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This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad soci

This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad social sciences. In it, he argues that, at the time of writing (late 50s), the industrialized West has largely solved what had previously been the main preoccupation of economics - improved standard of living. As evidence, Galbraith points to advertising. The argument is simple: when important productivity improvements take place, say the invention of a new way of baking bread, they don't need advertising to gain mass use. Their benefits are so obvious that they don't need to be sold. Demand doesn't have to be created, because demand comes from human existence. The existence of advertising, in contrast, shows that the thing being advertised probably isn't that important. Indeed, the item is so trivial as to require advertising to create demand for it. This then leads us to wonder what benefit is being served by both creating this product and the demand for it; Galbraith argues that we've essentially fetishized economic growth at all costs (a holdover, in his view, from the early days of econ which was concerned with our metaphorical bread making instead of our metaphorical advertised widget making). He then attacks planned obsolescence as the dumbest outcrop of this process, because now we're purposefully wasting materials on things which we hope to replace in the near future for no reason other than to keep making the things, things which we don't need anyway - as evidenced by the fact that they're advertised. Anyway I think this fits in perfectly with the whole influencer economy phenomenon, because that's literally all they do. Their raison d'etre is to generate demand for items nobody needs or even previously knew about.

mc32 4y ago
The critique of advertising rings some bells; however, planned obsolescence is not always a bad thing because the advances in new versions might outweigh the energy necessary to produce a better version. So something like a bread toaster probably suffers from planned obsolescence; LCDs (or generic display technology) likely benefit from planned obsolescence. Before Telecommunications deregulation everyone had pretty much the same telephone that was leased from the phone co. It was electromechanical with sizeable transformers and magnets in there. Compare that to the sets that were available after deregulation with miniaturized components. Basically it's not always cut and dried and there is nuance especially when it comes to energy efficiency. On the other hand, it's really annoying to buy kitchen appliances that are poorly manufactured.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  > planned obsolescence is not always a bad thing To whom? We now have floating islands of plastic from obsolescent devices. That plastic blender I bought 3 years ago is now in the trash heap. My mother's blender she bought 40 years ago is still going. Obsolescence is terrible for the environment in the entire lifecycle of a product. In my opinion, obsolescence are rarely good for the society, never good for the customer. It is only good for the manufacturer. > Before Telecommunications deregulation everyone had pretty much the same telephone that was leased from the phone co. It was electromechanical with sizeable transformers and magnets in there. Compare that to the sets that were available after deregulation with miniaturized components. Just to be clear, are you suggesting that deregulation brought in the "not always bad" obsolescence? I know it brought innovation and customer choice, but can you unpack further how it brought obsolescence?
  - eropple 4y ago
    > That plastic blender I bought 3 years ago is now in the trash heap. My mother's blender she bought 40 years ago is still going. Adjusted for purchasing power, how much did the former cost and how much did the latter cost?
    - foobiekr 4y ago
      The argument the poster is making isn’t that garbage implementations aren’t cheaper, it’s that their externalities are terrible.
      - feet 4y ago
        Unfortunately some people only seem to consider money as important, all else be damned
      - eropple 4y ago
        Of course--that's my point. Those externalities aren't priced in, which is a large part of the purchasing power change for consumer goods over the last couple decades. We can start with the cost of salvage and recycling being priced into COGS, amortized across expected lifetime (and refined as data comes in--make something good that lasts longer, get a refund against your up-front deposit as a manufacturer). Sorry, I should've been more explicit in my first post. My bad.
tinalumfoil 4y ago
If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses There was genuine skepticism over the horseless carriage when it was first becoming available. Vaccines wouldn't be in widespread today use if significant money and resources weren't spent convincing people of their safety. Lots and lot of useful technological innovations requires advertising before people were convinced to use them.
- anxiously 4y ago
  Fair enough, but there's a huge gap between vaccines and products like Raid Shadow Legends and Snuggies.
