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> We have created a gargantuan advertising industry that has zero net material gain for society Why do people say this, when they know full well that advertis

> We have created a gargantuan advertising industry that has zero net material gain for society Why do people say this, when they know full well that advertising drives people to buy things, and therefore, drive the economy?

jcoffland 11y ago
Because an economy driven mainly by consumerism is not sustainable in the long run. Such an economy requires unchecked growth and this falls apart once society starts consuming for the sake of consumption.
- mozumder 11y ago
  The entire global economy since the beginning of time is about consuming. What makes you think it would fall apart at all?
  - floatrock 11y ago
    Exponential growth. There's a myth out there that we are unconstrained by physical resources. And it has largely been true "since the beginning of time". But that time is quickly coming to an end -- the next big generation shift will be the acceptance of a resource-constrained world imho. Look at meat consumption. It takes something like 10x as much energy to grow a calorie of meat as it does a calorie of vegetables. If the entire world (or even just the global middle class, if something like that exists) ate as much meat as the developed world, it would be an ecological catastrophe growing all that livestock, disposing of its waste, and fertilizing the grain needed to feed it. And guess what, as the populations of India and China are entering the middle class, they're adopting a taste for meat-heavy diets. Energy consumption per capita is a pretty good proxy for human development. Whether it's meat or our plastic lawn furniture that we consume from amazon, all of it takes energy to produce. In other words, consumption is another word for energy, and if even a sizable chunk of the world consumed as much as we do in the western world, it would require something like more energy than all proven oil reserves. Clearly that's not going to work. We can always hope for the deus ex machina ending and say that we'll find salvation in technological progress (whether it's an efficient way to store solar or figuring out fusion or an FTL drive top open up new worlds), but that requires a dangerous amount of hope. It's also the path of inaction -- wait for someone else to deliver salvation. More realistically, I think consumption is starting to hit physical resource constraints and is inflecting towards the top of the S-curve. The entire global economy since the beginning of time may have been about consuming, but that doesn't mean the party can continue.
    - mozumder 11y ago
      There is no limit to consumption or available resources.
      - majewsky 11y ago
        There may be no upper bound on the absolute amount of available resources, but there is still a limit on how fast you can expand. Consider the following maximal example: If all of Earth's resources are exhausted (whatever that means, I don't rely on any exact definition), we need to head outwards into space. Because our expansion is limited by the speed of light, we can at most cover a distance r(t) = c * t and thus a volume of space V(t) = (c * t)^3 where t is the time spent travelling through space. The amount of available resources (assuming an even distribution of resources on the scale of the universe) is proportional to V, and thus to t^3. Cubic growth is much much much much less than exponential growth. In fact, the exponential function can be shown to grow faster than any power function.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Isn't it already happening. If you put a population of flies in a closed container, even with an unlimited food supply, their population will grow and grow until it hits a peak and collapases. We are smarter than flies but to think we are not also constrained by nature is folly?
    - hueving 11y ago
