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THE NUMBERS GAME

MALTHUSIAN MATHEMATICS AND THE BIG MAC

Twenty years have passed since I first read Fast Food Nation and the questions it posed have lodged deep within my brain ever since. Schlosser’s book played a huge role in shaping our views of fast food but it relied heavily on shock value, largely at the scale of the machine needed to feed our addiction. And oh boy, it was powerful. I can still see the endless lines of cows waiting innocently for a bolt to the forehead.

350 million cows were slaughtered last year just so you could have a sneaky Big Mac

The numbers have escalated since the book was published, of course: an estimated 350 million cows were slaughtered last year, along with nearly 50 billion chickens, just so you could have a sneaky Big Mac (also available as the Chicken BigMac, £4.09 or £5.59 as part of a meal deal). You can check my stats here at the Kill Clock on this handy little website https://animalclock.org/uk/

Shocking though the scale of this industrial slaughter is, ultimately our outrage is directed at the numbers involved. No one really cares about any of the one million cows, or 150 million chickens that die each day for us. What really concerns us is the sheer volume of death required to satiate our endless appetites. But on the basis we do enjoy chicken and there are nearly seven billion of us in search of three meals a day, perhaps a better question would be how many chickens would be a reasonable number to slaughter?

It’s the ‘mass’ we hate in ‘mass produced’ and the mass, of course, is us.

Ok, so instead of adding to the coffers of the mighty Maccy D, you choose instead to have lunch at the trendy diner where each burger is lovingly hand made, grilled to your pernickety specs and served on breadboard. How many cattle died now? The answer, of course, is the same number, or most likely many more as the efficiencies of a McDonald’s would eclipse any independent producer of almost anything. Our unease for our collective consumption then, is triggered not by death itself, but by the numbers. It’s the ‘mass’ we hate in ‘mass produced’ and the mass, of course, is us. It’s Malthusian Mathematics: designed to make you feel guilty.

In the decade ahead, a brand’s biggest job will be to help us navigate around our own guilt.

Now, if I told you that the Louis Vuitton handbag you’re lusting after is actually churned out at a rate of 1500 per hour you might not think it so worthy of your adoration. The actual production figure, of course, is a more closely guarded secret than diamond production at DeBeers, but we do know they hold ritual burnings of their unsold bags to avoid discounting. (We really have got it in for the poor old cow.) How special is that leather clutch now, I ask?

Over the next decade, as our burden of consumerist guilt grows heavy and unwieldy, we can expect much more of this sleight of hand. Concealing the mass in mass production is the new Holy Grail. A brand’s biggest job will be to help us navigate around our own guilt in order to make us feel special.

So, when we hear that 385,000 babies are born each day we can unanimously agree it’s far, far too many. The very thought of 385k umbilical cords getting chopped so that 385k screaming mouths can be fed three times a day for eighty odd years is beyond repugnant. That’s 385k soon-to-be burger eating, fuel burning, handbag buying humans unleashed upon our fragile little planet…every…single…day. Something must be done!

Until, that is, it’s our child: our angelic, perfectly formed little bundle of love, full of promise, hope and happiness. The other 384,999 babies can drop dead as far as we’re concerned. Hypocrites, that’s what we are. The Louis Vuitton handbag has value because it’s sold as a rare and precious thing, even though it really isn’t. The glass case and burly security guard are simply theatre to reinforce that narrative. So it’s a safe bet that livestream video direct from the factory will not be coming to a store near you anytime soon. Funny that.

So no, we cannot feel the same about another person’s handbag, let alone their newborn baby, since ours is special. Knowledge of the genuine numbers interrupts the narrative, interferes with our delusion. Deluded, narcissistic hypocrites, that’s what we are.

On a different note, apparently there’s enough loose change tucked down the back of our British sofas to buy at least three bespoke Gulfstream jets. That’s £155 million going to waste when we could each have…err, a sixty millionth share of them. And that’s the point really: it may be true but ultimately it’s absolutely inconsequential.

The planet is over populated with OTHER people, not us.

Like Thomas Malthus himself, we believe the planet is over populated with OTHER people, not us. Did you know that if we all lived as densely as they do in Manhattan, the Earth’s entire population would fit comfortably within New Zealand? (Second thoughts, with their regulations at the moment that might not be such a great idea.) Anyway, the world appears over populated because we’re all huddled together in congested little pockets of it, complaining about not having enough space. We are funny.

Malthusian Mathematics is my way of explaining how numbers and quantities can be leveraged to nudge and control us, and we’ve certainly witnessed plenty of that recently (nuff said). Numbers themselves may be completely innocent but they are frequently weaponised to make us feel scared, insignificant and powerless. Whether it’s the billions of galaxies in the universe or the billions pissed away on a useless Test & Trace app, numbers are almost impossible to visualise. We tend the think of the difference between a million and a billion as just one little letter, so here’s an eye opener: If you got a job that paid you a dollar a second you’d have a million dollars within just two short weeks. But you’d have to work flat out for the next thirty two years to get to a billion. Remember that the next time you hear about government waste.