  - wellareyousure 4y ago
    There is a tremendous amount of pharmaceutical advertising. I understand it's appealing, oh let's hate on the influencers. We DO see influencers advertise pharmaceuticals / health adjacent products, like with public health campaigns, that is a regulatory distinction and not a substantive one. When asked what was the one thing he wanted, Dr. Fauci said, 'Leonardo DiCaprio to encourage people to advocate for COVID measures.' They use ad inventory, they use ad techniques to reach their audience, they ARE ADS. Seemingly regulators have figured out a process for them. Video games are really interesting too. For some people, they are medicine! For some people, they substitute alcohol!
- ctoth 4y ago
  You know, I often see this faster horses thing quoted to point at how dumb consumers are. Wouldn't you agree, however, that a car which doesn't drive itself home after you've had a bit too many drinks at the local saloon is a downgrade? A car which doesn't graze its own food is a downgrade? A car which doesn't automatically make more cars is a downgrade? Perhaps if someone had figured out 'faster horses' sooner we wouldn't have literally millions of people dead from car crashes. Perhaps we wouldn't have an atomized society with little social interaction. It seems to me that once people know that something exists, which is possible through way more methods than the constant cognitive assault of our advertising-based culture, then they can do just fine at figuring out if the thing is useful to them. But yeah, keep gloating about how dumb people are for not just wanting a better version of what works.
tonymet 4y ago
this assumes humans are capable of understanding the value of things. They aren’t and values shift over time. advertising helps to inform and influence these changing values
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Why do humans need advertising to understand the value of things? I'd agree with you if your statement was more along the lines of, "people may not know that widget X exists and solves their problem well." But that's wholly different from understanding the value of things.
  - tonymet 4y ago
    People aren’t rational, they lack awareness, and even when they are aware of a new behavior they are hesitant to change behavior unless there are significant signals from media & peers that the new behavior will bring value . Besides all of this, the cognitive load of being aware of every possible new behavior, activity and product in the world would be overwhelming. I’m not advocating for more advertising (i live somewhat of an ascetic lifestyle myself), nor soft or hard paternalism. But assuming people will be able to discover and adopt high value behaviors without advertising (or other outside influence) is preposterous.
sublinear 4y ago
I agree with the general observation that "needs" are a more powerful means of making a sale. Advertising tends to focus on "wants". Yet, at the huge risk of getting downvoted into oblivion isn't rejecting "wants" as a legitimate source of growth a bit Marxist? If the economy only served needs and not wants we would be living in a very bleak and oppressive world.
pphysch 4y ago
I strongly disagree with Galbraith's argument essentially about "the end of quality". We did not reach an absolute zenith of product quality in the 50s. What did change was the coverage of mass media. Instead of relying on long and expensive genuine user feedback loops to generate positive buzz around a product, advertising manufactures that buzz directly. This is why is it everywhere, and influencers are just the latest innovation. Not because product quality/QoL reached a high point.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  > I strongly disagree with Galbraith's argument essentially about "the end of quality". We did not reach a zenith of product quality in the 50s. As someone who actively seeks tools, furniture and other consumer products from that period, I tend to disagree. Let's take furniture. Mine was made during this period by Stickley in New York state. One cannot find commensurate quality today unless you wish to commission handmade pieces. We have devolved to the point of disposable $5 extruded-plastic chairs, which may provide service for a time, knowing full well that the inevitable trip to the landfill is just around the corner. I reckon we're a ways past said zenith.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Yes, plastics hadn't been invented yet and there were still enough forests around to deforest that furniture could economically be made out of large chunks of solid wood. Nowadays, forestry requirements in most developed countries have (understandably) become tighter and it makes more sense to use less wood to make engineered wood products to build furniture than solid wood. Engineered wood products last a long time but still less than solid wood. Also, when new, a lot of old furniture was quite expensive and families would save up for pieces. We get the benefit of that being used and transmitted now (though obviously particularly striking pieces will not have a reduction in value.) While I certainly appreciate older, sturdy furniture (especially solid wood furniture as someone with some cabinetry background), I prefer modern lightweight materials, even if they last less long. They still last most of my lifetime which is enough for me. Marketing is not the issue, sustainable materials usage is.
