Also curious if anyone can to weigh in on how this might affect China's (supposed) rare earth monopoly, since I presume that was part of the motivation behind the research. Same thing for the coal industry in general.
But I see that mchannon answered my question, with the answer I expected
The coal industry may want, but like everyone else they're not guaranteed relevance in the long term. Going out of business is capitalism's way of saying your product is no longer required.
This is pedantic to the point of wilfully not wanting to understand that the coal industry is implied with that statement. But if we're going down the pedantic route:
> Going out of business is capitalism's way of saying your product is no longer required.
Demand and need are correlated, but not the same. Capitalism works with the former, and also has an entire industry devoted to creating demand when there is no need. I'm not saying capitalism is bad - it is an amoral system and a very effective tool for a lot of things. By itself self-regulates only to the vested interests of the people wielding the tools within the capitalist system, and this does not have to align with societal or planetary needs.
Democratic systems these days are not followed, they are moulded.
However, at the end of the day it won't matter. Advertising is available to all companies, we end up with a tug of war over peoples attentions, which will probably result in advertising becoming ineffective.
No, there is no debate. No one seriously argues that companies pour half a trillion dollars into advertising that doesn't work.
> However, at the end of the day it won't matter. Advertising is available to all companies, we end up with a tug of war over peoples attentions, which will probably result in advertising becoming ineffective.
It does matter. If the tug of war is between two companies that want you to buy their version of X, there is still no one advertising that you should not buy X at all. This is known as growing the market. Demand is still created in this case.
It's at least not a new thought. Mostly though I'm skeptical that advertising is subverting capitalism.
Is demand created though? How do you know that some people weren't just unaware of the product before, and would have gladly bought it had they known of it.
Because not buying something is the easiest, and default position.
Advertising is also part of the capitalism chain. Companies demand advertising, so it exists.
> Is demand created though? How do you know that some people weren't just unaware of the product before, and would have gladly bought it had they known of it.
You're describing creating demand. Someone didn't want something because they didn't know it existed. Now they want it. This is the most effective advertising possible.
> Because not buying something is the easiest, and default position.
Ok? If you exit the default position because you saw an ad, the ad worked.
Because the core principles of Capitalism could function without advertising, I think this is incorrect.
The main point I was trying to make was that advertising does not remove the inherent Democratic component of Capitalism.
> You're describing creating demand. Someone didn't want something because they didn't know it existed. Now they want it. This is the most effective advertising possible.
The advertiser didn't really create the demand though, it existed before them?
However, I don't think that advertising is enough to remove the democratic component from capitalism.
If you want a perfect example of this, go back to the start of modern advertising and look up the phrase "Torches Of Freedom" and Edward Bernays.
In what way did this harm democracy? Cigarettes are dying off, because of scientific discoveries, if anything this demonstrates my point.
And capitalism has no speech capacity.
If you’re going to be pedantic to the point of abrasiveness, at least don’t use the same shorthand you are criticizing.
It could be a carbon source for a new type of terra preta.
It would even be useful for the high-sulfur coals.
If the coal has no economic uses for energy production, but the mining has some reason to happen anyway, where the coal itself becomes a by-product, turning it into agricultural soil wouldn't be entirely horrible. The heavy metals would probably have to be removed before disposing of it anyway.