{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":313,"pdf_page":321,"physical_index":321,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"bb9f2cfef9bd34dd6ef58943897d7e1a0420f258d18c1e53ad63f19a12ae96ed"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"28. Becker could perhaps evade this dificulty by invoking his conception of preferences as definite, ordered, and fixed. In his theory, economic agents, including households, have, in essence, constant tastes and variable means to satisfy those tastes. According to Becker, “tastes neither change capriciously, nor difer importantly between people,” and therefore, all diferences in behavior can be accounted for in terms of variation in income and price— while conversely, holding price and income constant, all households should behave the same way (Becker and Stigler 1977, p. 76). But what this amounts to is the position that the economic behavior of households is (along with all other economic behavior) rational by definition—which clearly involves very questionable assumptions.\n\nc h a pt e r 9 : mo r a l p a n i c a b o u t u t i l i t y\n\n1. Searching through the Proquest database of nineteenth-century newspapers, for example, turns up over eleven thousand pieces in which some mention is made of the issue of adulteration.\n\n2. Note however that in applications where a substantial margin of safety is required, and safety is a function of material robustness, overengineering can be desirable.\n\n3. Slade’s (2006) suggestion that material obsolescence is just the application of science to the traditional practice of adulteration ignores the alternative interpretation of that form of obsolescence as “value engineering.” While it is entirely unclear how, in the paradigmatic case of adulteration, adding gravel to bread to reduce cost while also reducing calorific and nutritional content could possibly be seen as increasing eficiency (even in the unlikely scenario in which price is reduced to match the cheaper costs entailed), one can entertain a plausible story about the eficiencies gained by only building into an item as much durability as is required for a given pattern of predicted use.\n\n4. Business Review, April 1958, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Economists have argued more recently that style obsolescence under monopoly conditions produces a suboptimal social welfare outcome, since firms do not have to internalize the loss of value of older models consequent on the release of updated versions, and so produce more models than would otherwise be the case. See Waldman (2001).\n\n5. Of course, the suggestion could be that what is objectionable is savvy marketing manipulating the consumer into desiring the latest version of a product. But as we shall see, in the discussions about style obsolescence, the main issue is just the fact that models are changed, rather than the exact means used to promote new models.\n\n6. A lexical search of Google Books using NGram Viewer shows up a slightly diferent pattern—the term takes of in the mid-1950s, becoming increasingly common until reaching a peak in 1974, at 0.0000079877 percent of all bigrams.\n\n7. According to Giles Slade the term “progressive obsolescence” was first coined by Christine Frederick’s husband, Justus George Frederick, an ad man, in a 1928 article in the trade journal Advertising and Selling (Slade 2006).\n\nNotes to Pages 215–227\n\n313","previous_page":312,"next_page":314}