> We have created a gargantuan advertising industry that has zero net material gain for society
Why do people say this, when they know full well that advertising drives people to buy things, and therefore, drive the economy?
Why do people say this, when they know full well that advertising drives people to buy things, and therefore, drive the economy?
These people wouldn't just hoard their money because there is no ad telling them what to buy...
They'd just be exercising their own agency, rather then cokes, or nikes.
If there were no advertising, not many people would know about—let alone buy—video games. But dollar for dollar video games are much better for them than alternatives like drugs.
> not many people would know about—let alone buy—video games
So you are saying in the absence of manipulative ads, kids would be consuming drugs rather than games. I highly doubt that. And from personal experience, my brother is a Minecraft addicted nutter because of peers pushing him towards it, not advertising. I've never seen ads for Minecraft, yet it is one of the most successful video game properties ever.
wut?
People see an ad, they're more likely buy that thing. If they don't see an ad, they don't buy that thing.
You think people are still going to be spending their money if they aren't talked into buying things? lol.
The economy grows when people spend money. Disincentivizing people from spending money is a good way to make sure the economy dies.
Always be selling. NO exceptions. Coffee is for closers.
If 1 dollar is spent 5 times a year, that economy has a higher GDP than when that 1 dollar is spent 4 times a year.
Advertising makes sure that money is spent quickly, to increase the GDP by increasing the velocity of money in an economy.
If you get rid of advertising, you slow down the economy.
Do people spend money without advertising?
I would say, yes they do. People have intrinsic wants and needs. Why would I so fulfilling them, because of a lack of extrinsic wants and needs?
Edit: also aren't you just trying to optimise to what is measured. GDP goes up, and that's beneficial because? Greenspan says so?
I get that it's not what you want to hear, but that's your problem to deal with, not mine.
"Wishing and hoping" that advertising doesn't work, doesn't actually make it so. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it doesn't work.
The advertising industry is profitable because it's an arms race. Companies have to advertise because their competitors already are doing.
If all industries agreed to limit their ad spending, those trillions could become mere billions overnight, and the marginal revenue decreases would be more than offset by the decreased spending. But such coordination is impossible in a competitive economy, because any defector will reap huge rewards.
But in reality that does not actually matter either. Like I said, there is very little fiscal responsibility in people - at least in the US - predominantly a product of culture. The money people would have spent on random useless object advertised on TV 1 would instead be spent on personal want 2. The practical effect of advertising is that it is simply redirecting dollars that would have gone to those with smaller advertising budgets to those with larger budgets. The trillion dollar industry exists as an arms race where increasing product quality or diversifying is less effective - because people are already broke, and net wealth is declining, you cannot compete honestly as effectively in product anymore. If you try that, you simply lose to the guy who had more advertising out there using psychological techniques to manipulate people into buying the inferior product over yours, and that is where the wishing comes in, people wish people were more rational, but we are not, and constant bombardment of advertising only wastes money to let the fattest cats maintain sales margins.
We aren't arguing whether coke tastes nice, we are arguing whether you need to drink it...
I think you need to reread my comments.
I still don't understand why a slower economy is a bad thing. Poverty and starvation is definitely a bad thing, climate change is definitely a bad thing, but a slow economy?
I can agree with that, but I wonder how much it matters, in different scenarios. For example, if instead of hiring someone to cut my lawn (increasing GDP), I cut my lawn myself. Since GDP is lower, is the world therefore a worse place than it might have been?
Just a tought I have sometimes. Sometime in the future we will need to think another way to measure economic improvement.
I'm not just pretending, I genuinely don't understand what that means. It kind of sounds like you think consumption beyond bare sustenance is bad and needs to be checked somehow? If I'm understanding correctly, then I disagree with you.
What makes you think it would fall apart at all?
There's a myth out there that we are unconstrained by physical resources. And it has largely been true "since the beginning of time". But that time is quickly coming to an end -- the next big generation shift will be the acceptance of a resource-constrained world imho.
Look at meat consumption. It takes something like 10x as much energy to grow a calorie of meat as it does a calorie of vegetables. If the entire world (or even just the global middle class, if something like that exists) ate as much meat as the developed world, it would be an ecological catastrophe growing all that livestock, disposing of its waste, and fertilizing the grain needed to feed it. And guess what, as the populations of India and China are entering the middle class, they're adopting a taste for meat-heavy diets.
Energy consumption per capita is a pretty good proxy for human development. Whether it's meat or our plastic lawn furniture that we consume from amazon, all of it takes energy to produce. In other words, consumption is another word for energy, and if even a sizable chunk of the world consumed as much as we do in the western world, it would require something like more energy than all proven oil reserves. Clearly that's not going to work.
We can always hope for the deus ex machina ending and say that we'll find salvation in technological progress (whether it's an efficient way to store solar or figuring out fusion or an FTL drive top open up new worlds), but that requires a dangerous amount of hope. It's also the path of inaction -- wait for someone else to deliver salvation.
More realistically, I think consumption is starting to hit physical resource constraints and is inflecting towards the top of the S-curve. The entire global economy since the beginning of time may have been about consuming, but that doesn't mean the party can continue.
Consider the following maximal example: If all of Earth's resources are exhausted (whatever that means, I don't rely on any exact definition), we need to head outwards into space. Because our expansion is limited by the speed of light, we can at most cover a distance
r(t) = c * t
V(t) = (c * t)^3
Cubic growth is much much much much less than exponential growth. In fact, the exponential function can be shown to grow faster than any power function.
If you put a population of flies in a closed container, even with an unlimited food supply, their population will grow and grow until it hits a peak and collapases. We are smarter than flies but to think we are not also constrained by nature is folly?
1. Scientific discovery and innovation. People were all in huge panic in the 17/18/19th century about the ability of our limited amount of land to feed the (exponentially-growing) populace, yet discovery of new methods/technologies increased the hypothetical yield such that the point became moot.
2. We live in a feedback-loop system. In the absence of perverse (and universal) government incentives, society will slow-down as resources become scarce. That is, until point number 1 kicks in again and the cycle starts fresh.
John B. Calhorn's mouse utopia experiments give some indication of complexity in large communities beyond food resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM
There was no shortage of food or water or nesting
material. There were no predators. The only adversity was
the limit on space.
Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55
days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which
the population growth dropped markedly. The last
surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day
315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and
in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in
behavior were the following: expulsion of young before
weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in
homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to
maintain the defense of their territory and females,
aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant
males with increased attacks on each other which were
not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social
breakdown continued and the population declined toward
extinction. During this period females ceased to
reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely,
never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank,
slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits.
Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars
characterized these males. They were dubbed “the
beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and behavior
patterns were permanently changed.If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on.
This answer precludes the very real possibility that the necessary technology advances to "take the sea" or "go into space" don't come in time to be useful. Any plan that includes "things that haven't been invented yet" isn't a real plan, it's wishful thinking.