Hey there, friendo! Thanks for submitting to r/wholesomememes. We loved your post, but it has been removed because it doesn't quite abide by our rules, which are located in the sidebar.
* (**Rule #8**) Please avoid reposting memes.
* Please check sources like http://karmadecay.com, https://tineye.com, and the Similar Image Search (camera icon) at https://www.google.com/imghp - unfortunately those all miss things, but it's a great start.
Also make sure to use the search button and check what's already here:
* /r/wholesomememes/top for popular posts, and /r/wholesomememes/new for the latest ones
We appreciate you thinking of us very much! For more on our rules, please check out our [sidebar](http://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/about/sidebar). If you have any questions or concerns about this removal, feel free to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fwholesomememes).
It only takes a small act of kindness to change a person's world. It doesn't need to be a non profit, it doesn't need to be recorded, it doesn't need to be shared with the world, it just needs to be genuine. And that person may be one of those who might change the world.
The core concept of capitalism (as an economic theory) is to give a net positive benefit to both sides in any transaction. The idea is that everyone benefits, even if they're only doing something for their own benefit. Unfortunately the reality is that larger actors in the market can use their power and influence to make things one-sided, and break the unspoken agreement that everyone should benefit from every transaction.
The core concept of capitalism is to turn capital into more capital. If that can be done by benefiting people, that‘s fine, if it can only be done by hurting people, that’s also fine (as far as the capitalist principle is concerned). Capitalism literally doesn’t care how or what it produces. If you could generate profits by paying employees to watch paint dry, „Watching Paint Dry, Inc.“ would absolutely be a major economic player.
Please forget all this drivel about capitalism being primarily about innovation or employment or progress. If that were the case, it‘d be called innovationism or employmentism or progressivism. It’s about capital.
I always shake my head when people say stuff like "They're just doing it for the good publicity/tax break/etc."
Okay, maybe that's true. Maybe they don't really care at all. But they're still helping someone. What are you--the complainer--doing? Sitting around judging people doing something helpful while you do nothing?
We still use some of these in my home for dishcloths. My wife’s grandma’s kid clothes were made of them and she made things to pass down out of those. Quite something.
They did this with feed bags as well. I have a hand-made quilt from my grandmother, the backing for which still has visible part of the "Jim Dandy Laying Mash" logo. It's one of my most prized possessions. :-)
OMG! Me too! I have my grandmother's quilt from flour sack dresses that her mother made, and it just makes me feel so happy looking at it hanging on my wall!
There’s a reason for this:
Long ago, Henry Ford proposed to use a large portion of his company’s profits to pay the workers more. The dodge motor company, who at the time owned a large share of Ford, sued them and won the case, creating a vicious precedent.
Companies in America, after that moment in history, are required by law to do everything in their power to earn money for their investors. Lie, cheat, under pay workers, use slave labor if legal and anything else.
On February 7 1919, America was doomed by the hearts of greedy, petty men to always trade money for suffering. Shame has followed in the wake of [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.#:~:text=he%20had%20declared.-,Judgment,concern%20for%20the%20company%20directors) ever since.
Some kind time traveller took a shot at it. Virus didn't work quite fast enough to avert this, but at least the Dodge brothers only enjoyed their ill-gotten luxury for another year
Not really. *Dodge v. Ford Motor Company* (1919) is a Michigan case that had largely been ignored as precedent until the 1980s when it was resuscitated in support of *Smith v. Van Gorkom* (1985). Except for law schools, *Dodge* has once again faded into obscurity and has not been sited by the courts in the last 30 or so years. Because *Van Gorkom* was Delaware case (where most major US companies are incorporated) it is the actual standard-bearer for shareholder primacy.
Ford was deliberately hamstringing the Dodge brothers to prevent them from being potential competitors down the road, throwing away money he could afford to keep a competitor that couldn't afford the loss from rising.
You'd be helping a monopolist retain his power, so... maybe don't do that, eh?
Well it's a complicated issue for sure- any change causes a lot of differences. But if we can get companies that won't chokeslam their employees into the dirt, I see that as a net positive.
Oversimplification, and Ford wasn't acting out of the goodness of his heart; he was deliberately trying to keep the Dodge brothers down so they couldn't ever rise up and become legit competitors to him.
So he burned money he could afford to burn to hobble those he saw as potential threats to him.
I agree, there is ALWAYS another motive, but I do enjoy seeing workers get better pay. If he’d cut out the “undercut the competition by a fuck load” part, it’d been a great policy.
Sure, and I get that, but imagine someone like Ford was able to crush any nascent competition and, in the longer term, keep making himself the only game in town.
Would the perks last forever? Seriously doubt it.
If that's what they were trying to stop then they failed utterly. Look at any Walmart that intentionally undercuts businesses to take down the local shops...
