Vending Machines Influence On American Culture

In December of 1947, there was a “World’s Fair of vending machines” in Chicago with over 5,000 attendees. The Billboard magazine used to set aside their final 15-25 pages to focus exclusively on the vending machine industry for all their issues released from the start of the 1930s up until 1970. The National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) continues to hold big conventions annually for companies in the business, from the well-known soda corporations to unheard of companies manufacturing and managing the machines all around us. Today the vending machine business is approximately a thirty billion dollar industry (Atkins 2016). Most people do not give the large quiet boxes very much thought but the development of vending machines has

Some examples of traditional American culture’s views: stealing is bad, skinny is good, addiction is bad, money is good. But people in subsections of American or immigrated cultures can have views that counter these, a differing subset is called a counterculture (Cohen 2005). Someone who has little wealth may think stealing is not bad because stealing is free. An alcoholic says their addiction is a good thing because their addiction makes them feel better; even when it is expensive, unhealthy, and dangerous to themselves and those around

Many experts say that these people have developed an eating addiction, where even if they desire a healthier lifestyle, they feel inhibited by their body’s demand for more terrible snacks. When addiction comes up, people generally think of those who are dependent on illegal drugs but people can be addicted to many more substances and activities than what has not yet been legalized. In addition to nicotine and alcohol addiction, eating, gambling and stealing can all become addictions that have been studied seriously studied by many experts of the related fields. Going against the Western culture of independence, an over-reliance on an item, chemical, or habit sets people into a worrisome counterculture that drags them in chains after the item they cannot stop having. In psychologist Jim Orford’s educational book, Excessive Appetites, the reader has the chance to consider and explore the psychologist’s view of how so many things can show up in addictions. Not only does he bring up the topics already mentioned, he discusses addictions to gambling one’s savings away and reveals that overdoing exercise and even sex addiction can send a person down a dark path (2001). Interestingly, Professor Jesse Summers makes a different point in his 2015 article on addiction. The most commonly referred to