So if you’re currently feeling infinitesimally tiny and helpless in this endless, spiralling universe, dizzy at the thought of all those superfluous babies, chickens, cows and handbags we’re producing, just remember that only one hundred billion humans have ever lived. Ever.

Let’s face it, that makes you pretty damn special.

Thanks for reading. Now, please follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights, retail rants and musings.

Howard Saunders Feb 08, 2022 Uncategorized 0 Comment Read More

THE NEW VICTORIANS

Have you caught sight of your reflection in the shop window lately, longing to be recognised by your local baker or butcher? Perhaps you’ve found yourself dropping your fishmonger’s name into the conversation as if to confirm you’re a loyal and enthusiastic regular. Maybe you’ve been spotted nodding long and respectfully to the passing postman or smiling enthusiastically at the supermarket checkout girl. If so, you have joined the millions of us who have awoken from lockdown to rediscover our long lost community spirit. Dickens would be chuffed.

We’ve have had to learn a whole new language too. Simple greetings and acknowledgments are far from empty etiquette. Nods are the affirmation of respect for another’s role in society. The double eyebrow raise is the mutual understanding that says ‘the world may have gone crazy, but we’re still breathing air’. Over the last eighteen months, masks have helped choreograph a billion eyebrow ballets across the world as we were forced to express ourselves from behind the ubiquitous face nappy. And using names, well, that’s another whole level of respect entirely and a very, very precious local currency indeed. Sometimes, pre-Covid hubris would occasionally brag of its detachment from the community, like a badge of the indefatigable elites who barely have time to take their eyes off their spreadsheets. Lockdown certainly taught us some valuable lessons.

Cities have had it easy. They’ve basked in their own neon limelight for the best part of a century. Every go-getting teen dreams of leaving home for the bright lights of the city, but there are signs that might be changing. The centre of the universe may well be shifting away from the glare of our urban centres and toward the places where we actually live. For home is where the WFH revolution began and where it’s been busy recruiting a burgeoning hybrid army ever since. Lockdown forced us to go local, and funnily enough, most of us enjoyed it.

So much of the future lies tucked away quietly and courteously in the past. Our town centres will soon shake off their reviled ‘clone-town’ status and slowly but surely rebuild their individual personalities. The butcher, the baker and the ice cream maker will be in their element. And a renaissance of independent entrepreneurs waits eagerly in the wings to join them, with locally sourced products to replace the global stuff we were force fed for fifty years. Rest assured that fresh young blood is pumped and primed to bring us trendy bars, delis, and healthier takeaways and restaurants than ever before. Low rents and short leases will kickstart a faster changing, more dynamic retail landscape. Yes, the revitalisation of our towns will be spearheaded by food and hospitality.

But our attitudes to consumerism have shifted dramatically in the post Covid world. The delis, the bars and the takeaways will be punctuated by stores that salve our ever growing guilty consciences: second hand, up-cycled and refurbished goods will plug the gaps left abandoned by brands that lost faith in our towns. Not scruffy shops stuffed with dusty tat, but smart, branded places where throwaway culture is reversed and repurposed for a new age.

In our most enlightened towns an era of collaboration will emerge where stores and stalls share spaces and cross fertilise their wares. When a cafe collaborates with a neighbouring florist both brands benefit, but more importantly, the street itself comes alive.

A handful of brave national brands, that closed their doors in 2020, will venture back to the provinces in a bid to win over the customers they thought they’d lost for good. These new incarnations will be smaller than the ones they shuttered, but smarter too with fresh ideas and a distinctly local focus. The days of the token town’s-name-on-the-fascia will be a quaint but distant memory.

But best news of all, some of our luckiest towns will cheer as they watch their concrete carbuncle of a shopping centre demolished to make way for a glorious, glazed Victorian style market hall, full of independent traders of fresh produce alongside bustling eateries noisy enough to compete with Barcelona’s most cacophonous. Please don’t dismiss this revival of the golden age of retail as a pipe dream. The demand for a more sustainable economy means the shift towards localism is already irreversible. As local produce strips naked to claim zero waste status, the imported stuff will diplomatically follow suit. Within ten years your milk may well be lab-grown but it will come in a traditional, recyclable glass bottle.

So, in many ways a snapshot of your high street in 2030 might look remarkably similar to one taken at the turn of the last century on an old bellows camera: a canopied avenue concertinaed together in a jolly battle for attention. Cookie-cutter stores, that were simply a lacklustre version of their big city cousins, will have completely evaporated, along with mobile phone stores and banks. Back illuminated perspex fascias will be long banished. In the summer months, tables and chairs will spill from the restaurants onto the pavements as a much-loved memento of another important lesson from 2021.

