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Comment by vanderZwan | Hacker News Reader

> Coal is not conscious, it cannot want.

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.

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Capitalism exclusively aligns with societal needs, if society does not need or want something we don't buy it, the business evolves or goes bankrupt. Capitalism is not just amoral, but also is democratic in nature.

If society does not need or want something, there is an entire industry devoted to convincing society otherwise, that uses psychological and social modelling on vast and detailed databases of the targeted population.

Democratic systems these days are not followed, they are moulded.

Really, because I thought there was debate of whether or not advertising actually works, especially online advertising.

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.

> Really, because I thought there was debate of whether or not advertising actually works, especially online advertising.

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.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/researc...

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.

That article has very little concrete info in it, but the core is not that advertising doesn't work but that advertising to millennials effectively requires updated approaches. I certainly would not say that advertising "subverts" capitalism. Advertising is part of capitalism. It always has been. You can't get your wagon repaired if you don't know where the wagon repair shop is.

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.

> Advertising is part of capitalism.

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?

There is certainly a debate over which parts of advertising work most effectively, however I have never heard anyone seriously suggest (until maybe now) that the entire concept of advertising may have no effect at all.

I cede that point, I tend to ignore advertising, and people do debate whether _internet_ advertising works.

However, I don't think that advertising is enough to remove the democratic component from capitalism.

How can you say that with any confidence, while at the same time admitting you have not looked into it?

Because the majority of advertising is for mundane products, which are unlikely to influence people politically.

The majority of politics is to do with the exceptionally mundane and politics in market based economies are as much about what people buy as who they vote for.

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 the case you cite, advertisers were piggy backing on the feminist movement to sell cigarettes to women because there was a stigma against women smoking.

In what way did this harm democracy? Cigarettes are dying off, because of scientific discoveries, if anything this demonstrates my point.

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