Consistency

Just about every time I run into Steve Gold­berg and Star­bucks is men­tioned, he starts talk­ing about how they sell con­sis­ten­cy instead of good cof­fee. There is a poem by Richard Brauti­gan that is par­tic­u­lar­ly tren­chant in this con­text:

Xerox Can­dy Bar

Ah,
you’re just a copy
of all the can­dy bars
I’ve ever eat­en.

So I guess anoth­er vari­able can be thrown in with the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty argu­ment that I had with myself a while ago. Quan­ti­ty, Qual­i­ty and now Con­sis­ten­cy. I can see no prob­lem with con­sis­ten­cy if the qual­i­ty is high, but con­sis­ten­cy at the price of qual­i­ty is a bit trou­bling. I’m pret­ty sure the root of this fool­ish con­sis­ten­cy lies with the Eli Whit­ney’s cot­ton gin, or Samuel Colt and his revolvers, or per­haps even as late as Hen­ry Ford’s assem­bly lines; and with the first man­u­fac­to­ries . I’m not aim­ing at some sort of Lud­dite anti-Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ism here, although any­more I have to won­der if the price is worth it.

Instead I’m try­ing to say that we’ve become accus­tomed to con­sis­ten­cy and com­fort­ed by it. We’d rather have the same burnt cup of cof­fee and the same depart­ment store lay­out each place we vis­it instead of tak­ing the risk of being star­tled by changes in the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. I guess it is no sur­prise at the world-list­less­ness of many folks if you think of it in these terms. If you eat the same feed every day it is no sur­prise you start think­ing like a cow.