3 ms·
Imagine you're a farmer with a bunch of free-range chickens. Your responsibility is to make sure they all live long, healthy, happy, and free. There's a poiso
by CptFribble 8y ago
Imagine you're a farmer with a bunch of free-range chickens.
Your responsibility is to make sure they all live long, healthy, happy, and free.
There's a poisonous plant that sticks through the fence in a corner of the range. You tell all the chickens to stay away, that it will make them sick and kill them, but every year about 10-15% of them eat it anyway, and you're constantly dealing with the illness and death it causes. And you can't tear out the plant, because it's not growing on your property, it's just coming through the fence.
The problem, is that the plant didn't get there on it's own. A pack of wolves planted it, and at night they plaster the side of the coop with flyers saying how smooth and cool the plant is. But when you try to tear down the posters, or cut back the plant, all the libertarian chickens come out and yell about individual freedoms.
Humans aren't rational actors. We're emotional creatures of habit who are highly susceptible to advertising. If anything, we shouldn't ban the item in question, we should just make it really expensive, and disallow any forms of advertising. That means besides no TV, no magazines, no billboards, no visible smoking anywhere in media, not visible on shelves on any store anywhere, etc.
If we take away tobacco companies' power to emotionally manipulate humans, maybe not as many people will choose to throw their health away.
- provolone 8y agoYou're joined by Akerlof & Shiller when you claim: >Humans aren't rational actors. We're emotional creatures of habit who are highly susceptible to advertising Adbusters would agree with your claim that: >we should just make it really expensive, and disallow any forms of advertising. That means besides no TV, no magazines, no billboards, no visible smoking anywhere in media, not visible on shelves on any store anywhere, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Phishing-Phools-Economics-Manipulation-Deception-ebook/dp/B00WAM14RE https://www.amazon.com/Phishing-Phools-Economics-Manipulatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Athedailybell.com+adbusters https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Athedailybell.com+adbu... https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amises.org+shiller https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amises.org+shiller https://www.google.com/search?q=nobel+prize+in+economics+fake https://www.google.com/search?q=nobel+prize+in+economics+fak... Your comparison of a farmer owning chickens for profit/consumption to a government benevolently lording over citizens is illustrative. For the sake of being explicit, I don't think humans should be regarded as chattel. If you find this an apt comparison, we may have to agree to disagree. Thanks.