  - 4y ago
syrrim 4y ago
There was a commentary somewhere that while someone in france had discovered the cure to smallpox in the form of variolation, the king of france was dying of it. The reason he died was not because no cure existed, but because his doctors weren't aware of it and thus didn't know to apply it. The spread of knowledge is not magical. It will happen over time, but in that time knowledge will be lost. Variations of variolation have been used for thousands of years, but smallpox was only eradicated after galbraith wrote his book. The application of capital to the spread of useful knowledge can still happen even when the knowledge ought to be obvious and important to everyone that encounters it.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Wouldn’t it be better to “push” or “advertise” these things science and medical journals though ? That’s what I’m assuming they’re for. So it’s not advertising rather journalism which is required.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Similar thesis with Goodburn, Klien, Rumpfhuber Till - "The Design of Scarcity". A short, kooky but enjoyable read.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  Sure but do we need a push or pull based model. Ads are pushed into our attention. Google searches and "research" are pull based. If you solve the pull based model the king's doctor just looks it up, discovers something exists, and obtains the treatment. Recommendations are similar to ads in this regard as well. Maybe blurring the lines between the two depending on how the algo is designed. I'd personally be in favor of recommendation type approaches with combinations of human curation, and an adjustable spectrum of push/pull based results; and the ability to swap between these on a whim as needed.
  - muffinman26 4y ago
    I'd argue that you definitely need a push-based model for preventative measures: vaccines, smoke detectors, Personal Protective Equipment to reduce the spread of disease. If you don't know how serious a danger is, you won't start doing research on it until it actually occurs, at which point it is too late. It doesn't do much good to remind someone they need to have smoke detectors and check them regularly after the house burns down, or that a vaccine is available after they're infected.
olalonde 4y ago
> He then attacks planned obsolescence as the dumbest outcrop of this process, Planned obsolescence is an economic myth. There is very little evidence that it actually exists in the real world, unless you are really willing to stretch the definition. It's just not possible to successfully pull it off in a competitive market.
- svachalek 4y ago
  I guess "selling things that will wear out soon even though it wouldn't be hard to make better ones that last way longer" is stretching the definition? Because that's everywhere.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    People aren't willing to pay more for things that last longer.
    - Arrath 4y ago
      Individuals are. I buy more expensive boots knowing they'll last longer. Communities like the BuyItForLife or the Frugral subreddits discuss products and durability. A large enough cohort of consumers to influence manufacturers aren't doing so, unfortunately.
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    There is no strong incentive for companies to make products that last longer than a certain period of time, so they put no effort into it. I think that's really what people are calling "planned obsolescence." I think "unplanned obsolescence" would be a more accurate term. I really doubt any companies have teams of engineers tasked specifically with reducing product longevity.
    - fhd2 4y ago
      Companies evolve whatever strategies work best to extract the highest amount of consumer dollars at the lowest cost. I also doubt most of them have specific goals to make their products worse, but brand power, walled gardens, monopolies and cartels let them get away with quite a few tricks that _end up_ making them worse.
Radim 4y ago
And the remedy (if you believe the status quo needs a remedy) is right in the closing sentence of the article: > The promoters want our attention more than our cash. Try to avoid mass media, minimize exposure to advertising, question externally imposed values. Our human status-seeking rat race is real, but individual degree of participation optional. (I say "optional" but it may be in the same category as "simply choose to stop shooting heroin", for some psychological profiles, I realize.) Even here on HN I see comments celebrating that culture of demand-generation driven innovations, apparently the staple of progress in our society. Without which value discovery would collapse overnight. As if inventing a car was on the same level as producing a bottle of Clooney's Casamigo. Which is what the OP is really about, it's a lengthy but fairly focused article.
mym1990 4y ago
Hasn't advertising been around since way before the 50s? But anyways, I think the capitalist society cannot keep churning unless there are new products/services being created regularly...the whole thing is like a house of cards. If production slow down, people lose jobs, no disposable income, consumption goes down, etc...