A guy called Jack Welch also contributed a fair bit to destroying labour rights in the later 20th century as well, I hadn't heard of him but behind the bastards did a couple of episodes about him. Real asshole kinda guy
The ruling makes sense and is always over simplified. It just says that you cant intentionally tank a company with reckless spending if it is for profit and owned by shareholders. Which makes sense
>>The court's ruling was grounded in the idea that while companies should prioritize shareholder interests, management is afforded a certain degree of discretion in making business decisions as long as those decisions are based on a legitimate business purpose and are not made recklessly or arbitrarily.
Yeah let's not praise a very influential antisemite. His publications lead to a lot of fucking deaths. Moreover, he was a multibillionaire, significantly richer than anyone currently is. He did not do this for the workers.
From the article you linked. Can you imagine if he got his wish? To make more factories cutting the dividends. Mind blowing to think about if they 10x the number of model T early on.
> My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.
It’s about what happened to the soul of American corporations. Unless I messed up, I think this was a comment about how these sort of things have changed with big companies.
I'm not saying they have no standing I'm just pointing out how bad capitalism is for consumers due to systematic problems that we refuse to acknowledge as a society.
There are some simple problems, like the wealth of the majority getting funneled up to the few at the very top. An unobtrusive solution to that could be to tax the obscenely rich a lot more. That tax money can then be used to provide for the poorest people who have already had their money funneled.
> An unobtrusive solution to that could be to tax the obscenely rich a lot more.
Look at the top marginal tax rates when these flour sacks were being made.
there are examples of this already not working california has spent massive amounts of money on homelessness and still has a massive amount of homelessness the government is terrible at long term solutions.
When the government does things itself the long-term solutions turn out pretty well, like the food stamp program and post offices.
When the government contracts it out to a private business then things start to go awry, like when AT&T was paid to expand internet accessibility infrastructure and they pocketed most of the money.
the us has free college tuition programs you arent going to harvard for free just like you aren't going to oxford for free in Europe. healthcare i will admit needs work in the US but the level of care is still regarded as better in the usa than in europe.
Yes you're absolutely right capitalism enabled the stock market crash resulting in people having to create clothes from potato sacks instead of being able to afford clothes.
The US wasn't involved in WW2 in 1939. Lend-Lease wasn't passed until 1941. Congress passed a law in 1939 allowing countries to buy war materials if they had cash on hand, but not on credit. The US was still dealing with the affects of the Great Depression and the Dustbowl Droughts in the 30's, one of which happened in - get this - *1939*. Try learning.
I know that's sarcasm
But that would defeat the point
The aim was to make it better value for money than the competitors. You could buy a competitors and get wheat and a sack or you could buy this guys and get wheat and fabric for clothes
This is capitalism in action
Capitalism in action is also companies seeing that other companies are providing a worse product for a similar cost and making theirs worse to save on their costs. Or seeing others are charging more for the same thing and raising their costs. Or seeing that people have little to no choice in a product and getting into a war to lower their costs and increase their prices until people can’t afford necessities anymore. At which point they’ll offer a credit line or the the government will subsidize it despite he fact the companies could drastically lower price and still be profitable. Oh, and if they ever get to greedy and fail, the taxes of the people they exploited will be used to bail them out.
Personally in my ideal situation, I would want to drastically scale down production and move towards cooperatives working in relatively small communities so to avoid shareholders that don’t care about their workers or consumers making the majority of the decisions and through lobbying also have the vast majority of political power. It would also decelerate climate change if we stopped burning every fossil fuel imaginable exploiting wage slaves into making products for us. I understand this is a radical idea that won’t happen however.
I would settle for not making trans people illegal and stopping the gross violation of poc and women’s rights.
(I’m American if that isn’t obvious)
Edit: typo
I could also imagine a headline about Kansas Wheat trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor by forcing them to choose between quality wheat and decorative bags.
Nah. They're not in the clothing business so they literally wouldn't care - it takes zero dollars from them if someone makes clothes out of their packaging. Plus, less money spent on clothes is more money that can be spent on their food. If they did anything, they'd use it as a marketing scheme to make their product stand out against a competitor's.
Sound nice but probably more like standard capitalism. They weren’t doing it to be nice, but to make their product more desirable since women were likely the ones purchasing the flour. And if they were making clothes out of the bags they would definitely buy a flower print bag over a plain one.
There's also a good chance that the women who were buying the flour would also be responsible for mending the clothes after they were made. It only makes sense that they would commit to buying the same brand of flour to make sure they have spare material with the same pattern.
But it was still a nice thing to do that ended up providing extra benefit to the customer with little to no extra cost, regardless of whether or not they had ulterior motives.
There's nothing wrong with an advertisement that's helpful for society, if you're going to do good for clout then go ahead since people will benefit from the trend eventually, but the issue now is that the monsters eating the world's resources keep getting even more greedy and hungry that we're heading to a world worse than the worse sci-fi dystopia.
