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Abusing mental illness is not taking advantage of voluntary exchange, so any reasonable free market / libertarian advocate would also not say "tough luck you ha

by zanny 11y ago

Abusing mental illness is not taking advantage of voluntary exchange, so any reasonable free market / libertarian advocate would also not say "tough luck you have mental disease compelling you to behave irrationally". It really is no different than how transactions done under compulsion are not fair or voluntary. If you are mentally compelled to participate through psychological manipulation, that is no different than someone pointing a gun at your head and telling you to give them your money, or using socioeconomic influential factors and market capture to force participation in unfair transactions (ie, monopolies).

hodwik 11y ago
I would argue very few, if any, purchases are purely rational, non-addictive, and non-manipulative. Most products play off of our own varying degrees of "mental illness" and addiction -- be that video games, coffee, high-calorie content food, cars, clothes, big houses, and so on. Still, I'd rather be ill with my stuff than healthy without.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
So what about alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, weed, sugar, or fat? And isn't the goal of all ads psychological manipulation?
- zanny 11y ago
  There is a difference between allowing the temptation, and exploiting psychological conditioning. I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological manipulation. There are a lot of people who make irrational purchasing decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation in that behavior. Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental health than just being insane or not.

by zanny 11y ago

hodwik 11y ago

I would argue very few, if any, purchases are purely rational, non-addictive, and non-manipulative. Most products play off of our own varying degrees of "mental illness" and addiction -- be that video games, coffee, high-calorie content food, cars, clothes, big houses, and so on. Still, I'd rather be ill with my stuff than healthy without.

nommm-nommm 11y ago

So what about alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, weed, sugar, or fat? And isn't the goal of all ads psychological manipulation?

zanny 11y ago
There is a difference between allowing the temptation, and exploiting psychological conditioning. I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological manipulation. There are a lot of people who make irrational purchasing decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation in that behavior. Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental health than just being insane or not.