10 things that won't survive the recession

I forgot to put when will never be completlely digital, we can't even replace paper.

People have tried since the inventing of the type writter to replace paper and whatever you put against it always fails, ebooks, epaper,computers etc. they always fail.

Then paper could survive longer than electronic equipment say 500 years from now you find a computer and a piece of paper which will be understood more the paper you may not know how to use said computer but you can read the paper if its your language.

They way things are going the people of the future wont know nothing about this century, the electronic media will fail at some point and so will the backups while stuff like the pyramids will still be around. No matter how many copies of our history we put on compters , cd's flash, memory etc come 100 yrs from now the old stone buildings and tablets have a better chance of making it in the long run.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by kvaniu]

i don't see every household having a late model auto... regardless if it is powered by gas, ethonol, diesel, hybrid, electric...

the Cuban model or the old Soviet model is what i see coming in the 5 year recession... with a major building of all forms of public transportation.


Oh, and the last 1,000 or so drive-in movies will become extinct...
pretty much like most mini-strip-malls that will have gone ghost-town like

reply to post by ZindoDoone


Your right about the racing even the imports are feeling it. Subaru from what I hear is pulling out of WRC. I am sort of a gear head/tuner myself I got lucky and prices have dropped enough so that I could get my car (Evo VIII) in April 2008. I am not a tech though in the sorts that I work on cars for a living. I do though do most of my work if time and tools allow. That is my daily driver so if a shop can get it done faster than I can on a big project they get to do the work.

Honda pulled out of F1 and AMA, Porsche and Audi pulled out of ALMS, and Suzuki also pulled out of WRC.

Mitsubishi changed up the Evo X from the others in hopes of gathering a more diverse crowd because they really don’t make much with anything else. They took it from the rally roots and went more generalized in looks, now it looks like most other new cars. The power is there but with more weight. In the end their plan back fired, yeah the Evo X is selling but not like the previous generations did.


Seeing racing go I really don’t have a desire either way. I would rather be out driving my car than sitting watching someone else racing though. It is entertaining to watch some rallying or road course races from time to time though, but not the whole race too much time of doing nothing drives me crazy.

Raist

Brick and Motar will survive, sense you didnt go into what type of store food stores will surive, I dont think anyone will want to order food over the net wait couple days then get it; Lots of people like to pick there fruits and vegetables to ensure there not damaged, rotten or on there way to being rotten.

reply to post by kvaniu


Yes...I guess I jumped the gun on that one. What I meant by that statement was that we would see a radical shift from Big Box retail to smaller, more local centres.

Walmart will survive but a lot of the other retailers will need to cut staff/stores etc.

So...my frame of reference for this would be Best Buy. They are a Big Box retail Electronics outlet which sells somethings that people want but that they do no really need.

So in my line of thought, Best Buy will need to close down the marginal stores and cut back a lot of staff.

The centers that lose the Best Buy store will then be forced to buy electronics from Wal Mart. This will give Walmart electronic buyers (the guys/gals who meet with electronic companies and buy the goods for the Big Box..BBY or Wlmt) the upperhand with price/service/warranty negotiations. (yes you talk service and warranty with price when buying which is why you will see the same product with a different warranty with different retailers..little trade secret)

Walmart with its superior return policy, will gain a better public opinion with the "new frugal shopper" in light of its return policy/lower price further eroding Best Buys market share.

Walmart...being the aggresive company that it is will then begin to copy the "Best practices" of Best Buy and build, hire, and deploy new revenue streams for itself in the form of things such as....

1. The Geek Squad (Best Buys highest profit area)
2. Car and Home video install (another BBY high margin area)
3. Some higher end product (we are already seeing this with Sony)

etc etc

So that is how I meant the Brick and Mortar thing. Many big Box stores will close and the scene will radicaly shift. lol

And thank you for bringing that to my attention as I often will conceptualize an idea and then blurt out some sort of brain fart without it fully communicating the idea.

lol

I dont believe they could ever do away with professional sports or entertainment like concerts and live events, nor would I ever hope for such a thing.

I can, however, see the costs of such events dropping way down to adjust to the new economic markets.

Let's face it, a new mid sized car shouldnt cost $40,000......it shouldn't cost $75 to take your kids to the movies....and a concert ticket to see ANYONE shouldnt bottom out at $125. We have been gouged and overcharged for years and years, the problem was most people could afford a little extra so they didnt really notice or mind.

Why does a months worth of basic cable television cost over $75 in most areas? Why should a dinner for two hit you for $100+? I may sound like an old foggie but I can remember when $100 could buy you a fair amount of stuff. The way it is right now I cant leave a grocery store with 10 items and not pay $150...it is ridiculous.