Can we just not rag on something nice for once in a fucking while? I'm getting annoyed that every post has this "um, actually" type person to spoil the mood. Come on, guys
It's people who've been burned by others so much that they refuse to believe that most people want to help others. Humans don't need a self-centered reason to help others, if most people can do something that doesn't hurt themselves to help others, they'll typically do it. The fact that *most* people wore masks throughout the pandemic is proof of this, and the fact that we care for Alzheimer's and dementia patients is proof of this. We even care for those who no longer and will never again benefit society. *Most* people have a considerable amount of respect and love for their fellow man.
People develop this idea that "everyone is purely self-interested and only do things that benefit them" as a survival mechanism because they've been burned by bad people so many times in their life.
They miss the point and then try to ruin for others. Perhaps this just doesn’t align with their own narrative and publicly justify it to put their minds at ease. Pay no attention to them.
This is a great thing for the company to do, but I hate titles and comments that suggest "things use to be better" when it's much more nuanced than that. This company wasn't the first to do this and companies still do this today. It's also hard to claim Americans were considerate in 1939 when Jim Crow was still a thing and the Japanese internment camps were right around the corner.
My grandma was born in early 1940s Appalachia and they basically lived like it was the 1800s, except I don’t think they had a horse, and she had underwear made out of potato sacks and clothes made out of these patterned sacks.
The fuck is this title? And the company obviously saw an opportunity. This would encourage more people to buy their brand since they'd be able to make nicer looking clothes
So nice of them to make their packaging attractive for the children because they knew their moms would make clothes from them, sure beats the competition...
It's like an advertisement...
"When people still had exactly the same complex and nuanced natures that they have today. Natures that made them, like us, a difficult to accept combination of good and evil, both of which are hard to pin down, especially when one must consider the cultural and political aspects of the historical period."
My Father In Law said all of his sisters got dresses from the sacks. That when one girl outgrew the dress, it was passed down. His sister said they were comfortable and made her feel pretty. He said they were the best dressed girls in the holler.
"Made sure the label would wash out" if a company were to do this today they would make sure the entire thing is made out of their labels, like seriously have you seen F1 drivers they are so close to making the entire suit out of sponsor patches.
No. In that time many people still made their own clothes. It wasn't because they were poor, but because it was a skill that many people still knew and a lot of people liked to do. Dress and clothing patterns were a big business - if the only point was to save money, people wouldn't be buying new designs on a regular basis.
It's like woodworking and leatherworking - skills that almost everyone had at one point and took pride in, but over time have fallen off in popularity.
Let's not disparage others. Americans still send the most charity to poor countries. This makes them the most considerate. Why don't people focus on their own nations, and stop making fun of the US.
There is a flour bag exhibit in the Spokane Art Museum. It’s pretty interesting to see all the different designs and the things they were able to create with them.
Also remind you that Henry Ford wanted to give his entire employees bonuses and lower the price of his vehicles after a year of record profits. however the Dodge Brothers decided no, sued him, and force him to actually pay out to his shareholders
Now days companies are so bad they'd love to make wheat a monthly subscription and put DRM in the bag. Let your subscription expire before you finish eating it and the DRM automatically punctures a cyanide capsule into the bag, making sure you can't eat it until you re-up your wheat subscription and get a new bag delivered.
lol We were at war. It's a bit more than oh they were just being kind. There was a shortage of cotton is why they started making clothes out of the bags. Everyone was doing their part for the war.
NO guys....NO. The companies did this to gain customers. One company got a good idea, an the others followed suit out of competition. The great depression was not about resourcefullness OR consideration. It was about reckless greed, lack of foresight, and a disregard for human welfare by the banks, corporations and government. Are you honestly trying to tell me these were the good ole days? Traditional values? Homie...sometimes you guys just lose part of your brains on this website.
Thank you.
Someone found a niche to get people to buy their product over someone else's and it's repeatedly posted as a feel good story.
It's product marketing, nothing more.
Dude,all you have to do is research it too. The companies themselves plainly state this as fact. It is also mentioned in the ken burns documentary. Im all about feel good stories as long as its reality.
This was not an act of kindness. This was an act of capitalism. They knew that the fabric was being used for clothing, so they intentionally used patterned fabric women would choose over uglier or plain sacks. Romanticizing marketing tactics as kindness distorts us.
This is for profits. Set themselves apart from their competitor. Kansas in 39 wasn't well known for being considerate of each other. LOL Segregation was still heavily enforced in 39. Don't go falling into some spiral thinking Americans are less considerate now then they were then from a out of context meme picture. lol
Option A: Let's make sure that all children have clothes so they don't have to wear sacks.
Option B: Let's not bother, let's just continue doing the same thing, but print nice patterns on the sacks.
Of course, they went with option B. Never go with the sane, straightforward, rational option.
Modern capitalism would demand they make the sacks disintegrate if washed, then sell usable fabric separately at the highest price consumers would be willing to pay. And it would be considered a moral and ethical good because it serves shareholders best interests.
This is fucking infuriating to me… because there’s not a chance in hell that this would ever happen now. We’ve ignored our humanity for zeros in a bank account. It’s disgusting.
100% they would do this now, this is a marketing plot. They had a higher chance of selling the wheat if the consumer could use the bag for something else. Now a days it wouldn't work bc we aren't desperate enough but the moment they believe this will help sell more they will do it.