- bvirb 4y ago
  Yeah this is the argument I usually hear for why things are this way. You have to keep the guy in the factory slaving away making widgets so he can afford the Mercedes that the ad promised would make him happier so that the girl in the lab will slave away on the cure for cancer to pay for the widgets the guy in the factory made that the ad told her would make her happier. The above sure sounds sad to me, and I can imagine another system might be better for many people in many ways, but I think it's at least an argument worth acknowledging that there is still meaningful progress to be made, and economic growth might contribute to it.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
There are two kinds of advertising. One is a grocery store putting signs in the windows that say "Fresh cantaloupes, 99 cents". This was back when food was seasonal. People knew what cantaloupes were, but may have kind of forgotten about them, because it's been nearly a year since they could get them. So the store advertises that they have cantaloupes. This advertising just says "we have this thing". Now think of Coke and Pepsi ads from during the "cola wars" era, or beer ads from a wider era. It's all about cool people and beautiful women, and you're supposed to think that maybe you could be cool like that and have a girl like that if you drank that. It has nothing to do with the properties of what's being sold; it's all about image. The first kind of advertising is what you see when things are scarce; the second you see when things are abundant. I don't have a problem with the first kind of advertising.
planetsprite 4y ago
You'd have to be naïve to assume the standard of living in Western countries today is comparable to how it was in the 1950s.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I agree with you, but if you actually polled people on this issue you would perhaps be surprised how naive the US populace generally is.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  I think looking at a single metric is a mistake, though. Certainly, there was a lot more poverty, especially in areas where we've made giant strides, like elderly poverty. And we've made other huge strides in some areas of health, like reduction in smoking rates in the US. But, if I look at my parents, who were raised in "average" middle-class families in the US, there are many ways today's families' "standard of living" is worse, despite the fact that they can buy a lot more shit. 2 simple examples: 1. There is a ton more obesity today, and it has a disastrous effect on standard of living. 2. There is a ton more anxiety about maintaining a standard of living. My grandfather worked for "Ma Bell" for 47 years and raised 4 kids on that single salary. They ate dinner together as a family every night. Today your "average" middle-class family has both parents working and still with a constant undercurrent of economic anxiety. Look, I'm in no way arguing the 50s were some idyllic "Leave it to Beaver" utopia, but I am arguing that once you get to a "comfortable" middle class existence that focusing on "ability to buy more stuff" as the primary driver of "standard of living" is a mistake.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The '50s weren't when advertising was invented. They are, however, when planning laws were invented, artificially suppressing the housing supply and ensuring that as the population grows, a "comfortable" existence requires ever more struggle in order to be able to afford a place to live.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Regarding #1 it's because our cities have become hopelessly auto dependent. In the 50s, much of the US was still walkable and nutrition was less easily available. It was hard to see what car dependence would do to human well-being and scaling human cities, but the US is trying to fix these mistakes piecemeal. #2 was unique to the US. The rest of the world was either in shambles from colonialism or from WW2. Factories were destroyed and the US produced much of the world's manufacturing output. This temporarily gave a huge boost to American industry. As other countries recovered, competition became stiffer. Moreover the US labor market at the time was compromised almost completely of white men, so there was a lot less labor competition. The story was very different for others.
avgcorrection 4y ago
> This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad social sciences. Oh? What ideological indoctrination does it provide? > In it, he argues that, at the time of writing (late 50s), the industrialized West has largely solved what had previously been the main preoccupation of economics - improved standard of living. As evidence, Galbraith points to advertising. Oh right, taking the stated goals of an established field which has been central in the shaping of modern nation states at face value—its advertising. It’s not social science but I find the narrative of The Century of the Self to be convincing. It makes a lot more sense to sell things by way of manipulation than it does by just stating facts. But then you ask, why manipulate instead of just selling things that people more or less organically want? Because the economy has to grow. Into infinity. Is this a controversial point to make? And further, what is the current iteration of capitalism called? Consumer capitalism. It is not merely a culture of consumption since the system itself is built on consumption.
baxtr 4y ago
Interestingly enough you are spreading word about his work on social media to people (incl. myself) who have not heard about him. I wonder if that makes you an influencer.
fleddr 4y ago
Great take. A large section of our economy (say 50%) is supply driven, not demand driven. Just busy work.
