7 ms·

Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine have banned billboards altogether, and I hope more follow their lead.

SnowingXIV 8y ago
Having worked with a number of attorneys, this would be fantastic to disrupt the status quo. Plenty of competitors acquire clients almost solely by having a huge budget for putting these all around the city. I'd prefer a more research driven approach. Seems unlikely now that I looked it up, most recent state was Alaska (by state referendum) in 1998.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
City of Sao Paulo did as well, it is possible.
esotericn 8y ago
I agree. I think that advertising is on dubious grounds when it exists as a substitute for payment (dubious because of the extremely low payout compared to the inconvenience / damage caused). In public spaces, on transport systems and so on, things that can't be avoided and are either already paid for or aren't even being used (e.g. walking past an ad on the pavement which pays for nothing other than the land it sits on) it's completely inexcusable. We're trying to encourage people to use public transport. We need to do _everything we can_ to make it a better environment, more comfortable, more homely, etc. Knocking out advertising would be an easy win. (Killing off the OTT announcements would be another one... but I digress...)
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  "on transport systems" I was going to refute your claim about these things just paying for the space they use, by stating figures that show advertising provides a significant subsidy for Transport for London (which operates the tubes and buses in London). But I was wrong: annual advertising revenue is just 142MM GBP, or about 16 GBP per London resident. This seems low given how much time people spend looking at ads on the tube.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    Yep. I actually discussed this in a similar thread on HN a few days ago. Fare revenue is approximately 3bn GBP. A 1:20 ratio. In the worst case assuming no-one additional travels due to it being more pleasant, fares would have to increase ~5%. My bus fare would go from 1.50 to 1.57. This is a distraction, though. It's not relevant, because we shouldn't allow damaging activity to occur regardless of whether it might look marginally better economically if we zoom in far enough. If the tube system funded itself by stealing wallets from random passengers, it would still be right to stop that program, even if fares went up, because it wouldn't be right or good. A related concern I hear often is that if something becomes n% more expensive, then some people will be priced out. The correct answer to 'poor people can't afford the bus' is not 'perform strange indirect forms of abuse on slightly less poor people'. The answer is 'fix the fact that people are poor'. Public services should be funded via taxation, not by private advertising partnerships.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      > Public services should be funded via taxation, not by private advertising partnerships. 25% of TFL funding comes from government grants anyway, increasing that to 27% from local property taxation in London seems the most sensible thing, but in the age where people only care about the bottom line and don't factor in externalities I can't see that as an option. The Met are now selling themselves because people won't pay taxes to fund them (London's police budget is 20% lower today than it was in 2012/2013)
      - esotericn 8y ago
        > The Met are now selling themselves because people won't pay taxes to fund them This is straying off topic, but I'd argue that it's more like "people don't feel they have any say in the process". I'd gladly pay more taxes for essential services, but what we seem to fallen in to in the UK is, for lack of better terminology, a political masturbation session. Brexit is like a big bang refactor. Pointless, won't change anything material in any predictable way (whichever direction it goes), and just blows everything that actually matters into the weeds. Give me the button to press that if other people press the button will result in the police, teachers, firefighters etc being funded properly. I will press that button and tell everyone I know to press that button. It doesn't exist; the only "options" come along with a whole host of completely irrelevant nonsense.
sbhn 8y ago
Did they ban church spires and church bells ringing on Sunday. They are advertising also.
- epicide 8y ago
  If they put really gaudy church spires on a lot of buildings that aren't churches or play the bells at deafening volumes all day every day, I would sure hope they'd get banned, too. They are advertising, but the point isn't that all advertising is inherently bad. The point is that we've normalized a really unhealthy amount of daily exposure to it and it turns out we are way more susceptible to it than we like to admit.
  - sbhn 8y ago
    A church spire can be seen for many miles, and from almost any location in every city, it’s ringing bells can be heard for many miles and in every city. They’ve been doing this for hundreds of years and it’s normalised to the point where your conscious doesn’t notice it, but if Mac Donald’s or coke did this, then you’d notice and lobby to have it banned.
    - esotericn 8y ago
      If a church were to put something in my eyes, they'd put a sculpture, a nice building, a gargoyle on a wall, whatever. (That's what they actually do). If your examples did it - it'd be flashy, colourful, gauche, impolite, nonsense. Scammer grade low class bullshit. No-one likes having evangelists knock at their door, because they're annoying and interruptive.
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      Normal businesses don't have similar weekly events, but no, people don't really mind the sound of bells once a week. Business owners are free to build spires if they want: it's rarely considered a good idea. Similarly, every city and town with a church has had the option to ban spires and bells. When you find me the town that has done that, I will believe that more persons than yourself find these things to be detrimental.
philwelch 8y ago
If you were going to rank the 50 states by natural beauty, those 4 would easily be in the top 5 or 8. That probably makes it an easier sell to ban billboards.