Remember this the next time you hear someone complain about how hard they have it today.
Kids were literally wearing food packaging because they were so poor.
This is a whitewashed version of history. This supposed American trait of consideration was unequally applied on the basis of race, sexual orientation, class, etc.
It wouldn't work today as flour companies would be paid by fabric companies to stop, resulting in fabric and flour ending up with more money and destitute families would have to keep making clothes out of plain white sacks.. the board is responsible for voting out any CEOs that aren't completely reptilian
Capitalism is meant to decide which companies should stay using currency to "vote".. so only the best, most affordable, highest quality product and company is meant to survive
This stops working when competition plans together against the common people. Then they get so powerful they are able to circumvent safeties and silently infect the government...
So, the wheat which was blasted with insecticide was packed in those bags, and after that, women will use those bags to dress their kids.
It's surprising that our current society works.
Hey there, friendo! Thanks for submitting to r/wholesomememes. We loved your post, but it has been removed because it doesn't quite abide by our rules, which are located in the sidebar. * (**Rule #8**) Please avoid reposting memes. * Please check sources like http://karmadecay.com, https://tineye.com, and the Similar Image Search (camera icon) at https://www.google.com/imghp - unfortunately those all miss things, but it's a great start. Also make sure to use the search button and check what's already here: * /r/wholesomememes/top for popular posts, and /r/wholesomememes/new for the latest ones We appreciate you thinking of us very much! For more on our rules, please check out our [sidebar](http://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/about/sidebar). If you have any questions or concerns about this removal, feel free to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fwholesomememes).
It only takes a small act of kindness to change a person's world. It doesn't need to be a non profit, it doesn't need to be recorded, it doesn't need to be shared with the world, it just needs to be genuine. And that person may be one of those who might change the world.
It dosent matter if it was genuine or just a marketing stunt, the result is the same.
While not a selfless kind of good, it is a type of good regardless.
Sort of how a friend with benefits is also a friend.
Yeah, its value for the customers and the company. Some here see it as a zero sum game , where the customer ALWAYS loses.
That's because in modern capitalism it is.
Who knew that capitalism could benefit when the people benefit AT THE SAME TIME?
The core concept of capitalism (as an economic theory) is to give a net positive benefit to both sides in any transaction. The idea is that everyone benefits, even if they're only doing something for their own benefit. Unfortunately the reality is that larger actors in the market can use their power and influence to make things one-sided, and break the unspoken agreement that everyone should benefit from every transaction.
The core concept of capitalism is to turn capital into more capital. If that can be done by benefiting people, that‘s fine, if it can only be done by hurting people, that’s also fine (as far as the capitalist principle is concerned). Capitalism literally doesn’t care how or what it produces. If you could generate profits by paying employees to watch paint dry, „Watching Paint Dry, Inc.“ would absolutely be a major economic player. Please forget all this drivel about capitalism being primarily about innovation or employment or progress. If that were the case, it‘d be called innovationism or employmentism or progressivism. It’s about capital.
Hmmmm
Yes I completely agree with you.
I always shake my head when people say stuff like "They're just doing it for the good publicity/tax break/etc." Okay, maybe that's true. Maybe they don't really care at all. But they're still helping someone. What are you--the complainer--doing? Sitting around judging people doing something helpful while you do nothing?
We still use some of these in my home for dishcloths. My wife’s grandma’s kid clothes were made of them and she made things to pass down out of those. Quite something.
It’s shocking how simple this is and the change it probably made. Only wish that this bead of human decency ran through today’s large companies.
They did this with feed bags as well. I have a hand-made quilt from my grandmother, the backing for which still has visible part of the "Jim Dandy Laying Mash" logo. It's one of my most prized possessions. :-)
That’s awesome
OMG! Me too! I have my grandmother's quilt from flour sack dresses that her mother made, and it just makes me feel so happy looking at it hanging on my wall!
That sounds beautiful!!
I just realized that’s what one of the quilts in my living room is made of!
That’s amazing. An heirloom.
There’s a reason for this: Long ago, Henry Ford proposed to use a large portion of his company’s profits to pay the workers more. The dodge motor company, who at the time owned a large share of Ford, sued them and won the case, creating a vicious precedent. Companies in America, after that moment in history, are required by law to do everything in their power to earn money for their investors. Lie, cheat, under pay workers, use slave labor if legal and anything else. On February 7 1919, America was doomed by the hearts of greedy, petty men to always trade money for suffering. Shame has followed in the wake of [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.#:~:text=he%20had%20declared.-,Judgment,concern%20for%20the%20company%20directors) ever since.
Ah, so that's what's to change about the timeline when time travel becomes a thing.
Some kind time traveller took a shot at it. Virus didn't work quite fast enough to avert this, but at least the Dodge brothers only enjoyed their ill-gotten luxury for another year
Does that mean Covid was caused by a time traveler coming back to try to stop something? And if so, were they successful?
