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It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive. There's a lot of talk about what impact mass automation will have on our society, and what kind of work people will have once they're replaced by machines. This is always framed in such a way as if it's a problem we're about to face, but it looks like it's actually a trend that's been going on for decades (at least). And the answer is that, unless there is an effort to direct these people towards productive ends, many will continue to flow to these parasitic sectors.

foldingmoney 7y ago
It's not like there's some central planning committee that sits down and decides what to pay everyone. Citizens decide where to spend their money -- at least the part that the government doesn't tax and spend for them -- and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them.
- flukus 7y ago
  > Citizens decide where to spend their money That's the problem, to a large extent we don't because of the pervasive manipulation the advertising industry does to us, the industries reason for existence is literally undermine our free will.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    suggesting that you come over for dinner because my desserts are tasty is not “literally undermining your free will”.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Almost correct. Governments have a strong say in what is incentivized and what is not through taxation and monetary policy. The people running government are (in most places) elected by the people but that is affected by political manipulation, gerrymandering and politicians often represent the moneyed interests that got them into power.
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    Okay, explain to me how the government is incentivising 'advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc.' through taxation and monetary policy.
    - QuercusMax 7y ago
      Well, to start, corn is highly subsidized. This means corn syrup is cheaper than it should be, making soda and most processed foods cheaper than healthier options.
      - foldingmoney 7y ago
        Low quality ingredients will always be cheaper than high quality ingredients, regardless of subsidies and taxes. That's an unfortunate fact of life, not a government decision. And there's nothing to stop people buying diet soda.
        QuercusMax 7y ago
        Here's an article backing up my point: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-diet-farm-subsidies-idUSKCN0ZL2ER https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-diet-farm-subsidie... Why do we need the govt making cheap unhealthy stuff even cheaper?
    - kavalg 7y ago
      Wrt soda, and highly processed food, I think that FDA and similar agencies could make an effort to evaluate the consequences of prolonged consumption of such food and figure out what quantities are safe. They could require proper labeling and not allow children to buy such foods (as with cigarettes and alcohol). For credit cards, maybe he meant that in some countries, where individuals cannot default, banks are comfortable taking too much risk and advertise credits aggressively. I have personally witnessed several victims of this (yes, people can be dumb). Wrt "car dealerships and (most) sales people", it is probably not affecting the individual so much, but if you look closer at "enterprise sales" and government spending, you will certainly notice some "interesting" practices. However, I think that this is a lot harder to solve than the other case above, because it is not so directly aimed at the masses.
- rexpop 7y ago
  > Citizens decide where to spend their money. It's almost criminal the way we propagate the narrative that advertising is ineffectual. Of course, if it were, there wouldn't be so much money in it. So it's very hard for me to take seriously people who believe in consumer choice.
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    What percentage of the products that you see advertised every day do you buy? 100%? 50%? I'm guessing it's probably less than 1%. No one would argue that businesses spend a lot of money on targeted advertising, and targeting is something that marketers are constantly trying to refine. What is targeting? Showing things to the people who are most likely to buy them. In the world you're describing, targeting wouldn't exist, because the mind control techniques of advertising have made free will a thing of the past, and people will just buy whatever the all powerful advertising agencies tell them to buy.
- csomar 7y ago
  > and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them. I think his point is, these industries are not valuable to people; they are just aggressive at extract wealth from other people. In net, they have a negative value (from his perspective) and thus society will be better without them.
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    No one's being forced to buy soda, eat highly processed food, have a credit card, or use a car dealership. Yet people voluntarily choose to spend their money on these things, so they obviously do find some value in them. When you characterise them as 'not valuable to people', you're making a prescriptive moral judgement (and not one I necessarily disagree with), as opposed to a descriptive observation of where free agents choose to spend their money. I don't drink soda or eat highly processed food, I don't have a credit card, and I didn't buy my car from a dealership. But the fact that many people choose to spend their money on all these things tells me that those people do see value in them, and I don't think my preferences are right and theirs are wrong.
    - piva00 7y ago
      You lost me on "free agents", under the kind of system of advertising and PR we are under there is a very narrow window of "free agency".
      - foldingmoney 7y ago
