Listening every night to those auto dealer training films. They assumed forced obsolescence as a basic fact of the universe, and relied on the manufacturers to keep it moving.
The Conservative Prospect was troublesome because he liked simplicity, liked to do his own maintenance, and disliked constant change.
New thought: This is a pretty good rule in other areas of life. Fleets hate obsolescence. Conservative Prospects hate obsolescence. In an earlier era, even the Luxury Prospects wanted steadiness and stability. Packard thrived on stability, and GM found that it couldn’t force Cadillac through the same annual costume change that worked for other brands.
What do these groups have in common? They do their own repairs. Fleets had their own mechanics and parts supplies. Conservative Prospects had a good toolkit and enjoyed changing their own tires and oil and filters. Luxury Prospects, at least before the ’50s, had chauffeurs who did the routine maintenance.
The same rule applies in other spheres. I enjoy doing my own programming, so I HATE the constant GitHub updates. Each update destroys my own knowledge and AGGRESSIVELY DESTROYS THE VALUE OF MY TOOLS. This is identical to the fleet attitude. A bus line or taxi operator or railroad can’t retrain its mechanics every year and doesn’t want to toss out and restock its parts and tools every year.
Dealers loved Step-up Prospects because Step-ups were white collar types who never got their hands dirty. They happily allowed the dealer to do all the maintenance, and willingly paid for the hidden cost of frequent retraining and parts tossing, because the STATUS OF THE NEW MODEL EVERY YEAR is the most valuable part of a car to the Step-up.
In the software world (including games and bitcoin), the fast-moving Reddit types are the Step-ups. They gain STATUS from keeping up with the Altmans, and they don’t need to bother their pretty little heads with grubby details of constants and variables and structs and loops. When a Conservative Prospect asks them for advice on a problem involving an old system, the Step-ups have only one answer: Get the latest version. They don’t care if the fleet has thousands of machines still running the old program, which would cost millions to replace. Forced obsolescence is the universe. Stability is literally UnThink.
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Sidenote: George Mason and his protege Romney understood both ends of the spectrum. Previous small cars exclusively appealed to cheapskates. Price was the only selling point. The Rambler was priced ABOVE basic Chevies and Fords, and included some deluxe equipment. At first it was offered only as a convertible. Mason was appealing to Conservative AND Luxury Prospects at the same time. He understood that Ramblers appearing as second cars in the curvy driveways of mansions would stir the STATUS hunger of the Step-ups. Romney continued the bipolar approach with simplicity and slow change.
Polistra's Mill 