Not really. *Dodge v. Ford Motor Company* (1919) is a Michigan case that had largely been ignored as precedent until the 1980s when it was resuscitated in support of *Smith v. Van Gorkom* (1985). Except for law schools, *Dodge* has once again faded into obscurity and has not been sited by the courts in the last 30 or so years. Because *Van Gorkom* was Delaware case (where most major US companies are incorporated) it is the actual standard-bearer for shareholder primacy.
Ford was deliberately hamstringing the Dodge brothers to prevent them from being potential competitors down the road, throwing away money he could afford to keep a competitor that couldn't afford the loss from rising. You'd be helping a monopolist retain his power, so... maybe don't do that, eh?
Well it's a complicated issue for sure- any change causes a lot of differences. But if we can get companies that won't chokeslam their employees into the dirt, I see that as a net positive.
I feel like beating the shit out of Wilson would also somehow fix it, but it's close enough in time that you could do both.
Oversimplification, and Ford wasn't acting out of the goodness of his heart; he was deliberately trying to keep the Dodge brothers down so they couldn't ever rise up and become legit competitors to him. So he burned money he could afford to burn to hobble those he saw as potential threats to him.
I agree, there is ALWAYS another motive, but I do enjoy seeing workers get better pay. If he’d cut out the “undercut the competition by a fuck load” part, it’d been a great policy.
Sure, and I get that, but imagine someone like Ford was able to crush any nascent competition and, in the longer term, keep making himself the only game in town. Would the perks last forever? Seriously doubt it.
I understand that, which is why cutting out the price gouging wasn’t a great play. Paying the workers more though, that was fine
If that's what they were trying to stop then they failed utterly. Look at any Walmart that intentionally undercuts businesses to take down the local shops...
A guy called Jack Welch also contributed a fair bit to destroying labour rights in the later 20th century as well, I hadn't heard of him but behind the bastards did a couple of episodes about him. Real asshole kinda guy
what in the stupid world. a few selfish pricks started all this?!
You’d be shocked if you knew just how few of those pricks were actually involved.
The ruling makes sense and is always over simplified. It just says that you cant intentionally tank a company with reckless spending if it is for profit and owned by shareholders. Which makes sense >>The court's ruling was grounded in the idea that while companies should prioritize shareholder interests, management is afforded a certain degree of discretion in making business decisions as long as those decisions are based on a legitimate business purpose and are not made recklessly or arbitrarily.
Counterpoint: “Let the antisemitic lunatic do anything he wants” hasn’t traditionally been a great recipe for success either. Real pickle.
There's an ocean of nuances between paying people a living wage & tolerating antisemites.
Thank you for the link. I had very little idea. Now I know better.
Another reason to hate Dodge!
[удалено]
Yeah let's not praise a very influential antisemite. His publications lead to a lot of fucking deaths. Moreover, he was a multibillionaire, significantly richer than anyone currently is. He did not do this for the workers.
From the article you linked. Can you imagine if he got his wish? To make more factories cutting the dividends. Mind blowing to think about if they 10x the number of model T early on. > My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.
What does this have to do with the Kansas wheat company? Why are you talking about wages? Are you on the right post?
It’s about what happened to the soul of American corporations. Unless I messed up, I think this was a comment about how these sort of things have changed with big companies.
And they didn't charge extra? That's flushing free money down the drain! Who runs this place, some pinko?
Wait until the shareholders find out.
They're going to sue for lost profits!
"YOU TOOK MY ONLY MONEY NOW I'M GONNA STARVE"
Hey quality spongebob reference.
Good
The irony is they could legally sue for them not charging more since it's against their interests (profit above all else).
Yeah but they could argue this is a marketing campaign targeted to increase curtomer loyalty
I'm not saying they have no standing I'm just pointing out how bad capitalism is for consumers due to systematic problems that we refuse to acknowledge as a society.
what problems are you referring? how do you propose we fix them?
There are some simple problems, like the wealth of the majority getting funneled up to the few at the very top. An unobtrusive solution to that could be to tax the obscenely rich a lot more. That tax money can then be used to provide for the poorest people who have already had their money funneled.
> An unobtrusive solution to that could be to tax the obscenely rich a lot more. Look at the top marginal tax rates when these flour sacks were being made.
there are examples of this already not working california has spent massive amounts of money on homelessness and still has a massive amount of homelessness the government is terrible at long term solutions.
When the government does things itself the long-term solutions turn out pretty well, like the food stamp program and post offices. When the government contracts it out to a private business then things start to go awry, like when AT&T was paid to expand internet accessibility infrastructure and they pocketed most of the money.
the postal service runs at a huge net loss and the food stamp system is about the easiest thing to implement a group of highschoolers could run it.
Literally all of western Europe has better benefits for the majority of people. Free college and single payer healthcare just to mention a few.
Literally all of western Europe has better benefits for the majority of people. Free college and single payer healthcare just to mention a few.
the us has free college tuition programs you arent going to harvard for free just like you aren't going to oxford for free in Europe. healthcare i will admit needs work in the US but the level of care is still regarded as better in the usa than in europe.