      The only reason the fly colony would collapse is if it ran out of a resource. No point in giving them an unlimited food supply because it's a resource like any other.
      - sp332 11y ago
        That's exactly the point. Sooner or later, human consumption is going to hit a wall.
        mozumder 11y ago
        Why would that happen? Where is the actual limit to anything? If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on.
        gnaritas 11y ago
        > If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on. This answer precludes the very real possibility that the necessary technology advances to "take the sea" or "go into space" don't come in time to be useful. Any plan that includes "things that haven't been invented yet" isn't a real plan, it's wishful thinking.
      - KannO 11y ago
        Humans are more complex than flies and social atmosphere would need to be healthy relative to dramatic population sizes. John B. Calhorn's mouse utopia experiments give some indication of complexity in large communities beyond food resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space. Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.
- mistermann 11y ago
  Why does it require growth, and why does that growth have to be "unchecked", whatever that means. I don't see why one person producing one thing and consuming those produced by others is unworkable....or is that not consumerism?
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    It's a pretty weak argument when you just pretend not to understand the language. There's no problem with consuming goods. That's necessary, but there are limits to what needs to be consumed. When the economy requires more consumption than is needed for its members to sustain a healthy lifestyle then it needs to be checked or at least not actively pushed further by government policies aimed specifically at increasing unneeded consumption.
    - mistermann 11y ago
      "When the economy requires more consumption than is needed for its members to sustain a healthy lifestyle" I'm not just pretending, I genuinely don't understand what that means. It kind of sounds like you think consumption beyond bare sustenance is bad and needs to be checked somehow? If I'm understanding correctly, then I disagree with you.
1stop 11y ago
Because it doesn't. These people wouldn't just hoard their money because there is no ad telling them what to buy... They'd just be exercising their own agency, rather then cokes, or nikes.
- mozumder 11y ago
  > These people wouldn't just hoard their money because there is no ad telling them what to buy... wut? People see an ad, they're more likely buy that thing. If they don't see an ad, they don't buy that thing. You think people are still going to be spending their money if they aren't talked into buying things? lol. The economy grows when people spend money. Disincentivizing people from spending money is a good way to make sure the economy dies. Always be selling. NO exceptions. Coffee is for closers.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    I don't watch ads and yet I still buy things. Granted, not as much as if I watched ads I'm sure.
    - mozumder 11y ago
      If you don't buy something, and hold off on spending, then the GDP goes down, as the velocity of money slows down. If 1 dollar is spent 5 times a year, that economy has a higher GDP than when that 1 dollar is spent 4 times a year. Advertising makes sure that money is spent quickly, to increase the GDP by increasing the velocity of money in an economy. If you get rid of advertising, you slow down the economy.
      - 1stop 11y ago
        You have astatement A and conclusion C but no B step. Do people spend money without advertising? I would say, yes they do. People have intrinsic wants and needs. Why would I so fulfilling them, because of a lack of extrinsic wants and needs? Edit: also aren't you just trying to optimise to what is measured. GDP goes up, and that's beneficial because? Greenspan says so?

