But why? Why do I like PC's so much?
The answer is that they have earned my loyalty one way or another. I like the layout of PC's and they are cheap compared to Macs. I like Target because it seems organized and clean. Other than that, most businesses seem pretty much the same. Every bank offers checking accounts, savings accounts, and will sell you a loan. Every sit-down restaurant has roughly the same menu and atmosphere. Every candidate running for governor has roughly the same platform.
Begin tangeant from my what I'm writing about:
If you read the "issues" page on any given candidate's website, they all sound the same. Take this example:
Since the pivotal 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, we have known that America’s schools are falling behind those of other industrialized countries. Now, more than ever, we find ourselves part of a truly global economy with workforce needs changing and businesses facing employee shortages in critical areas such as engineering, science, and health care.
Now read this one:
I will insist that some of my additional state funding be used to increase public school teachers’ salaries. The average Minnesota teacher’s salary is 3.3% below the national average. Good salaries are essential to attracting and retaining the best teachers possible, who are essential to the best public schools possible.
Now which one is Tom Emmer and which one is Mark Dayton? They are both pro-education, they both acknowledge that our schools aren't good enough, but they are otherwise on opposite ends of the political spectrum. (The answer, if you are curious, is that it doesn't matter because neither one of them would be a good governor anyway).
/tangeant
I guess what I'm getting at is that your loyalty should be very expensive. If you get bad service somewhere, don't go there again. That's what makes capitalism the most democratic system on Earth: you vote with your money. If you keep going back to the same place over and over, bad companies will not be slapped by the Invisible Hand. My favorite quote from the Futurama episode was this exchange between the eye-phone salesman and Fry: "it's $500, you have no choice of carrier, the battery can't hold a charge, and the reception isn't very-" It's at that point that Fry interrupted the Eye-phone salesman and told him to "Shut up and take my money!" I think that's an accurate representation of the idiotic loyalty Mac fans have to their computers. "It costs twice as much as a comparable PC, and it doesn't work as well," "Shut up and take my money!" Mom put it best at the end of the episode: "Idiots!"
