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It seems like as a society if we agreed not to have advertising, we would save both companies (b|m)illions of dollars. This isn't an argument for advertising,

It seems like as a society if we agreed not to have advertising, we would save both companies (b|m)illions of dollars. This isn't an argument for advertising, it's an argument that advertising is an infectious disease: once one company in an industry starts advertising, the others have to advertise to compete. And that hurts consumers because every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar that comes out of the pockets of consumers and is not spent on improving the product.

Nasrudith 7y ago
It is a symptom/emergent result of competition really and differentiating themselves. Not having competition would obviously lead to more stagnation which would lead to things being worse for consumers. Really advertising is sort of an analog to reproductive signaling burdens like males deliberately showing fitness by making themselves obvious to predators.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > It is a symptom/emergent result of competition really and differentiating themselves. Not having competition would obviously lead to more stagnation which would lead to things being worse for consumers. Right, but we don't have to accept that it has to be this way. If we're committing to the idea that competition is there to benefit consumers, we should cut out the parts of competition that clearly aren't beneficial to consumers. There would still be competition if people got information about products from independent reviewers, it would just be competition based on the qualities of the products, rather than the advertising.
  - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    > ...if people got information about products from independent reviewers No such thing; in markets where traditional advertising never caught hold, the 'independent' reviewers are anything but. In a way that is much worse when bias and vested interest is clearly labeled.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      Consumer Reports, Labdoor, etc. work just fine. You can look at where the money for these companies comes from, and see who they're serving. Also, if you think that advertising bias and vested interest is clearly labeled, you may be seeing a lot of advertising that you don't realize is advertising.

Nasrudith 7y ago

It is a symptom/emergent result of competition really and differentiating themselves. Not having competition would obviously lead to more stagnation which would lead to things being worse for consumers. Really advertising is sort of an analog to reproductive signaling burdens like males deliberately showing fitness by making themselves obvious to predators.

kerkeslager 7y ago
> It is a symptom/emergent result of competition really and differentiating themselves. Not having competition would obviously lead to more stagnation which would lead to things being worse for consumers. Right, but we don't have to accept that it has to be this way. If we're committing to the idea that competition is there to benefit consumers, we should cut out the parts of competition that clearly aren't beneficial to consumers. There would still be competition if people got information about products from independent reviewers, it would just be competition based on the qualities of the products, rather than the advertising.
- otabdeveloper4 7y ago
  > ...if people got information about products from independent reviewers No such thing; in markets where traditional advertising never caught hold, the 'independent' reviewers are anything but. In a way that is much worse when bias and vested interest is clearly labeled.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    Consumer Reports, Labdoor, etc. work just fine. You can look at where the money for these companies comes from, and see who they're serving. Also, if you think that advertising bias and vested interest is clearly labeled, you may be seeing a lot of advertising that you don't realize is advertising.