the thing to keep in mind is that basically every industry in america is currently reaping the effects of over four decades of focusing exclusively on the short-term, which worked for them in the same sense as how clear-cutting forests work out. its going to take quite a while for many of them to recover and rebuild those audiences and customers, and given how the economy still has no incentive for anything but those short-terms, most of these industries are more likely to collapse and have to be rebuilt from the ground up instead.

like, i had this realization while reading a book about the history of the fashion industry, where one of the breakthroughs of the 80s was realizing that you could outsource labor (and also, sometimes connected, sometimes not, produce lower quality products), and still sell well on the strength of a brand.

but, conspicuous consumption notwithstanding, brands are mainly a stand-in for trust, so essentially what that means is that you're selling your customer's trust in the product piece by piece, until at some point the brand no longer has meaning. the understanding i get from reading from contemporary accounts is that people... just didn't... think that mattered???? or was real???? presumably because every executive who makes these decisions just assumes anyone who makes less money than them is an idiot