Intermediate [wealth] technology

[eldan]

Once upon a time, I had the great privilege of spending a couple of months in central/Eastern Europe as a tourist. I learned many interesting things along the way, the biggest of which was just how completely World War 2, the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact and the Cold War had shaped the destiny of many millions of people, but right now I feel like

Comments

[boobirdsfly]

is the capitol hill online company on Olive still in existence?

[eldan]

Online Coffee? I think so.

I recently decided to walk around town more (as opposed to getting on the bike to save 5 minutes or taking the bus so I can read stuff on my phone on the way somewhere), because I realised I'm not aware enough of things like this. I shouldn't have to answer "I think so" about a place I pass by relatively often.... I guess this whole post is really a result of that decision.

[eldan]

I don't think that's the opposite, but perhaps I'm not quite using the right words to describe what I'm getting at. I see these as a very closely related phenomenon: the mechanism's different (technological change rather than directly wealth increase) but it's still a case of something that used to be useful and has been superseded.

[chilimuffin]

I think the rent-to-own furniture/appliance stores also count, as they're for people who can come up with $40 a month, but not $400 at once. There's a computer company like that too, blue rhino or something. Collateral-based loans (on cars, etc, not those initiated when purchasing the vehicle) are another.

Something that was pointed out to me in the past few months that I found interesting was the concept of fishing as an indulgence the "average" poor of the U.S. can't really indulge in. The "average poor" here are working poor, with long hours at low wages. The people I see fishing in the summer are retired, on disability, unemployed, or somewhere in the middle classes, for the most part. Or kids. I don't know if this pans out all over the nation, but it was interesting to think about once it was pointed out to me as a concept. Made me wonder if hunting wasn't similar.

[eldan]

Yes, furniture rental-to-own is a great example. Another thing that's striking about these is that the intermediate is very often a good deal more expensive in the long run.

I think rubyport makes a good point below about fishing. Round here, the very poorest communities actually depend on fishing and crabbing for a significant proportion of their diet, which is its own problem, because they're clustered around the river that's also a Superfund site and the carcinogens they're eating are probably related to the disproportionately high cancer rates there. Meanwhile the leisured rich go out of town to fish for pleasure, and those in between neither depend on fish from the Duwamish estuary nor have time to go fly fishing.

[chilimuffin]

I know we have mercury in most of our lakes, but I'm not sure how bad the Madison lakes are relative to the rest of the state. As I mentioned below, I guess I can't really speak with authority on the poorest poor here and their fishing, because I'm not sure where'd they'd be fishing all the time - I know a few places and the people who fish there are not the poorest poor (but close). For the most part, the poorest people I see are at the free clinic or at the VA, and unless they're rural, they're not fishing. But that's all I got.

[rubyport]

Never thought about laundromats quite this way before - an interesting idea

[eldan]

That's another way carpooling is an intermediate - its usefulness really depends on the sort of work you do. If you worked on the Boeing assembly line round here, you'd have a large number of people starting and finishing work at exactly the same time as you. But if you had my job (or if you were an engineer at Boeing, for that matter) it would be exactly the PITA you describe. And each year fewer people are employed to do the physical assembly itself.

[chilimuffin]

good point on the fishing and wealth. Where I live, at least, I think the time component relative to the amount of food gleaned (as compared to the relative time and cost of fast food) makes fishing prohibitive. I suspect that is not the case on the coasts, necessarily, though it's not like we lack fish here. That said, I'm sure I don't see the poor who do fish, because I wouldn't know all the places they're fishing.