Bottom line is the days of excess and overpriced consumer gouging are a thing of the past. Plain and simple people just dont have it to spend like that anymore, and the ones that do are tightening the purse strings considerably.

Companies hoping to remain in business will be forced to accept lower profit margins while offering lower prices and better values. Sucks for them I guess, but I welcome it.

And yeah...I hope all of the malls are shut down. I can't stand going to the mall. Good riddance.

reply to post by BlackOps719


I am not sure we will see an end to overpriced things. I just think we will see less brands of overpriced things.


Not that I would like to see an end to all the sports and entertainments but it would be nice to see a better quality and less dependency of such things. Seriously people need to get up and do more instead of filling in the sunken spot on the couch.

As for the mall the only reason I go there is the store that sells incents.

Raist

Shut down the mall in my town and you just took employment away from a good number of people. I work in the retail environment and I just don't see it going away anytime soon. The OP's article relies on the idea that most people will indeed go digital. Well, I don't think it's going to happen. People are a social animal. We need human interaction. Many people drive to the stores just to pay their bills. People don't want to sit at home and click a button for everything. Just my $.02

reply to post by BlackOps719


Let me start off by saying that Americans who think everything should be cheap is the reason that we are now getting lead tainted goods from China. You dont' want to pay for it, so we end up getting garbage, instead of paying for higher quality goods here.

People who think cars are too expensive have no idea what goes into building a car. If someone understood how a car really worked, and what went into it, 40k is a reasonable price.

Study how a car is designed alone, is an engineering and mathmatical feat. One that is done while still have to meet all the design standards. I watched this once and having to do a simple change can result in scrapping the design and starting over. Something simple as having to make the windshield a few mm taller or shorter, for it changes the whole aspect of the car.
Cars these days actually have more computer power then the first lunar lander. The cute little airbags alone cost several thousand dollars. Then there is the rigorous testing to make sure the car works and the safety features work.
There are thousands of parts, operating at very high temperatures, moving thousands of times a minute, so you can get from point A to point B.
And most do it rather successfully for quite a period of time. When your car is on and moving, just about every part on that car is moving, in sync, to keep you going.

then there is the alternative. A horse, costs about 40,000 a year to keep. The fastest ones only go about 35 mph, and that is only for a mile and half.

I think most sedans are a pretty good deal.

reply to post by nixie_nox


Ya and at least 40% of that cost is Government mandated crap. All the worlds auto makers make cars that are much less expensive to buy in every other country. Only here they have to deal with NHTSA and the EPA who don't do anything but cause trouble and make decisions based on junk science and the TORT problems with lawyers. We can't even get the beter more economical cars here because of BS lighting regs and bumber regs and every other BS NHTSA comes up with.

Zindo

[edit on 1/1/2009 by ZindoDoone]

reply to post by whiteraven


With the current price of oil, it's cheaper to just iimport them than to build more nuclear stations or develop alternative cars.

Originally posted by eldard
reply to post by whiteraven

 

With the current price of oil, it's cheaper to just iimport them than to build more nuclear stations or develop alternative cars.

Current price is not equivalent to military value.

We are not playing a 1 year game. It is viewed as a live or die winner take all kind of game. lol

One way to look at oil would be via a military viewpoint.

During the Second World War we choked off the Japanese oil/energy supply as well as the German oil/energy supply. It was a simple tactic but those who won control of the energy trade routes as well as the energy producing areas won the war.

The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran was the invasion of Iran by British and Commonwealth forces and the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Countenance, from August 25 to September 17, 1941. The purpose of the invasion was to secure Iranian oil fields and ensure supply lines (see Persian Corridor) for the Soviets fighting against Germany on the Eastern Front

en.wikipedia.org...

The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead. Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya.

www.history.navy.mil...



We took that to heart as we emerged on the world stage in place of Britain who was almost destroyed after the war.

The fact that the United Kingdom was almost destroyed during the war gave rise to the cold war as the balance of power shifted soon after WW2.

In hindsight we can see many errors made during the heat of WW2.

Personally, I'm not sure WWII was a just war, and am prepared to tentatively advance a belief that the British Empire should have stayed out of it. The British Empire and France declared war on Nazi Germany to uphold the territorial integrity of Poland, yet completely ignored the fact that the Soviets also invaded Poland. Given that Poland was given to Stalin following WWII, it follows that WWII failed to achieve its strategic objectives.