Having worked with a number of attorneys, this would be fantastic to disrupt the status quo. Plenty of competitors acquire clients almost solely by having a huge budget for putting these all around the city. I'd prefer a more research driven approach. Seems unlikely now that I looked it up, most recent state was Alaska (by state referendum) in 1998.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

City of Sao Paulo did as well, it is possible.

esotericn 8y ago

I agree. I think that advertising is on dubious grounds when it exists as a substitute for payment (dubious because of the extremely low payout compared to the inconvenience / damage caused). In public spaces, on transport systems and so on, things that can't be avoided and are either already paid for or aren't even being used (e.g. walking past an ad on the pavement which pays for nothing other than the land it sits on) it's completely inexcusable. We're trying to encourage people to use public transport. We need to do _everything we can_ to make it a better environment, more comfortable, more homely, etc. Knocking out advertising would be an easy win. (Killing off the OTT announcements would be another one... but I digress...)

rahimnathwani 8y ago
"on transport systems" I was going to refute your claim about these things just paying for the space they use, by stating figures that show advertising provides a significant subsidy for Transport for London (which operates the tubes and buses in London). But I was wrong: annual advertising revenue is just 142MM GBP, or about 16 GBP per London resident. This seems low given how much time people spend looking at ads on the tube.
- esotericn 8y ago
  Yep. I actually discussed this in a similar thread on HN a few days ago. Fare revenue is approximately 3bn GBP. A 1:20 ratio. In the worst case assuming no-one additional travels due to it being more pleasant, fares would have to increase ~5%. My bus fare would go from 1.50 to 1.57. This is a distraction, though. It's not relevant, because we shouldn't allow damaging activity to occur regardless of whether it might look marginally better economically if we zoom in far enough. If the tube system funded itself by stealing wallets from random passengers, it would still be right to stop that program, even if fares went up, because it wouldn't be right or good. A related concern I hear often is that if something becomes n% more expensive, then some people will be priced out. The correct answer to 'poor people can't afford the bus' is not 'perform strange indirect forms of abuse on slightly less poor people'. The answer is 'fix the fact that people are poor'. Public services should be funded via taxation, not by private advertising partnerships.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    > Public services should be funded via taxation, not by private advertising partnerships. 25% of TFL funding comes from government grants anyway, increasing that to 27% from local property taxation in London seems the most sensible thing, but in the age where people only care about the bottom line and don't factor in externalities I can't see that as an option. The Met are now selling themselves because people won't pay taxes to fund them (London's police budget is 20% lower today than it was in 2012/2013)
    - esotericn 8y ago
      > The Met are now selling themselves because people won't pay taxes to fund them This is straying off topic, but I'd argue that it's more like "people don't feel they have any say in the process". I'd gladly pay more taxes for essential services, but what we seem to fallen in to in the UK is, for lack of better terminology, a political masturbation session. Brexit is like a big bang refactor. Pointless, won't change anything material in any predictable way (whichever direction it goes), and just blows everything that actually matters into the weeds. Give me the button to press that if other people press the button will result in the police, teachers, firefighters etc being funded properly. I will press that button and tell everyone I know to press that button. It doesn't exist; the only "options" come along with a whole host of completely irrelevant nonsense.

sbhn 8y ago

Did they ban church spires and church bells ringing on Sunday. They are advertising also.

epicide 8y ago
If they put really gaudy church spires on a lot of buildings that aren't churches or play the bells at deafening volumes all day every day, I would sure hope they'd get banned, too. They are advertising, but the point isn't that all advertising is inherently bad. The point is that we've normalized a really unhealthy amount of daily exposure to it and it turns out we are way more susceptible to it than we like to admit.
- sbhn 8y ago
  A church spire can be seen for many miles, and from almost any location in every city, it’s ringing bells can be heard for many miles and in every city. They’ve been doing this for hundreds of years and it’s normalised to the point where your conscious doesn’t notice it, but if Mac Donald’s or coke did this, then you’d notice and lobby to have it banned.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    If a church were to put something in my eyes, they'd put a sculpture, a nice building, a gargoyle on a wall, whatever. (That's what they actually do). If your examples did it - it'd be flashy, colourful, gauche, impolite, nonsense. Scammer grade low class bullshit. No-one likes having evangelists knock at their door, because they're annoying and interruptive.
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    Normal businesses don't have similar weekly events, but no, people don't really mind the sound of bells once a week. Business owners are free to build spires if they want: it's rarely considered a good idea. Similarly, every city and town with a church has had the option to ban spires and bells. When you find me the town that has done that, I will believe that more persons than yourself find these things to be detrimental.

philwelch 8y ago

If you were going to rank the 50 states by natural beauty, those 4 would easily be in the top 5 or 8. That probably makes it an easier sell to ban billboards.