        If the advertising industry is such a powerful force of mind control that we literally have no free will anymore, then why did they let _you_ figure it out? You're giving them way too much credit. Do you notice how the world is full of failed advertising campaigns? How the world is full of failed companies and failed products that the evil geniuses in advertising weren't able to make people buy? There's a world of difference between 'we can use some principles from psychology to try to exploit people's fears and make them more interested in our product' and 'our unlimited powers of persuasion make free will an illusion'. And despite the hype, most big-data, machine learning, 'downloading your thoughts from Facebook before you've even had them'-style targeted advertising amounts to showing you ads for the thing that you just bought.
rexpop 7y ago
You'd be smart to accuse me, here, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but the core parasite is Capital, which siphons value from the labor of mankind in a Byzantine labyrinth of social games meant to obscure this essential truth.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But capital through markets is how we get around the "labyrinth" that is the economic calculation problem. I think it's like complaining about how you lose power when you transfer electricity over wires. It's true, but there's always going to be a transmission cost.
  - jcora 7y ago
    There is no economic calculation problem: http://flowing.systems/economy/politics/2017/08/16/calculation-problem/ http://flowing.systems/economy/politics/2017/08/16/calculati...
    - kortilla 7y ago
      >The Mises Institute has put it up for free, which is surely off-message but whatever. Ah, a clearly well-rationed article is at foot. Here’s a hint, if someone isn’t able to model free things in their understanding of capitalist systems, they don’t understand them enough to critique them. Anyway, the rest of that “critique” isn’t actually a critique. It’s just goal post shifting to the point where it assumes socialist systems by nature have perfect demand discovery mechanisms (none of which are alluded to) and can never produce a surplus. Conveniently, it follows that clearly socialist systems are perfectly efficient and do not allow surpluses because they have this neat built in mechanism of perfect demand discovery. So it’s “not true socialism” if there are any inefficiencies in food production, energy production, etc because “true socialism” has a mechanism by which everyone gets exactly what they need. Did someone inform the author of this that such a mechanism has never existed and the most efficient mechanism we have discovered so far is markets?
      - 7y ago
Mirioron 7y ago
How are soda, highly processed food, and credit cards parasitic? They provide a service that people find very useful.
- ionised 7y ago
  Just like heroin and hitmen.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Gee wiz, sugary drinks and hitmen. What similarities they share! Seriously, this is total nonsense and it frustrates me to even read such a wild comparison.
pzs 7y ago
Indeed, and economists seem to be a bit puzzled by this [1]. [1] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
InternetUser 7y ago
> Advertising, soda, highly processed food Did you see this? - > Crossfit, Inc. Suspends Use Of Facebook And Associated Properties - May 23, 2019 https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossfit-suspends-facebook-instagram https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossfit-suspends-facebook-...
kortilla 7y ago
Advertising, sales, dealerships, middlemen, and snake oil salesmen all existed long before the automation started. You claim sales and advertising are parasitic, but what is the alternative? A central planning committee that decides what products we can buy?
chrisseaton 7y ago
This is such a hugely snobby attitude. The value of soda for example is that some people like the taste and sensation. It brings them a little bit of joy. Not everything has to be coldly utilitarian.
- ionised 7y ago
  Or people enjoy soda because the of insane amount of sugar put in it by people intending to make the product as addictive as possible. Remove the sugar from soda and you have awful-tasting water. Sugary drinks are no better than cigarettes, and the people pushing them know exactly what they are doing and what they are exploiting.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    You can make anything sound absurd by reducing it to its ingredients like that. And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society.
    - ionised 7y ago
      > And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. I disagree. You can make anything seem valuable by defining value in the most cynically narrow terms possible like that. By that same logic, heroin has great value in society, and hitmen and we shouldn't be trying to stop these things. However we do, because the popularity of the product is no measure of its contribution to society. Continue on with that logic and literally everything is valuable, making it a meaningless distinction. > You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society. I can and did. It's an opinion not an assertion. If you are creating a need that didn't already exist, like targeting people's predisposition to addictions to substances like sugar, or nicotine, or heroin, then I posit that you have created no real value whatsoever.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        By your logic music and art have no value to society, because there was no need for those until they were invented, someone could assess their value as zero, they consume natural resources which harms all of us, and the people could be doing something more productive (by some unstated metric of yours) instead. You just don't enjoy soda. There's nothing wrong with other people enjoying it. Either in moderation, or irresponsibly in our opinion, which is their own business. Other people don't enjoy music and art and should probably think they should be done away with you like you with soda.
andrepd 7y ago
In a system where we (richly) reward people who buy and sell securities back and forth, or who manipulate people into wanting to buy mountains of crap (with lovely side effects such as the above post mentions), or produce clothing and food, transport them half the world, then set it on fire, when the system rewards these behaviours then of course this is exactly what will happen.