In other words, we sent billions of dollars to the Soviet Union, which then turned around and stabbed us throughout Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, destroying the British Empire in the process. In the broader picture, WWII was a failure.

As for the "moral argument" (i.e. we must get rid of Hitler because he killed millions of people) which is often advanced about WWII, that is similarly phoney. We declared war on the second worst dictator in Europe (up to 1939, Hitler had probably killed many thousands of people within his own borders and elsewhere) and ignored the worst dictator in Europe (up to 1939, Stalin had already dispensed of 15-20 million people). Even worse, we later allied with the worst mass murderer in Europe (who had earlier aided Hitler during the Battle of Britain), and financially built up a Soviet beast that would lead directly to the deaths of perhaps 70 million people in China, and millions more in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.


I believe a more prudent approach to the events of 1938-9 would have been to bankroll all non-communist and non-nazi regimes in Europe, refusing to declare war on Hitler, and to simply wait for the inevitable war between Hitler and Stalin. Even better would have been to take active measures to provoke war between Hitler and Stalin (by simultaneously offering secret mutual protection pacts to both sides, and then breaking the agreement).

From there, we could have played the Nazis and Soviets like Saddam and Khomeini, hopefully bringing their regimes to the brink of exhaustion. The British Empire would have survived (hurrah!) longer and the Cold War averted.

www.libertarian....



Right after World War two we worked hand in glove with many middle East powers to secure our energy supply.

The United Kingdom had lost much of its influence in the Middle East but its intelligence infrastructure was still one of the best when it to came to the ME.

Russia began to leverage its power in the ME as well but it had less money then the US right after WW2 and needed to rebuild parts of itself...aka Leninrad...so we began to use the British intel structure in the Middle East but we also inherited the issues.

Israel , I believe was allowed in order to secure a permanent Western Foothold in the ME.

Anyway..... it dawned upon a everyone involved in WW2 that whoever controled the oil controled the world and we as a new world superpower knew that we could not allow Russia (then Soviet Union) any more leverage in the ME then they already had.

Oil is non renewable. Limited supply.

The biggest secret is that we...as in Canada/United States have most of the worlds known reserves as of now but the PTB want to utilize the fields available with the least expensive (labour) production costs.

Here is a link to see how US production has fallen.
en.wikipedia.org...:Top_Oil_Producing_Counties.png

Here is another link showing oil producing states/nations..en.wikipedia.org...:Oil_producing_countries_map.png

Notice how the Islamic States dominate OPEC. Also notice how FARC/MILF/Taliban/Somalian Pirates etc are all situated near OPEC countries.

So the tactic is now to change infrastucture to be less oil dependent as we need oil to secure Military Dominion. Our military infrastructure will still rely on oil for many decades if we make it that long.

So the game is still an oil game.



[edit on 2-1-2009 by whiteraven]

One thing I am wary of is the fact that we had been Allies with two forms of goverment which killed over 130,000,000 of its own people.

We had to have created deep intel avenues which I am sure are still utilized to this day. This would mean that we allowed millions to perish with our goverments full knowledge.

I often wonder if those involved in the post WW2 world are working together to leverage a world order in which we have a nationalistic socialism society everywhere?

I read a banned book concerning this by Rhiech. It was very convincing as he had a first hand historical account of how Germany had fallen to Nationalism. He then proved that mankind tends to drift toward nationalism rather then toward freedom as most persons gladly give up liberty during the periods of stress in order to gain security.





[edit on 2-1-2009 by whiteraven]

reply to post by ZindoDoone


I was gonna say Zindo, that sounds like old school townsquare to me.

Like your new Av too, bro.

"3RD Alabama cav!!!" "left into line!!!" " charge at a gallop!!!"

reply to post by Raist


Racing will never dissapear, nor will the internal combustion engine. Those that think they are going the way of the dodo are just kidding themselves.

After the Cuban embargo, the folks in Cuba made due with what they already had; 40's and 50's era American cars are still on the road over there as daily drivers. The local mechanics began fabricating their own parts, sometimes going as far as to build entire assemblies from scratch, or performing swaps on their rides that most people would never think of. I am not exaggerating when I say a Cuban mechanic can do it all, it was out of nessecity that they learned how to do just that. Sure they may get some foreign cars imported every now and again, but most Cubans probably couldn't afford a new car.

