Libertarians, My Libertarians!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
LOL! You sound like a dopey liberal.
ReplyDeleteReligion and collectivism are to blame here, not free markets. It's absurd and irrational that we have one day where we pack in pretty much ALL gift giving for the entire year into. This is a ridiculously diisturbing regulation to impose on the market, forcing retailers to try and generate a large majority of their sales into a small window of time.
I usually wouldn't post an obnoxious piece of jack-assery like this, but you gave me such an easy target...
Delete" This is a ridiculously diisturbing regulation to impose on the market..."
OK, KPres, exactly who "imposed" the idea of Black Friday "on the market"?
Most gift-giving was done at Christmas for years and years, and there was no Black Friday and no scenes like this. And then "the market" imposed Black Friday on us. With these results.
Black Friday is the natural evolution to the consumerist madness that Christmas has become. It didn't pop up out of nowhere this year. It probably began in the 60s with the consumer electronics boom and has grown in importance to retailers ever since.
DeleteYou're waxing nostalgic back to a time when people actually believed in Christianity, so the holiday held some sacred value that dictated people's behavior. Not anymore. Nobody actually believes any of it anymore, but they aren't at the point they want to admit that to themselves, so they use the consumerism to hold some attraction to the event. Each year the consumerism grows more dominant and you end up with events like the one you linked to.
"Black Friday is the natural evolution to the consumerist madness that Christmas has become. "
DeleteAnd absolutely, 100% a market event, not driven by government regulation at all.
Yes but "the market" isn't the cause, the holiday is the cause. The market is just trying to satisfy the massive demand the holiday creates. So your beef is with the Christmas. If there was no such irrational holiday, there would be no Black Friday.
DeleteOK, KPres, this is stupid. Christmas existed for 1900 years or so without there being a Black Friday. The market BOTH:
Delete1) Caused Christmas to become associated with shopping (do you really think someone in 500 or 1000 or 1500 went on a shopping spree for Christmas?), a totally non-religious idea -- in fact, religious leaders FIGHT the idea!; and
2) Created Black Friday.
So, please either:
1) Show me some evidence that some Church leader somewhere said "Focus on shopping at Christmas" and therefore "religion," and not marketing and advertising are behind this; OR
2) Just stop the nonsense.