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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is confusing marketing designed to
by b0rsuk 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly
Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is confusing marketing designed to prevent the buyer making informed decisions.
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The term has been adopted by economists. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, championing meaningful regulation for the financial industry, used the term confusopoly to refer to large financial institutions (Cordray 2014, 4'04"-4'26") :
"There's actually an economic term for this; it's called "Confusopoly." If [the sellers] can confuse the consumer enough then the consumers won't necessary know what choice they're making and they can be talked into just about anything."
— Richard Cordray, 2014/01/08
- strbean 7y agoI love this concept. This perfectly describes the state of pretty much all consumer markets today, and one of the biggest pitfalls of free-market capitalism. Also, it feeds in to my always-shouted-down argument that advertising/marketing is generally a counter-productive economic broken window (not counter-productive for a given business, but counter-productive as a whole).
- b0rsuk 7y agoI wish I could PM this to you because it's third time I post the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142 Advertising is cancer on society. Very thoughtful points.
- strbean 7y agoAdded to my reading list, thanks!
- blaser-waffle 7y agoInformation Asymmetry is the more generic term for this situation. One person has the info, and the other doesn't -- and can benefit from keeping it that way, e.g. insider stock trading, estate sales, even garage sales where you know what their old junk is really worth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry