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Comment by venus | Hacker News Reader

Remember the posts on HN a few days ago how we're all just as poor and working even harder as we were 50 years ago? This is why.

Scramble to make the money to buy the food whose shelf cost is 90% marketing and 5% the cheapest, crappiest ingredients available. Or buy the washing powder that's 90% marketing and all made in the same factory anyway and the only difference is the self selected demographic targeting. Or #name_whatever_product_you_like.

> they had a 15-person social media team at the ready to respond to whatever happened online in response to the Super Bowl

This is what our society spends its money on. A crack team of Oreos marketers. Words fail me.

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Good point. Fortunately, it's easy enough for individuals to opt out. And there seems to be a trend in urban cores towards this.

If you opt out of pacakaged foods and car ownership, you have a lot of surplus money to spend on whatever you want, or save. Ditto for owning a large house, or an oversized apartment.

Edit: to be clear, I didn't mean money is the purpose of opting out of these things. But it's certainly a significant side effect.

How can you afford grass fed beef? With the money you save not paying for oreo's marketing budget.

It's certainly possible to opt out of packaged foods as a way of saving money, but I don't think I know anybody who's done so. I'd go so far as to say most people do it to eat tastier, healthier, and/or more ideologically pleasing food, and usually spend more than they would on a diet of Hot Pockets or Taco Bell.

In Germany we have Aldi (they own Trader's Joe in the US), they only sell no name products, and I honestly belive food cannot be sold/produced any cheaper.

The two founders used to be the richest Germans for decades.

Good point! I'm in the midwest, and we have a few Aldi stores here too. There's definitely a distinction between opting out of packaged food (making things from scratch, eating more fruits/vegetables, ..) and opting out of the marketing-driven frenzy of brand name food. The latter can definitely save you money.

I wish I could save money opting out of crap food. Instead, I'm in the process of investing big-time. I likely won't see a dime back, but hopefully me, my wife and kids will all be healthier (which could conceivably pay dividends, but causality will be impossible to prove).

The sad reality is the corn[1] and wheat that makes up the majority of things in boxes is disgustingly cheap. I went to the grocery store tonight and avoided the middle aisles where the boxes of corn-crap live, and spent about 40% more than the old normal.

1. A gigantic lightbulb went of for me when I heard the following, "Farmers have known for hundreds of years the best way to fatten a cow up before butchering it is to give it corn." Now try to find some food item that doesn't contain some corn product. They even put the damn stuff in meat.

>> Remember the posts on HN a few days ago how we're all just as poor and working even harder as we were 50 years ago? This is why.

That would definitely be something I would like to read about, but looks like I've missed them. I've been going through the news page but can't seem to find it. Care to share a few links from your saved stories list? Many thanks.

I think this is it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5161941

I'm pretty sure advertisers feel the same way (but opposite) about writing code for a living...

I call it buying air. Most products are commodity and, more often than not, effectively identical. The only way such companies can survive is through the use of psychological arbitrage.

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