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I find discussions on HN about advertising very amusing. If advertising would magically disappear tomorrow, most of the people visiting this site would be joble
by TheLogothete 11y ago
I find discussions on HN about advertising very amusing. If advertising would magically disappear tomorrow, most of the people visiting this site would be jobless.
Something to think about.
- mverwijs 11y agoLet's cross that bridge when we get to it. We're innovative, imaginative folks around here. I'm sure a solution will present itself.
- ssharp 11y agoThere are lots of innovative and imaginative folks all over the world. ...and ads are still the best solution to certain problems.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- galfarragem 11y agoThat's what I keep saying also (at expense of some downvotes). As most people, I don't like ads. But this is capitalism, a system fueled by consumption. Without changing the system, ads will never disapeer, they will always come back with a different form, they are a necessary 'evil'. [edit/disclaimer] I don't work on ads, I only curate a niche blog.
- chippy 11y agoif this discussion makes people who work in jobs dependent on ads to reflect on their choices then so this goes the initial step towards a change, even if it's a change in career from digital marketing to a technology company.
- TheLogothete 11y agoWhich company is not dependent on advertising?
- grey-area 11y agoYC?
- mseebach 11y agoConsumption is the final purchase of goods and services by individuals. What other direction or purpose ("fuel") should a system have? A system that doesn't end in consumption either doesn't produce anything, or produces for no reason, which seems wasteful.
- bottled_poe 11y agoOne of the problems with pure capitalism is that it favours those that are buying. i.e. those with money. The direction of progress under a capitalist system is governed by the desires of the wealth-holders (whether that is millionaires, the middle class, or some other cross-section of society), not humanity as a whole.
- mseebach 11y agoThat would be a lot more powerful argument if capitalism didn't so readily churn out ever-cheaper (ie, directed at the poor) offerings of, well, everything. Walmart and Spirit Airlines (to pick a few out of many such offerings) aren't exactly pandering to the rich. Anyway, this was not the point the GP made, and thus not what I responded to.
- bottled_poe 11y agoThat's not a counter argument - cheap products exist because there is a market for it (whether the market demographic is rich or poor, it doesn't matter). It still hinges on the exchange of money to decide what should be produced. It's far from perfect, but it does seem to have a blurry correlation with what humanity needs (in my opinion).
- mseebach 11y agoI guess it's not a counter argument as much as disagreeing with the premise. If the outcome is good (a wide range of products available to the poor) then why declare the mechanism by which it happens (exchange of money) problematic? At least, let's focus on concrete problems. The problem with declaring something "far from perfect" is deciding what perfect looks like. The fact that even the poor has a Walmart-sized vote in what gets produced looks like a pretty strong vindication of the system to me. Sure, there are always areas that can be improved, I'm not declaring the current state of things perfect, but I'm appealing to a focus on specific, practical improvement, rather than a yearning for an abstract perfect state that epistemologically probably can't be known.
- peteretep 11y agoIf advertising magically disappeared tomorrow, someone would solve micro payments within a week, and we'd all have jobs again.
- TheLogothete 11y agoThis is not a technical problem. It's a people problem. People, in general, don't want to pay for content. Never will.
- mbrock 11y agoThat's ridiculous. People pay for "content" all the time, and always have.
- TheLogothete 11y agoThen start a search engine and ask people to pay per query.
- mbrock 11y agoDo you mean to imply that all forms of content are equally sensible as units of sale?
- TheLogothete 11y agoI imply that the marketplace will never allow you to charge money for something which can be given for free and monetized with ads.
- mbrock 11y agoYeah, I would more or less agree with "people in general don't want to pay for content that they can easily and legally get for free with non-obtrusive ads."
- 11y ago
- chippy 11y agoIndeed! This is probably why there are some personally invested negative responses to the idea of removing ads. It's a basic protection of investment. That, and most "techies" here are just working in traditional business fields, selling stuff, producing products, marketing things.
- moonshinefe 11y ago"If advertising would magically disappear tomorrow, most of the people visiting this site would be jobless" but really this is just a silly presumption with absolutely no evidence.
- owenwil 11y agoStartups as we know them would collapse, yes. Look at how many of the top apps on iOS and Android rely on advertising -- hint: it's all of them
- elorant 11y agoI think that most people in here build services rather than content.
- petercooper 11y agoI find them amusing because you get a hardcore of geeks thinking how they view the world (and advertising) as being the Right Way™ and that the general public secretly shares their opinions, even thought they don't. It's on the same level of idiocy as thinking all the "brightest minds" are in tech or working in Silicon Valley, "print is dead", or that social media doesn't matter.
- jheriko 11y agothere is definitely a recurring problem with this sort of thinking... i think it actually hurts the whole of the tech industry. i'm glad someone else notices this though and is willing to call it out as idiotic. that is exactly what it is. :)