todd is still going off

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, August 22, 2001 6:59pm

I continue to remain appalled at America, but I'll let the politicians off for a bit. Which leaves, of course, corporate America.

A few weeks ago, I read an article in the Oregonian about the growth of businesses targeted at preteens, or "kids".

As usual, it's a bit of a challenge figuring out what exactly is the worst facet of America displayed in the article.

Option 1: The mother with two kids and zero control over them. She buys several pairs of $125 shoes for both of them every year and says that "people spend money on shoes and they're going to keep doing it, if their children are anything like mine". She also points out that her children already have the shoes picked out before they go shopping. And who is she to say no?

Option 2: The comically evil chief executive of Columbia Sportwear, a company that recently introduced snowboarding apparel for children ages 1 to 3. He says, apparently while rubbing his hands together and grimacing, "If the parent likes to have their kid look like a snowboarder, we want to have that stuff available", adding that "the nice thing about kids' apparel is that it gets outgrown. Kids can't wear the same jacket for three years in a row. We consider that to be a good thing"

Charming. Obviously the ultimate fault lies with the consumers who propagate these stupid product lines, choosing to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars so their brat^H^H^H^H kid can look just like mommy - only smaller! - even though they'll have no memory of it in a few years.

But what really worries me in this sorry tale is the attitude of the corporations. They want their sales figures to keep increasing, year after year. And they've tapped the adult and teen markets. So they create new market segments so they can make more and more money.

It's a familiar story in every industry. Geeks won't buy any more computers, so the sub-$1000 PC is born, introducing computing to a whole bunch of people who didn't need computers before they could afford them. Drug companies somehow figure they need more money than they made curing diseases, so they develop drugs to alleviate life's little problems and market them to everybody who feels a bit off.

But it doesn't take a financial genius to realize that increasing profits, year after year, won't last. It's not sustainable. Eventually, you've simply saturated the planet. But then, I suppose that's a problem CEO's can only hope for.

So all you consumers, you better go back to your bars, your temples, your massage parlors. Sigh.