Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns.
Nah. Show me a country with a similar low density as America where people don't buy cars almost as soon as they can afford them.
The advertising was certainly prominent, but it didn't drive the fundamentals.
Most Americans don't live in particularly low-density areas. The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit.
That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.
The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices
Yes, in the case of New York the infrastructure choices were literally set in stone well over a hundred years ago.
made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit.
We all have choices to make in life. You can:
A) Live in a place like Manhattan in a small, expensive apartment, high population density, crime issues, impractical to own anything that doesn't fit in an elevator (including a car), but you can walk around and it has a usable public transportation system. Or..
B) Live in a place where for less money you can have a single-family house, room for multiple cars, a lawn and garden, low crime, and a reasonable commute to work. But no subway system.
Most Americans voted with their feet in the 20th century and chose B. They didn't need convincing.
That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.
That's ridiculous.
There's nothing more potent to a young couple than a house with a few empty bedrooms.
It's not ridiculous at all, it's very veridic. It's a basic advertising technique to link the product to some desirable value or quality. In the automobile's case, independence, which is already, in Western cultures, a trait of males and strongly linked to virility. They don't sell just the product, but the image that comes with owning it, the famous "lifestyle".
Edward Bernays is considered the father of modern PR and propaganda. Not a coincidence, he is the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was the first to theorize the manipulation through the subconscious. And sex is one of the subconscious' most powerful forces. He participated in the US effort that succeeded in swaying the US public opinion away from isolationism and into the First World War. Not accidentally, this propaganda effort heavily featured virile imagery: young strong men as soldiers (which, incidentally, are the most expendable members of a society). Modern advertising is nothing more than applied propaganda and follows his ideas.
How naive of you to ask... No, how about you try to disprove it?
Unlike math, moth social science studies require years of work. I could of course go to a library or search Google to try to find something that would support my point (hint: most likely I will find something). Would that be proof to you? Regardless of what you think of it, it would still not be good enough for me to consider it as proof. Because it would be equivalent to what's known in the statistics circles as a "fishing expedition": cast a wide enough net and you will find something to support your opinion regardless of what your opinion is.
The best way to produce a true "proof" would be to ignore everything that's been written and perform a sociological experiment. That would require years of work, expertise in conducting similar experiments, and millions in funding. Is that what you are asking me to do?
It is impossible to make any progress in the soft fields without relying on intuition. Learn to accept it. Think of intuition as a little Bayesian engine built into your brain. Often biased, but if honed properly, extremely powerful. You are well warned not to trust everything I say; but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't seek out a better perspective on the world. Only through seeking a different perspective can one avoid being biased.
I'm not being naive here. I fully expected you not to produce any data, and you didn't.
No, how about you try to disprove it?
Because I'm not the one making the extraordinary claim here (that America's personal transportation infrastructure is primarily the result of a systematic psychological manipulation by advertisers).
I could of course go to a library or search Google to try to find something that would support my point (hint: most likely I will find something). Would that be proof to you?
It depends on what you find. Is it based on aggregate economic and census data, or is it simply testing individuals' susceptibility? Was it funded by a government trying to figure out where they needed to build roads, or an advertising industry promoting itself? Do the methods support the conclusions? How much does it support the claim we're discussing?
The best way to produce a true "proof" would be to ignore everything that's been written and perform a sociological experiment. That would require years of work, expertise in conducting similar experiments, and millions in funding. Is that what you are asking me to do?
There have, in fact, been many millions (likely billions) spent funding sociological and urban planning studies over the years.
Can you reference some serious study that even halfway supports the claim? I'll read whatever you come up with with an open mind.
Or are you expecting me to throw out my own experience and intuition and just "learn to accept" yours?
Because my experience says that where people work and live is a major life decision that people plan for and think about very carefully. People buy houses in the suburbs because they prefer not to hear the neighbors through their apartment walls or live in the shadow of the factory or office building where they work. People buy cars because they need to get to work and cars provide convenient, comfortable, and relatively inexpensive personal transportation.
My intuition tells me this explanation is sufficient and we needn't invoke Bayes, Bernays, Freud, or powerful psycho-sexual subconscious forces to explain it further. Heck, my intuition would sooner accept a purely Jungian explanation than this self-important Media Studies concoction.
A person in advertising once related to me that the studies they went by placed sex third in male attention-getting effectiveness. Food came in second after...wait for it...transportation. That's right, advertisers use transportation on its own to sell other products. They hardly needed to use sex to sell farmers a Model T or family cars in the 30's and 40's.
I think that my explanation will be better supported by data than yours. Here's why:
The automobile trend in the US started with the Model T: a utility vehicle if there ever was one. This trend was well underway far before the advertising-industrial complex really kicked into gear post-WWII.
Furthermore, people all over the world begin to prefer cars over walking whenever the economic/logistic factors support it. If the American phenomenon were really primarily the result of a specific set of machinations, you wouldn't expect it to replicate itself quite so consistently.
Nah. Show me a country with a similar low density as America where people don't buy cars almost as soon as they can afford them.
The advertising was certainly prominent, but it didn't drive the fundamentals.