foldingmoney 7y ago

It's not like there's some central planning committee that sits down and decides what to pay everyone. Citizens decide where to spend their money -- at least the part that the government doesn't tax and spend for them -- and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them.

flukus 7y ago
> Citizens decide where to spend their money That's the problem, to a large extent we don't because of the pervasive manipulation the advertising industry does to us, the industries reason for existence is literally undermine our free will.
- kortilla 7y ago
  suggesting that you come over for dinner because my desserts are tasty is not “literally undermining your free will”.
r00fus 7y ago
Almost correct. Governments have a strong say in what is incentivized and what is not through taxation and monetary policy. The people running government are (in most places) elected by the people but that is affected by political manipulation, gerrymandering and politicians often represent the moneyed interests that got them into power.
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  Okay, explain to me how the government is incentivising 'advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc.' through taxation and monetary policy.
  - QuercusMax 7y ago
    Well, to start, corn is highly subsidized. This means corn syrup is cheaper than it should be, making soda and most processed foods cheaper than healthier options.
    - foldingmoney 7y ago
      Low quality ingredients will always be cheaper than high quality ingredients, regardless of subsidies and taxes. That's an unfortunate fact of life, not a government decision. And there's nothing to stop people buying diet soda.
      - QuercusMax 7y ago
        Here's an article backing up my point: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-diet-farm-subsidies-idUSKCN0ZL2ER https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-diet-farm-subsidie... Why do we need the govt making cheap unhealthy stuff even cheaper?
  - kavalg 7y ago
    Wrt soda, and highly processed food, I think that FDA and similar agencies could make an effort to evaluate the consequences of prolonged consumption of such food and figure out what quantities are safe. They could require proper labeling and not allow children to buy such foods (as with cigarettes and alcohol). For credit cards, maybe he meant that in some countries, where individuals cannot default, banks are comfortable taking too much risk and advertise credits aggressively. I have personally witnessed several victims of this (yes, people can be dumb). Wrt "car dealerships and (most) sales people", it is probably not affecting the individual so much, but if you look closer at "enterprise sales" and government spending, you will certainly notice some "interesting" practices. However, I think that this is a lot harder to solve than the other case above, because it is not so directly aimed at the masses.
rexpop 7y ago
> Citizens decide where to spend their money. It's almost criminal the way we propagate the narrative that advertising is ineffectual. Of course, if it were, there wouldn't be so much money in it. So it's very hard for me to take seriously people who believe in consumer choice.
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  What percentage of the products that you see advertised every day do you buy? 100%? 50%? I'm guessing it's probably less than 1%. No one would argue that businesses spend a lot of money on targeted advertising, and targeting is something that marketers are constantly trying to refine. What is targeting? Showing things to the people who are most likely to buy them. In the world you're describing, targeting wouldn't exist, because the mind control techniques of advertising have made free will a thing of the past, and people will just buy whatever the all powerful advertising agencies tell them to buy.
csomar 7y ago
> and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them. I think his point is, these industries are not valuable to people; they are just aggressive at extract wealth from other people. In net, they have a negative value (from his perspective) and thus society will be better without them.
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  No one's being forced to buy soda, eat highly processed food, have a credit card, or use a car dealership. Yet people voluntarily choose to spend their money on these things, so they obviously do find some value in them. When you characterise them as 'not valuable to people', you're making a prescriptive moral judgement (and not one I necessarily disagree with), as opposed to a descriptive observation of where free agents choose to spend their money. I don't drink soda or eat highly processed food, I don't have a credit card, and I didn't buy my car from a dealership. But the fact that many people choose to spend their money on all these things tells me that those people do see value in them, and I don't think my preferences are right and theirs are wrong.
  - piva00 7y ago
    You lost me on "free agents", under the kind of system of advertising and PR we are under there is a very narrow window of "free agency".
    - foldingmoney 7y ago
      If the advertising industry is such a powerful force of mind control that we literally have no free will anymore, then why did they let _you_ figure it out? You're giving them way too much credit. Do you notice how the world is full of failed advertising campaigns? How the world is full of failed companies and failed products that the evil geniuses in advertising weren't able to make people buy? There's a world of difference between 'we can use some principles from psychology to try to exploit people's fears and make them more interested in our product' and 'our unlimited powers of persuasion make free will an illusion'. And despite the hype, most big-data, machine learning, 'downloading your thoughts from Facebook before you've even had them'-style targeted advertising amounts to showing you ads for the thing that you just bought.

rexpop 7y ago

You'd be smart to accuse me, here, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but the core parasite is Capital, which siphons value from the labor of mankind in a Byzantine labyrinth of social games meant to obscure this essential truth.