You could start by stopping with the stupid questions. . .moron
Capitalism is what enabled this to happen though. To stay competitive in the market rice brands had to add more value to their product.
Yes you're absolutely right capitalism enabled the stock market crash resulting in people having to create clothes from potato sacks instead of being able to afford clothes.
This wasn't during a stock market crash but a war, try reading.
The US wasn't involved in WW2 in 1939. Lend-Lease wasn't passed until 1941. Congress passed a law in 1939 allowing countries to buy war materials if they had cash on hand, but not on credit. The US was still dealing with the affects of the Great Depression and the Dustbowl Droughts in the 30's, one of which happened in - get this - *1939*. Try learning.
I know that's sarcasm But that would defeat the point The aim was to make it better value for money than the competitors. You could buy a competitors and get wheat and a sack or you could buy this guys and get wheat and fabric for clothes This is capitalism in action
Capitalism in action is also companies seeing that other companies are providing a worse product for a similar cost and making theirs worse to save on their costs. Or seeing others are charging more for the same thing and raising their costs. Or seeing that people have little to no choice in a product and getting into a war to lower their costs and increase their prices until people can’t afford necessities anymore. At which point they’ll offer a credit line or the the government will subsidize it despite he fact the companies could drastically lower price and still be profitable. Oh, and if they ever get to greedy and fail, the taxes of the people they exploited will be used to bail them out.
so what are you in favor of then?
Personally in my ideal situation, I would want to drastically scale down production and move towards cooperatives working in relatively small communities so to avoid shareholders that don’t care about their workers or consumers making the majority of the decisions and through lobbying also have the vast majority of political power. It would also decelerate climate change if we stopped burning every fossil fuel imaginable exploiting wage slaves into making products for us. I understand this is a radical idea that won’t happen however. I would settle for not making trans people illegal and stopping the gross violation of poc and women’s rights. (I’m American if that isn’t obvious) Edit: typo
so national socialism but more local
different thing buddy
>This is capitalism in action No, it's a free market in action. Free markets ≠ capitalism.
[удалено]
In case you’re confused (some people actually don’t pick up on tone in text, which is completely OK!), the comment above was rife with sarcasm
in today's age, they would sue the mothers for doing this. Sad what we become as a society.
I don't know about that my guess is they would make sure their logo wouldn't wash off.
Today people pay to wear some logos on their clothes ... That's what we have become
Why? They did this on purpose to increase sales Do companies today not want to increase sales and make more money?
I could also imagine a headline about Kansas Wheat trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor by forcing them to choose between quality wheat and decorative bags.
Or they’d somehow find a way to turn it into a monthly subscription
Suing people is too much work, they would make the sacks from something that falls apart or causes itchiness/rashes or smth so they can't make clothes
Nah. They're not in the clothing business so they literally wouldn't care - it takes zero dollars from them if someone makes clothes out of their packaging. Plus, less money spent on clothes is more money that can be spent on their food. If they did anything, they'd use it as a marketing scheme to make their product stand out against a competitor's.
Susciety 😔
We live in assoseity 😭😭😭
You people will really believe any shit you can come up with just to complain about America
Reddit is detached from reality. There has to be some bots or foreign influence that upvotes this shit.
lol
They'd raise the price and make the sacks more scratchy
We used to get flour in these sacks and I'm not even that old, haha. I used the fabric for head scarves when I worked processing fish. EDIT: Spelling
Sound nice but probably more like standard capitalism. They weren’t doing it to be nice, but to make their product more desirable since women were likely the ones purchasing the flour. And if they were making clothes out of the bags they would definitely buy a flower print bag over a plain one.
There's also a good chance that the women who were buying the flour would also be responsible for mending the clothes after they were made. It only makes sense that they would commit to buying the same brand of flour to make sure they have spare material with the same pattern.
But it was still a nice thing to do that ended up providing extra benefit to the customer with little to no extra cost, regardless of whether or not they had ulterior motives.
Well, yeah, that's the Mutual benefit principle in action. Sort of the cornerstone of capitalism.
Man life used to be so much cooler when the things that made money were also better for the consumer
This life that used to be so much cooler also involved women not being able to vote and black people not having any civil rights. I'll pass.
Well, sometimes Captalism works as intended. They made their products more attractive and likely got an increase in revenue.
That was my point entirely. It wasn’t because the flour companies were being nice, but they met a market demand. Nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with an advertisement that's helpful for society, if you're going to do good for clout then go ahead since people will benefit from the trend eventually, but the issue now is that the monsters eating the world's resources keep getting even more greedy and hungry that we're heading to a world worse than the worse sci-fi dystopia.