I have a '38 Chevy that I'm currently building into a drag/street car, and a lot of folks like me will do most of the fabrication themselves; emissions and laws regarding cars tend to be irrelevant if the car predates the laws, Hell, I don't even need seatbelts technicaly (they were at one time considered optional equipment). When it comes to pre-war American cars, anything goes, and any combination of engine, rear axle, transmission, etc, will usually be a hodge-podge of parts from GM, Mopar and Ford bins (example, I have a pontiac small-block engine, ford 8" rear end, mopar steering box all going into my chevy)

If the automakers only made electric or fuel cell cars, there would still be internal combustion cars on the road; They are the most resilient and versatile modes of transport there is. They could get rid of gas stations, and weekend mechanics would just run their cars off alcohol or biodiesel. alcohol is much cheaper than gasoline, runs engines cooler and makes more power. Even though you need to burn more of it, the cost offsets the difference, and it even burns cleaner to boot!

If an engine breaks, you could rebuild it or swap in another. The type of engine doesn't really matter, you can make anything work. Most mechanics couldn't rewind a high output electric motor that is permanently sealed and brushless, and he definitely couldn't fix a modern battery (old lead-acid batteries are serviceable though). There are so many Chevy smallblock v8's in existence that have been produced, that they will easily be available for over a century past the last one coming off an assembly line. Only legislation would send them to the scrap pile, just don't expect everyone to obey if it comes to that.

Long story short; conventional engines and cars aren't going anywhere for a long, long time, so long as there are people who know how to work on them.

Just think of mad max, do they drive electric cars? hell no! not reliable enough, and no place to charge 'em! for long term survival, you can't beat internal combustion, the only thing that comes close is steam power, which I think is long overdue for a comeback!

As for the big three producing mass transit, that's old news, GM has produced trains, and busses before, so it's not out of the question, especially if their auto sales continue to slump.

My last car, a Toyota, left a little bit to be desired and had more problems than any domestic I've ever owned (although I currently have a Subaru as a daily driver and it's a great car!). Truth is, it's all a big crapshoot anyways, so you may as well support your local auto manufacturers. The only reason that most imports are built in the US now is to get around import tariffs; they figured out it was cheaper to send in the parts than completed cars. The revenue (and parts buisness) goes to foreign companies rather than their domestic counterparts. So buy American! it's as good as anything else on the road these days, and you will be able to put gas in it, so long as there is a drop of oil left in the ground, there will be someone to pump it and sell it! :cool

Originally posted by clay2 baraka

Rental stores will soon be a thing of the past. It's because of the effectiveness of mail-rental services such as NetFlix. An online supplier can provide a rental service without the increasing overhead of maintaining retail locations, not to mention a much-reduced payroll expense.

Simply put, retail rental stores will be out priced, as we will see happen with other sorts of retail businesses as they are displaced by online commerce.

[edit on 12/29/2008 by clay2 baraka]

I disagree with this. Not everyone has the internet. For where I live, NetFlix does not have a fast turn around. I'm sure there are other places that don't have a fast turn around either.

Not everyone wants to wait for a movie to arrive by mail. Some don't even know what they want to watch until the night they go to rent the movie. There will always be a niche for video store rentals.

A few years ago, people told me newspapers will not be around any longer, since people can access them online. Well, newspapers, TV news, and online news are all thriving.

NetFlix also may have to compete with very good libraries in some areas where one can request movies, get them in at the library, and watch them for free. The very good libraries have the new releases with out much of a wait time.

I use to live by one of those libraries, and had a better turn around than NetFlix without the cost. I wasn't limited to three at a time, which they claim is their popular package.

Many people I talk with don't seem to even know they can get movies from the library. It seems like some sort of big secret.

reply to post by Raist


I agree. I have heard that baseball is in far more trouble then they let on. I have seen half empty stadiums.

It used to be that sports was for the family, you can go on the weekend and take the family. Now it is for businesses. You can't get in without one person paying a fortune. Gone are the days when my mom took my brother and I to see a game in the peanut seats for 10 bucks. And still get some peanuts and a coke.

If sports wants to survive,they have to ditch the mega salaries. People aren't going to go poor and still give someone money for a recreational sport.

I grew up in Pittsburgh that loved their sports. BECAUSE during economic depression, the people could go get cheap entertainment on the weekends.

Sports need to adapt.

What I forsee and is already happening in my area is that college and minor leagues are getting popular. There is a minor league baseball stadium that is near here that has a bunch of stuff for the family, even hot tubs by the field, and the place is always packed, because people can afford it and enjoy it.

You know, the number one on my mind is America.

I really do not know if America as we know it is going to survive.

The road we are on, I see no relief. There needs to be jobs. The government can not just create jobs. Where do they get the money? They print it, that just creates more inflation.

I believe we are witnessing the fall of America. Just as Rome fell, we are following the same path.

Sure we will exist, but what will we exist as?