America's Obsession with Convenience and the Demise of Quality

About 80% of the time I eat at a fast food restaurant (an average of once a month) I wonder how the establishment stays in business. A couple weeks ago I was talking with my dad and said something like, “I wonder if we were to offer some of the 'food' we gladly eat to a starving person in a developing country, if they would even be grateful to receive it.” Before I say the next bit I will say, I am not a healthnut, I eat a lot of sweets and really enjoy some candy that has nothing but artificial flavoring; but some of the junk we eat, if you stop to think about it, isn't really recognizable as food, doesn't taste remotely like anything occurring in nature (I'm thinking specifically about some frozen burritos I used to like while in college).

We want our food now, whether it's at a fast food joint or a sit down restaurant. Think for a moment, have you ever cooked? Don't most of the best things you prepare take time and quite a bit of it? If you're making a really good hamburger, is it done in 5 minutes? If you're making an excellent fajita, is it done in 10? If you're making a delicious southern meal is it done in 20?

Quality takes time and we have sacrificed it in the name of convenience. We have demanded food that is fast, cheap, and still tastes good (at least to some people) and to accomplish this the food is tinkered with a lot. What else should we expect?

Being a specialist takes time and a specific area of expertise but in our demand for convenience we first created supermarkets (which largely took away people specializing in baked goods, meat, cheese, etc.) and then went a step further and created the superstore (which took away people specializing in hardware, toys, clothing, etc.). Despite this, we criticize the employees of these establishments, complaining that they don't know where something is or they don't know something about a product. I know most people are assigned to a department and mostly work in that area (or at least I hope that is what happens), but even within that one department there's a very large variety of stuff (again, groceries have all sorts and electronics has everything from cellphones to tvs and dvds).

Within superstores our demand for convenience and cheap stuff has again done away with quality. I am not totally sure this is really the case, but someone who used to work in a John Deere factory told me that there was the line that made stuff for certain stores and then there was the line that made stuff for Wal-Mart (and I'm sure other superstores) and the quality wasn't the same. Also, if you talk to someone who knows jeans, they'll probably tell you even though you can get a pair of Levi's jeans at Wal-Mart for cheaper, you may not be getting the same quality as at some other stores.

About any of this, I can't really judge. Even though I hate Wal-Mart, I consider it a convenient evil and shop their anyway because, well, it's convenient and cheap.

I grew up in a home that didn't eat out much, my mom cooked from scratch almost every night. Yes, some of the meals were simple, but they were still good. As I've gotten older, I still don't eat out much and I enjoy cooking largely because I know I'll like what I make because I can control what goes into it.

Over the years we have learned to settle for less, we have made demands and they led to what we have today. So many are willing to settle for less that some things which are better quality have grown more expensive. A specific example is bread. Though I eat sliced bread and enjoy it decently for breakfast, I think it was one of the worst innovations to happen to America. Much of the rest of the world has really good, fresh bread for fairly cheap. While I was in Ukraine, one of the Americans I stayed with paid extra to get American-style sliced (frozen) bread instead of the fresh uncut bread you could get in every tiny store... and I thought they were a little insane for that.

I will end this by saying, when you can afford it buy fresh, buy local, buy from a small specialty store. Maybe someday our shouts for quality with drown out our demands for convenience and, in the process, maybe we will get to know our butcher, our grocer, our garden store owner, and computer specialist.

Shower Thoughts on Economics

I wrote this after some thoughts occurred to me while taking a shower a few months ago, I hinted at my thoughts and a friend wanted me to share. Keep in mind, I know very little about economics and, overall, I do not follow the news. Saying that, I thought it was worth sharing, maybe?

Because my friend, Jake, asked me to...also, Jake, it is not a dream or anything I want to do, it was merely some thoughts.

While I was in the shower I was thinking about going to Wal-Mart for a few things. I have a strong dislike of Wal-Mart but it is the closest store to me and, I have to admit, having such a variety in one place in convenient. My dislike of it caused me to link Wal-Mart to how poorly our economy is doing. I thought about how there used to be small stores that carried mostly American-made and how towns and even countries used to be a lot more self-sufficient. If another town was failing or started to do poorly it didn't necessarily mean your town would start to do poorly and, especially, ones country's fate was not so closely linked to another. First the industrial revolution began to do away with this self-sufficiency; more and more products began to be made in factories further away, instead of your plow being made by the nearby blacksmith, your dress made by the local tailor, etc. Conversely, the factory towns became more dependent on imported subsistence. Then if an agricultural town did poorly, the factory town suffered as well, and if the factory town suffered losses and people were cut loose, then they bought less.

Globalization took this a step further and intertwined the fate of not only of towns, but also of nations. The phrase popped in my head, “Together we rise, together we fall.” Of course, with globalization there is also the fact that you add a lot of competition. You are competing not only with the company down the road, which has similar access to resources and workers with similar cost of living and, thus, similar wages; but companies across the globe that may have very different access to resources and employees with wages which are determined by totally different means than your own employees' wages. A side note: yes, I know much of the world has unfair wages and horrible work conditions but people rarely seem to also take into account that in some countries you can get a weeks worth of food for only a few dollars and buy a good pair of shoes for a faction of what you would pay here. In other words, you shouldn't just look at how much someone is paid and automatically think it is a horrible wage.

Oh, I almost forgot, in the shower I also thought about how, because each town is no longer self-sufficient and no longer has all the little stores nearby which can provide for your needs, there is not only all the gas and means of power expended in shipping things from far away, but also the added distance and gas you have to use to gain access to these products.

I thought localizing things and decentralizing things (having smaller stores) could help our economy, which is what we used to have anyway. Because I think Wal-Mart is a convenient evil monster that is chiefly responsible with doing away with most mom-and-pop stores, I thought of all this when I thought of going to Wal-Mart.

When I got out of the shower and started eating my breakfast I saw an article in Time called Go Glocal by Rana Foroohar which talks about how companies who are using labor/factories/supplies closer to home are the ones that are doing well and that more companies are likely to follow suit.

Specialization is one way in which states could be not so much in competition with each other. They could mostly try and cater to the companies which are already there, and, thus, not be short changing other states. Intentionally or unintentionally certain companies are already doing this by developing the programs in community colleges which will turn out the individuals they need. Also, it is bound to happen because of the companies starting to utilize small firms and companies to satisfy their needs (those small suppliers will grow and, as the larger company grows, the place where their needs are most readily supplied are right where they are).