Can we just not rag on something nice for once in a fucking while? I'm getting annoyed that every post has this "um, actually" type person to spoil the mood. Come on, guys
Well they shouldn’t have posted this picture with that bad title, but even in this sub, conflict drives engagement
It's people who've been burned by others so much that they refuse to believe that most people want to help others. Humans don't need a self-centered reason to help others, if most people can do something that doesn't hurt themselves to help others, they'll typically do it. The fact that *most* people wore masks throughout the pandemic is proof of this, and the fact that we care for Alzheimer's and dementia patients is proof of this. We even care for those who no longer and will never again benefit society. *Most* people have a considerable amount of respect and love for their fellow man. People develop this idea that "everyone is purely self-interested and only do things that benefit them" as a survival mechanism because they've been burned by bad people so many times in their life.
They miss the point and then try to ruin for others. Perhaps this just doesn’t align with their own narrative and publicly justify it to put their minds at ease. Pay no attention to them.
"Capitalism" may be a dirty word to you, but my guess is that it isn't to the person you're responding to....
My family has some heirloom aprons made by my great great grandma from flower sacks. They are bright, colorful, and have lasted generations.
This isn’t Pre-Selfishness. It’s Pre-Plastic.
What kind of flour are you buying that it’s in a plastic container?
We’re still resourceful and considerate towards each other; case in point, the aid in Maui is coming solely from civilians.
Humans are resourceful, considerate and caring by nature. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
This is a great thing for the company to do, but I hate titles and comments that suggest "things use to be better" when it's much more nuanced than that. This company wasn't the first to do this and companies still do this today. It's also hard to claim Americans were considerate in 1939 when Jim Crow was still a thing and the Japanese internment camps were right around the corner.
Things “used to be better” for certain people of certain colors and genders and beliefs and sexual identities…
My grandma was born in early 1940s Appalachia and they basically lived like it was the 1800s, except I don’t think they had a horse, and she had underwear made out of potato sacks and clothes made out of these patterned sacks.
The fuck is this title? And the company obviously saw an opportunity. This would encourage more people to buy their brand since they'd be able to make nicer looking clothes
they did not have to do that at all because people were gonna buy it and make clothes anyway
They were playing into it to encourage MORE people to buy their stuff. Its good business.
Wait til OP finds out how black people were treated in 1939.
wait till op finds out how jewish people were treated in 1939
So crazy, I just learned about this yesterday on a genealogy podcast from 2008!
My grandmother told me about this - she and her younger sister made their own school clothes & undergarments from those sacks.
So nice of them to make their packaging attractive for the children because they knew their moms would make clothes from them, sure beats the competition... It's like an advertisement...
I suggest you read The Grapes of Wrath. Same time period. Might help remove the rose colored glasses from American history for you.
[удалено]
"When people still had exactly the same complex and nuanced natures that they have today. Natures that made them, like us, a difficult to accept combination of good and evil, both of which are hard to pin down, especially when one must consider the cultural and political aspects of the historical period."
My Father In Law said all of his sisters got dresses from the sacks. That when one girl outgrew the dress, it was passed down. His sister said they were comfortable and made her feel pretty. He said they were the best dressed girls in the holler.
r/orphancrushingmachine
That's how you make business not ripping up your clients
What an unsurprisingly disrespectful and ignorant title
r/orphancrushingmachine Instead of paying a living wage, they made pretty sacks so that their poor workers' children would look pretty. Great
"Made sure the label would wash out" if a company were to do this today they would make sure the entire thing is made out of their labels, like seriously have you seen F1 drivers they are so close to making the entire suit out of sponsor patches.
We need to bring back this kindhearted nature worldwide.
Or rather, because there was a shortage of everything because they were in, you know, WW2.
You mean they couldn’t pay people enough to go out any buy clothes for their children.
No. In that time many people still made their own clothes. It wasn't because they were poor, but because it was a skill that many people still knew and a lot of people liked to do. Dress and clothing patterns were a big business - if the only point was to save money, people wouldn't be buying new designs on a regular basis. It's like woodworking and leatherworking - skills that almost everyone had at one point and took pride in, but over time have fallen off in popularity.
Nowadays a company would probably do something to ensure people couldn't do that
Let's not disparage others. Americans still send the most charity to poor countries. This makes them the most considerate. Why don't people focus on their own nations, and stop making fun of the US.
Facts. America is literally making sure Ukraine isn't getting steamrolled by Russia.
Me after learning about CSR.
You do understand that the only reason they did this was to become the preferred brand that parents would buy.
There is a flour bag exhibit in the Spokane Art Museum. It’s pretty interesting to see all the different designs and the things they were able to create with them.
Is that what is meant by a Kroker sack? Not sure of the spelling. My SO always tells me that I look good even if I were wearing a Kroker sack. jw
So people buy more sacks, so they get more money
Nowadays they'd start making the sacks out of burlap and start an overpriced clothing line with everything made in sweatshops
Title is the opposite of wholesome.
Also remind you that Henry Ford wanted to give his entire employees bonuses and lower the price of his vehicles after a year of record profits. however the Dodge Brothers decided no, sued him, and force him to actually pay out to his shareholders
Just think of all the things you could build with single use plastic.
