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This is not that simple, unfortunately. Advertising in itself is not bad. Why informing about a good product is something wrong? How we would have Tesla or iPho

This is not that simple, unfortunately. Advertising in itself is not bad. Why informing about a good product is something wrong? How we would have Tesla or iPhones, etc. without advertising. Nobody would know about all of those. But something went wrong at some point. Similarly with options - options were a great way farmers could offload risk to the products buyers, who, in exchange could get better prices. But when options started to be used for something which is not much different from lottery bets, again, something went wrong. This is important lesson. Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible. But ethics no longer works. Big IT companies owners were fixing employees wages, who cared. Amazon owner does not care about warehouses workers miserable work conditions. Facebook owner is ok to steer people into fights, as this increases "engagement", ads clicks and revenue. Has it happened that Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg was asked to leave his country club or whatever place they are hanging out because of the unethical behavior? Obviously not.

nicoburns 6y ago
> Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible. Whether it's still Capitalism at that point is an interesting question. Some people seem to call any market-based system capitalism. For others the lack of ethics is definitional. My own view is that we probably ought to stop using the term "capitalism" entirely for the most part, and be more specific about what we mean.
reportgunner 6y ago
Advertising itself is bad.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> This is important lesson. Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible. The market is literally a big, greedy - in algorithmic sense - optimization engine. It optimizes away everything that stands in the way of making more money. It optimizes away quality, and it absolutely optimizes away any and all ethics. Marketing and advertising are a clear example of this in two separate ways: on the object level, they're already doing everything they can that isn't strictly illegal[0]; on the meta level, you see that competing on marketing and advertising has a better ROI than actually trying to make better products. You cannot expect a sense of ethics from a system which requires ethics as a containment vessel, and continuously tries to erode it. Much like you can't expect water to just keep flowing in a straight line, in absence of a bank or pipe that would constrain its expansion. -- [0] - And enforced. GDPR demonstrates that with insufficient enforcement, otherwise reputable companies will absolutely break the law.
exoque 6y ago
Maybe I'm wrong but I thought that Tesla actually never used ads. Then again with the PR they generate there's just no need to.
iso1631 6y ago
You picked two terrible examples. I first heard about the iphone via word of mouth as a friend had one and was showing it off at the bar. I hear about new ones by word of mouth from collegues (from people who go out of their way to watch product releases on the apple away day or whatever it is). I hear about new gadgets by paying for someone to go to CES and look at what's new. Tesla, and starlink, again is word of mouth, or deliberatly seeking out information on it (by visiting tesla.com for example).

nicoburns 6y ago

> Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible. Whether it's still Capitalism at that point is an interesting question. Some people seem to call any market-based system capitalism. For others the lack of ethics is definitional. My own view is that we probably ought to stop using the term "capitalism" entirely for the most part, and be more specific about what we mean.

reportgunner 6y ago

Advertising itself is bad.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> This is important lesson. Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible. The market is literally a big, greedy - in algorithmic sense - optimization engine. It optimizes away everything that stands in the way of making more money. It optimizes away quality, and it absolutely optimizes away any and all ethics. Marketing and advertising are a clear example of this in two separate ways: on the object level, they're already doing everything they can that isn't strictly illegal[0]; on the meta level, you see that competing on marketing and advertising has a better ROI than actually trying to make better products. You cannot expect a sense of ethics from a system which requires ethics as a containment vessel, and continuously tries to erode it. Much like you can't expect water to just keep flowing in a straight line, in absence of a bank or pipe that would constrain its expansion. -- [0] - And enforced. GDPR demonstrates that with insufficient enforcement, otherwise reputable companies will absolutely break the law.

exoque 6y ago

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought that Tesla actually never used ads. Then again with the PR they generate there's just no need to.

iso1631 6y ago

You picked two terrible examples. I first heard about the iphone via word of mouth as a friend had one and was showing it off at the bar. I hear about new ones by word of mouth from collegues (from people who go out of their way to watch product releases on the apple away day or whatever it is). I hear about new gadgets by paying for someone to go to CES and look at what's new. Tesla, and starlink, again is word of mouth, or deliberatly seeking out information on it (by visiting tesla.com for example).