But what you can’t see in this photograph from the future is perhaps the most important lockdown lesson of all: the invisible, interlacing grid that connects everything with everything else. The consumer of the Twenties wants to check stock levels online, reserve items online, try things in store, pick up in store, have things delivered at a specific time, return them in store, pay via the mobile, read reviews, give feedback and receive after-sales advice both in store and online. In other words we want, and expect, a completely seamless experience that extends from our tiny screens to the store and back, for absolutely everything.

No matter what toys Apple and Samsung have planned for us, the mobile, demanding, entitled, forensic consumer is here to stay. Let’s call them the New Victorians!

Now please follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights and musings.

Howard Saunders Dec 15, 2021 Uncategorized 0 Comment Read More

DYSTOPIA 2041

It was over Sunday lunch back in the winter of 2022 that we had the heated family argument over all this. Dad was on one of his ‘hell in a handcart rants’ and was convinced the government wanted complete control over every aspect of our lives and we should resist at every turn. What he failed to see was any of the positive side: the health benefits, the increased security and even our own longevity for that matter. No, he certainly wasn’t right about everything.

Take the ApMan system, for example. Yes, it tracks everywhere I go but it also nudges me to take more exercise or even drink more water. It lets me know when the air is safe and even recommends the safest route for a daytime breather. After ‘consumer traffic’ was banned in cities in 2030, carbon monoxide levels have thankfully plummeted, but levels of ozone and PM (particulate matter) can still be dangerously high, so it’s best to stay indoors, even for an amber warning. No need to take unnecessary risks.

Traffic levels are historically low but there are still plenty of autonomous trucks and cabs running around so the PSS (Pedestrian Signal System) keeps us safe. I seriously cannot imagine how treacherous the roads were back in the day when Dad used to drive around in his own car…and without any guidance control! Terrifying.

When occasionally we do venture out on foot it’s so much safer these days, even if you do get fifty quid knocked off your UBI for cutting the corner at a zebra crossing. You soon learn to stick to the allocated routes and zones.

ApMan is indispensable, frankly. Obviously you need it to get into a bar, store or a gallery, but now that it’s linked to my personal genome it advises me on what’s best to eat, how much, and at what time of day. Following his advice also gives me a serious discount off my health insurance, so it really is a win win. Over indulge on anything and it will vibrate annoyingly for hours so there’s very little drunkenness anymore, at least not for the tracked and healthy. Pubs are more highly regulated than anywhere, so you’d be crazy to flout ApMan’s advice if you want to stay off the trouble maker list.

Restaurants are pretty strict too as they have to follow so much of the latest legislation, so it’s easier just to order from one of the dark kitchens. There’s so much more choice than in the restaurants anyway, and it’s a hell of a lot safer than mixing with everyone, that’s for sure. Every day there’s news of yet another outbreak in a bar or a brasserie that’s then forced to shut down for disinfection. And it often takes months for full Green Clearance.

I remember the local food markets we had around here until they were eventually banned for being the proven source of countless infections and viruses. No one wants to risk their health like that anymore. I think it was the long, hot summer of 2025 that the Hygiene Squad swooped in to close ours down. Quite an exciting day that was!

London is so much cleaner and impressive looking than it was in Dad’s day. All the architecture is tastefully illuminated at night and the roads are so much quieter too, with PSS embedded into the pavements everywhere and distress buttons every few hundred metres or so. The heated underpasses do fill up with the homeless in the evenings, but above ground the city looks better than it’s ever looked, I imagine.

I haven’t used the Tube in years but apparently it’s almost exactly as it was fifty years ago, complete with some of the (now protected) posters and ads for fast food and alcoholic drinks. Some E-friends of mine made a Youtube documentary about it not long ago. London’s Underground really is a piece of subterranean living history, shuttling cleaners and sanitary workers beneath the city right around the clock.

Back at home my children are pretty well balanced, all things considered. Their bi-monthly Social Wellness tests put them in the top 20%, even though they both spend most of the day in the Metaverse. They go to concerts there as well as educational classes and lectures in order to boost their home studies, so it isn’t all e-sports and shoot-em-ups. Sam’s actually got a paid job in there, managing some digital entrepreneur’s identity or something on an Ethereum retainer. It’s all a bit beyond me, to be honest.

So you see, what my father couldn’t understand was that giving up a bit of our independence would in return help make us so much safer, healthier and more financially secure than ever before. Dad might not agree but I believe that’s a price well worth paying.

I promise my next blog will be a tad more upbeat. Meanwhile please follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights and wry retail based musings.

Howard Saunders Nov 15, 2021 advertising, city, discount, face recognition, Future, smartphone, technology, Uncategorized 0 Comment Read More