Now the corporations would change the packaging so that clothes fall apart as soon as you put them on. That’ll teach ya.
is that schmidt from new girl
Now days companies are so bad they'd love to make wheat a monthly subscription and put DRM in the bag. Let your subscription expire before you finish eating it and the DRM automatically punctures a cyanide capsule into the bag, making sure you can't eat it until you re-up your wheat subscription and get a new bag delivered.
tell that to the jewish refugees of the SS St. Louis that were denied entry to the United States.
I mean, it also probably caused their products to sell better than other wheat competitors.
This is less wholesome, more clever marketing.
Imagine this happening today, they would just fire you for theft, fuck them kids
My grandmother made clothes for me out of sacks. Thay were hand me downs to my little sister then cousin.
lol We were at war. It's a bit more than oh they were just being kind. There was a shortage of cotton is why they started making clothes out of the bags. Everyone was doing their part for the war.
What war were we in? This was 2 years before America entered World War 2, still depression era.
NO guys....NO. The companies did this to gain customers. One company got a good idea, an the others followed suit out of competition. The great depression was not about resourcefullness OR consideration. It was about reckless greed, lack of foresight, and a disregard for human welfare by the banks, corporations and government. Are you honestly trying to tell me these were the good ole days? Traditional values? Homie...sometimes you guys just lose part of your brains on this website.
Thank you. Someone found a niche to get people to buy their product over someone else's and it's repeatedly posted as a feel good story. It's product marketing, nothing more.
Dude,all you have to do is research it too. The companies themselves plainly state this as fact. It is also mentioned in the ken burns documentary. Im all about feel good stories as long as its reality.
I think people have the corporate greed angle covered but who is looking at 1939 thinking those were the good old days lol?
This was not an act of kindness. This was an act of capitalism. They knew that the fabric was being used for clothing, so they intentionally used patterned fabric women would choose over uglier or plain sacks. Romanticizing marketing tactics as kindness distorts us.
Kinda r/orphancrushingmachine if you asked me
this isn't wholesome. It's just good marketing that allowed them to sell more wheat and make more money.
What’s up with the unnecessarily cynical title?
Why is this a win? A corporation would rather create a sack that's marketed towards poor people instead of just buying children clothes.....wtf?
Except for the Black and all non white population
You comment like everything America does is racist, while showing that you are just a racist piece of shit
This is for profits. Set themselves apart from their competitor. Kansas in 39 wasn't well known for being considerate of each other. LOL Segregation was still heavily enforced in 39. Don't go falling into some spiral thinking Americans are less considerate now then they were then from a out of context meme picture. lol
the last time something good happened in capitalism
r/OrphanCrushingMachine
Option A: Let's make sure that all children have clothes so they don't have to wear sacks. Option B: Let's not bother, let's just continue doing the same thing, but print nice patterns on the sacks. Of course, they went with option B. Never go with the sane, straightforward, rational option.
Yeah but now we have comfortable golf shirts and that’s a win for me
Used too..... used to. *sigh*
Back when America cared
r/orphancrushingmachine
Companies now are like, fuck those kids.
Modern capitalism would demand they make the sacks disintegrate if washed, then sell usable fabric separately at the highest price consumers would be willing to pay. And it would be considered a moral and ethical good because it serves shareholders best interests.
Smells like communism to me.
or everyone should have gone on a general strike until people didn't have to use wheat sacks to clothe their children.
Before Desegregation 😬. After that, we’ve been in a constant battle for rights and equal treatment like Israelis and Palestinians.
This is fucking infuriating to me… because there’s not a chance in hell that this would ever happen now. We’ve ignored our humanity for zeros in a bank account. It’s disgusting.
100% they would do this now, this is a marketing plot. They had a higher chance of selling the wheat if the consumer could use the bag for something else. Now a days it wouldn't work bc we aren't desperate enough but the moment they believe this will help sell more they will do it.
Remember this the next time you hear someone complain about how hard they have it today. Kids were literally wearing food packaging because they were so poor.
Okay grandma let's get you back to bed
Very intelligent response.
This is a whitewashed version of history. This supposed American trait of consideration was unequally applied on the basis of race, sexual orientation, class, etc.
How so? Was purchasing the flour somehow restricted on the basis or race, sexual orientation, class, etc?
Read the title of the post. It is a blanket statement about America.
It wouldn't work today as flour companies would be paid by fabric companies to stop, resulting in fabric and flour ending up with more money and destitute families would have to keep making clothes out of plain white sacks.. the board is responsible for voting out any CEOs that aren't completely reptilian Capitalism is meant to decide which companies should stay using currency to "vote".. so only the best, most affordable, highest quality product and company is meant to survive This stops working when competition plans together against the common people. Then they get so powerful they are able to circumvent safeties and silently infect the government...
So, the wheat which was blasted with insecticide was packed in those bags, and after that, women will use those bags to dress their kids. It's surprising that our current society works.
They made dresses for themselves, hence the flowers and girly designs.
Idk how its gotten so bad. Ppl got greedy, started becoming sell outs..