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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

I’m really curious to know how a world where branding was illegal could possibly work. Branding, when it comes down to it, is reputation management. If you don’t allow anyone to manage their own reputation then you don’t really have a free society at all. Heck, even people in prison are able to manage their own reputations within the prison population.

If you suppose, by wishful thinking, that no one could know the reputation of anyone else then you would have a chaotic and unpredictable society. You’d be unable to trust anyone to act fairly in even the most trivial circumstances. It would look like an unmoderated forum where everyone is anonymous and no one can pin anything on anyone else. Quite dystopian.

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From a European perspective, I would never suggest making information about individuals public, not even criminals. Even though where I am from, we seem to swing to far in the other direction when it comes to protecting the rights of perpetrators vs. the victim's rights, I think registries of any kind in that regard are a big mistake.

Nevertheless, it should be possible to set higher standards for corporate communication than for individuals. I am thinking about this more in terms of markets and information asymmetry than personal liberties. I think it is fine when corporations are required to publish what they are doing. There is room to improve how mandatory disclaimers work and for what they are required.

I'm still unclear about what you mean by not allowing "branding." Consider the following two scenarios, the first one with branding and the second one without:

1. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"

"It sounds interesting, I heard they made it easier to repair."

2. "Hey what do you think of the new Apple iPhone 16?"

"What is an Apple iPhone? I have never heard of such a thing!"

Clearly this is a rather extreme example, but I hope it illustrates what I am talking about. Branding, for Apple, involves putting their logo everywhere they can and advertising on TV, in magazines, on billboards, etc. If you disallow all of those things then it becomes much more reasonable to imagine a world in which scenario 2 is possible.

So maybe we don't want to go that far. But then where do we draw the line? Is it okay for Apple to put their logo on their stores? Is it okay for them to advertise a new iPhone on TV or in magazines? Or not? Or do you take a finer-grained approach and allow some kinds of ads but not others? Must an ad be purely informational with no music or flashy graphics/video?

I'm honestly not even clear on what the goal is with such a regime. How do you know when the law is working as intended or when it is failing to do so? Apple has succeeded in marketing themselves as an iconic fashion brand (right up there with LVMH, a European brand). Do you think such fashion brands should cease to exist? Why or why not?

The original topic of this thread was environmentalism and Apple having a greener image than they deserve, while they are just a corporation (like all others), which is following its incentives. Now, I never said I wanted to outlaw branding. I am just stating that corporations can escape the fair competition of the market by playing a meta game doing things like advertising or lobbying.

What I am suggesting is to keep the markets and let corporations follow incentives to make the best products, while trying to limit these meta games. This thread shows an example where this is arguably already working. I am suggesting to do more of it, e.g. make corporations publish reports of how they are actually doing in that regard, maybe even as a sort of disclaimer next to their own branding efforts.

I just want our rules to be a little stricter when it comes to false advertising and fraud. Why should a corporation be allowed to say: "We care for communities in America." This is not true. They care for shareholder value. There should be a disclaimer like: "We care for our community. We have no independent proof to back that up. Our main objective as a for-profit is to maximize profits. We are making XX $ / year and have in the past moved our production facilities to the cheapest location."

I am exaggerating here and am not providing a finished solution, just trying to illustrate what I mean.

> But then where do we draw the line?

That is in fact tricky, but I think our society as whole should move a little closer to facts.

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