Mirioron 7y ago
But capital through markets is how we get around the "labyrinth" that is the economic calculation problem. I think it's like complaining about how you lose power when you transfer electricity over wires. It's true, but there's always going to be a transmission cost.
- jcora 7y ago
  There is no economic calculation problem: http://flowing.systems/economy/politics/2017/08/16/calculation-problem/ http://flowing.systems/economy/politics/2017/08/16/calculati...
  - kortilla 7y ago
    >The Mises Institute has put it up for free, which is surely off-message but whatever. Ah, a clearly well-rationed article is at foot. Here’s a hint, if someone isn’t able to model free things in their understanding of capitalist systems, they don’t understand them enough to critique them. Anyway, the rest of that “critique” isn’t actually a critique. It’s just goal post shifting to the point where it assumes socialist systems by nature have perfect demand discovery mechanisms (none of which are alluded to) and can never produce a surplus. Conveniently, it follows that clearly socialist systems are perfectly efficient and do not allow surpluses because they have this neat built in mechanism of perfect demand discovery. So it’s “not true socialism” if there are any inefficiencies in food production, energy production, etc because “true socialism” has a mechanism by which everyone gets exactly what they need. Did someone inform the author of this that such a mechanism has never existed and the most efficient mechanism we have discovered so far is markets?
    - 7y ago

Mirioron 7y ago

How are soda, highly processed food, and credit cards parasitic? They provide a service that people find very useful.

ionised 7y ago
Just like heroin and hitmen.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Gee wiz, sugary drinks and hitmen. What similarities they share! Seriously, this is total nonsense and it frustrates me to even read such a wild comparison.

pzs 7y ago

Indeed, and economists seem to be a bit puzzled by this [1]. [1] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

InternetUser 7y ago

> Advertising, soda, highly processed food Did you see this? - > Crossfit, Inc. Suspends Use Of Facebook And Associated Properties - May 23, 2019 https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossfit-suspends-facebook-instagram https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossfit-suspends-facebook-...

kortilla 7y ago

Advertising, sales, dealerships, middlemen, and snake oil salesmen all existed long before the automation started. You claim sales and advertising are parasitic, but what is the alternative? A central planning committee that decides what products we can buy?

chrisseaton 7y ago

This is such a hugely snobby attitude. The value of soda for example is that some people like the taste and sensation. It brings them a little bit of joy. Not everything has to be coldly utilitarian.

ionised 7y ago
Or people enjoy soda because the of insane amount of sugar put in it by people intending to make the product as addictive as possible. Remove the sugar from soda and you have awful-tasting water. Sugary drinks are no better than cigarettes, and the people pushing them know exactly what they are doing and what they are exploiting.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  You can make anything sound absurd by reducing it to its ingredients like that. And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society.
  - ionised 7y ago
    > And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. I disagree. You can make anything seem valuable by defining value in the most cynically narrow terms possible like that. By that same logic, heroin has great value in society, and hitmen and we shouldn't be trying to stop these things. However we do, because the popularity of the product is no measure of its contribution to society. Continue on with that logic and literally everything is valuable, making it a meaningless distinction. > You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society. I can and did. It's an opinion not an assertion. If you are creating a need that didn't already exist, like targeting people's predisposition to addictions to substances like sugar, or nicotine, or heroin, then I posit that you have created no real value whatsoever.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      By your logic music and art have no value to society, because there was no need for those until they were invented, someone could assess their value as zero, they consume natural resources which harms all of us, and the people could be doing something more productive (by some unstated metric of yours) instead. You just don't enjoy soda. There's nothing wrong with other people enjoying it. Either in moderation, or irresponsibly in our opinion, which is their own business. Other people don't enjoy music and art and should probably think they should be done away with you like you with soda.

andrepd 7y ago

In a system where we (richly) reward people who buy and sell securities back and forth, or who manipulate people into wanting to buy mountains of crap (with lovely side effects such as the above post mentions), or produce clothing and food, transport them half the world, then set it on fire, when the system rewards these behaviours then of course this is exactly what will happen.