jcoffland 11y ago

Because an economy driven mainly by consumerism is not sustainable in the long run. Such an economy requires unchecked growth and this falls apart once society starts consuming for the sake of consumption.

mozumder 11y ago
The entire global economy since the beginning of time is about consuming. What makes you think it would fall apart at all?
- floatrock 11y ago
  Exponential growth. There's a myth out there that we are unconstrained by physical resources. And it has largely been true "since the beginning of time". But that time is quickly coming to an end -- the next big generation shift will be the acceptance of a resource-constrained world imho. Look at meat consumption. It takes something like 10x as much energy to grow a calorie of meat as it does a calorie of vegetables. If the entire world (or even just the global middle class, if something like that exists) ate as much meat as the developed world, it would be an ecological catastrophe growing all that livestock, disposing of its waste, and fertilizing the grain needed to feed it. And guess what, as the populations of India and China are entering the middle class, they're adopting a taste for meat-heavy diets. Energy consumption per capita is a pretty good proxy for human development. Whether it's meat or our plastic lawn furniture that we consume from amazon, all of it takes energy to produce. In other words, consumption is another word for energy, and if even a sizable chunk of the world consumed as much as we do in the western world, it would require something like more energy than all proven oil reserves. Clearly that's not going to work. We can always hope for the deus ex machina ending and say that we'll find salvation in technological progress (whether it's an efficient way to store solar or figuring out fusion or an FTL drive top open up new worlds), but that requires a dangerous amount of hope. It's also the path of inaction -- wait for someone else to deliver salvation. More realistically, I think consumption is starting to hit physical resource constraints and is inflecting towards the top of the S-curve. The entire global economy since the beginning of time may have been about consuming, but that doesn't mean the party can continue.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    There is no limit to consumption or available resources.
    - majewsky 11y ago
      There may be no upper bound on the absolute amount of available resources, but there is still a limit on how fast you can expand. Consider the following maximal example: If all of Earth's resources are exhausted (whatever that means, I don't rely on any exact definition), we need to head outwards into space. Because our expansion is limited by the speed of light, we can at most cover a distance r(t) = c * t and thus a volume of space V(t) = (c * t)^3 where t is the time spent travelling through space. The amount of available resources (assuming an even distribution of resources on the scale of the universe) is proportional to V, and thus to t^3. Cubic growth is much much much much less than exponential growth. In fact, the exponential function can be shown to grow faster than any power function.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Isn't it already happening. If you put a population of flies in a closed container, even with an unlimited food supply, their population will grow and grow until it hits a peak and collapases. We are smarter than flies but to think we are not also constrained by nature is folly?
  - hueving 11y ago
    The only reason the fly colony would collapse is if it ran out of a resource. No point in giving them an unlimited food supply because it's a resource like any other.
    - sp332 11y ago
      That's exactly the point. Sooner or later, human consumption is going to hit a wall.
      - mozumder 11y ago
        Why would that happen? Where is the actual limit to anything? If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on.
        gnaritas 11y ago
        > If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on. This answer precludes the very real possibility that the necessary technology advances to "take the sea" or "go into space" don't come in time to be useful. Any plan that includes "things that haven't been invented yet" isn't a real plan, it's wishful thinking.
    - KannO 11y ago
      Humans are more complex than flies and social atmosphere would need to be healthy relative to dramatic population sizes. John B. Calhorn's mouse utopia experiments give some indication of complexity in large communities beyond food resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space. Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.
mistermann 11y ago
Why does it require growth, and why does that growth have to be "unchecked", whatever that means. I don't see why one person producing one thing and consuming those produced by others is unworkable....or is that not consumerism?
- jcoffland 11y ago
  It's a pretty weak argument when you just pretend not to understand the language. There's no problem with consuming goods. That's necessary, but there are limits to what needs to be consumed. When the economy requires more consumption than is needed for its members to sustain a healthy lifestyle then it needs to be checked or at least not actively pushed further by government policies aimed specifically at increasing unneeded consumption.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    "When the economy requires more consumption than is needed for its members to sustain a healthy lifestyle" I'm not just pretending, I genuinely don't understand what that means. It kind of sounds like you think consumption beyond bare sustenance is bad and needs to be checked somehow? If I'm understanding correctly, then I disagree with you.

1stop 11y ago

Because it doesn't. These people wouldn't just hoard their money because there is no ad telling them what to buy... They'd just be exercising their own agency, rather then cokes, or nikes.

mozumder 11y ago
> These people wouldn't just hoard their money because there is no ad telling them what to buy... wut? People see an ad, they're more likely buy that thing. If they don't see an ad, they don't buy that thing. You think people are still going to be spending their money if they aren't talked into buying things? lol. The economy grows when people spend money. Disincentivizing people from spending money is a good way to make sure the economy dies. Always be selling. NO exceptions. Coffee is for closers.
- mistermann 11y ago
  I don't watch ads and yet I still buy things. Granted, not as much as if I watched ads I'm sure.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    If you don't buy something, and hold off on spending, then the GDP goes down, as the velocity of money slows down. If 1 dollar is spent 5 times a year, that economy has a higher GDP than when that 1 dollar is spent 4 times a year. Advertising makes sure that money is spent quickly, to increase the GDP by increasing the velocity of money in an economy. If you get rid of advertising, you slow down the economy.
    - 1stop 11y ago
      You have astatement A and conclusion C but no B step. Do people spend money without advertising? I would say, yes they do. People have intrinsic wants and needs. Why would I so fulfilling them, because of a lack of extrinsic wants and needs? Edit: also aren't you just trying to optimise to what is measured. GDP goes up, and that's beneficial because? Greenspan says so?