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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if literally the only way to get a phone, or even find out what phones there are, was through a carrier store.

Take away advertising and the only way someone could find out about a product is word of mouth, or walking into a shop. Functionally everything would originate in shops. That means looking at the available options would be very time consuming, involve a lot of travel and be dominated by very powerful gatekeepers who would control you access to goods and information. It would revitalise the high street, that's for sure, but in a very controlling, rent-seeking way.

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> That means looking at the available options would be very time consuming, involve a lot of travel and be dominated by very powerful gatekeepers who would control your access to goods and information.

You make it sound like ads are purely informational and designed to help us make an informed decision. Remember the iPhone ads touting "fastest iPhone ever" with the bottom text "sequences shortened"?

Did you buy your last computer with no research, just the ad? Do you go to McDonald's because the burgers look exactly like the ones in the commercial?

There are ways to optimize access to this information. Trade shows that display new products. Mail-order catalogs for companies or industry groups. Companies would find a way to make information - not ads - available for interested people to peruse. The core difference would be "pull not push", i.e. people with a problem would go looking for solutions, and very little space to compete on product information - preventing runaway zero-sum games.

Trade shows and catalogs are forms of advertising.

Also, regarding "pull not push", people sometimes don't know there is a solution to their "problem" (where "problem" might not be a real problem, per se, but maybe simply not even knowing that a given option exists).

You can define anything as advertising if you try hard enough. That's not very helpful for trying to strike a balance, though.

Of the ads I see, if we exclude the drug ads that really should not be allowed, I'd say that an extremely small fraction are telling me about solutions I didn't already know existed. The "useful" case should not be so rare.

Of course there are workarounds, but they are time consuming and therefore expensive, but also less efficient and reliable. It would be going back to the 80s, but even more locked in to physical outlets as gatekeepers. You're really just exchanging an inconvenience for a tyranny.

I agree that a world without advertising or news or reviews would be bad.

Your thought experiment isn't very useful for picturing a world that only lacks advertising.

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