushed by social media, to follow a fashion changing almost every month. You didn't buy in the 80s stuff to be obsoleted in a few months. And because most of the people cannot afford every few months a new wardrobe made of (halfway) quality items, today's taste requires fast fashion garbage. So here we are, and we can get back to sanity only when we get rid of the influencer-led economy, good luck with that.

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I'm amazed how much of the internet economy has turned out to be advertising. People complain about ads when they watch TV, but they'll go out of their way to spend hours watching ads on social media. And lots of kids dream about being an influencer, basically an advertiser, for their work.

One reason why I have no interest in going to facebook anymore is that the vast majority of people's social media activity on there nowadays is advertising... something. People showing their latest purchases, vacations, experiences, etc, all basically showing something they spent money on.

> the desire of the customers, as pushed by social media, to follow a fashion changing almost every month

A lot of it is top down, pushed onto customers by the industry. It's very hard to find timeless classics these days, we are given trendy bits that change every year to speed up obsolescence so they purposely look kitschy.

The desire of costumers is to go well beyond psychotic measures in order to save the tiniest amount of money on a purchase, rather than purchase domestic or locally produced for a bit more expensive. And that applies almost worldwide, not only to Americans.

Plenty of people would buy domestic goods if they were “a bit more expensive”. I’d say 5% on a large ticket item or 15-20% on a small item would be “a bit”.

Rarely is “made in the USA” just a bit more expensive in my experience.

For the very small ticket item you might even have to pay 100% more if you want to support your local community or your nation. Which should be fine, it's just a few dollars. For big ticket item 15-20% is acceptable. But people only think about their own purse.

Frequency matters. A few dollars extra / 100% extra on some small thing you buy a handful of times per year? Sure. If it’s a small ticket item you buy every day, most people aren’t going to be able to spend an extra thousand dollars per year on every single category of thing they buy; they just don’t have that kind of money.

If it's food then it's perfectly acceptable to spend an extra thousand dollars per year to support your community or nation. And your own health.

Except for food, I don't know what anybody would spend money on which isn't utilities, rent or gas. All of which you cannot choose between domestic or imported.

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