ROTMetro 4y ago
When I did consulting landing gigs was mainly based on knowing tools others didn't. From frameworks to speedup the project to knowing of existing software that filled their need that others simply didn't know about. Tech wise one of the biggest drawbacks to no longer living in the Bay Area is that lack of exposure to what most consider the unimportant stuff. I used to go to all kinds of meetup style events and learned as much just from watching people work and seeing the tools they used and ways they used them I never thought of versus the main point of the meetup. That almost made the drive over 17 worth it. Better advertising would have killed that niche for me, instead it was left to the unaffordability of healthcare when you are self insured at have a family to do me in.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> The argument is simple: when important productivity improvements take place, say the invention of a new way of baking bread, they don't need advertising to gain mass use. I mean, to look at your example again, in the United States, where technology gets adopted the quickest, 99% of bread sold is utterly disgusting (and expensive) and would be illegal to sell in many countries. A $100-150 automated bread maker fixes this, and yet they do not have mass adoption. Everything is marketing driven.
- tjr225 4y ago
- nradov 4y ago
  While this might seem shocking to a Frenchman, many Americans (including me) just don't eat much bread.
- kelnos 4y ago
  The reason you like the bread that you eat in your country is because it's the bread that you grew up with. While there are certainly some breads in the US that I don't like (mostly the mediocre-quality mass-produced stuff[0]), the variety of good bread is pretty amazing. If you don't like it, that's fine, you do you. [0] Which is undoubtedly made by an automated bread maker, so I don't think using a machine "fixes" bread.
lupire 4y ago
So if someone invented the best thing since sliced bread, it wouldn't need advertising? https://wcsa.world/news/world-almanac-event-academy/wcsa-on-this-day-july-07-2018-sliced-bread-sold-for-the-first-time-by-the-chillicothe-baking-company-in-1928 https://wcsa.world/news/world-almanac-event-academy/wcsa-on-...
im_down_w_otp 4y ago
The last time I was at CES I went to one of the outer wings of the event where they had all the random booths of people shilling cheap backpacks, cheap cell phone cases, cheap Bluetooth speakers, etc. etc. etc. Every booth basically the same as the next and each one promoting what was definitely nothing more than near-future landfill filler. I remember having two really clear thoughts. 1) CES is mostly a megachurch dedicated to buying crap we don't need with money we don't have. 2) It's a special kind of existential debasing that goes into being a person who has to tend one of those booths and stand there pretending like your hot pink camouflage backpacks are so much better than the ones that look exactly like them in the booth next to yours. A lot of people get really excited to go to CES. I've had to go for work several times, and it always just makes me depressed.

mc32 4y ago

The critique of advertising rings some bells; however, planned obsolescence is not always a bad thing because the advances in new versions might outweigh the energy necessary to produce a better version. So something like a bread toaster probably suffers from planned obsolescence; LCDs (or generic display technology) likely benefit from planned obsolescence. Before Telecommunications deregulation everyone had pretty much the same telephone that was leased from the phone co. It was electromechanical with sizeable transformers and magnets in there. Compare that to the sets that were available after deregulation with miniaturized components. Basically it's not always cut and dried and there is nuance especially when it comes to energy efficiency. On the other hand, it's really annoying to buy kitchen appliances that are poorly manufactured.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago
> planned obsolescence is not always a bad thing To whom? We now have floating islands of plastic from obsolescent devices. That plastic blender I bought 3 years ago is now in the trash heap. My mother's blender she bought 40 years ago is still going. Obsolescence is terrible for the environment in the entire lifecycle of a product. In my opinion, obsolescence are rarely good for the society, never good for the customer. It is only good for the manufacturer. > Before Telecommunications deregulation everyone had pretty much the same telephone that was leased from the phone co. It was electromechanical with sizeable transformers and magnets in there. Compare that to the sets that were available after deregulation with miniaturized components. Just to be clear, are you suggesting that deregulation brought in the "not always bad" obsolescence? I know it brought innovation and customer choice, but can you unpack further how it brought obsolescence?
- eropple 4y ago
  > That plastic blender I bought 3 years ago is now in the trash heap. My mother's blender she bought 40 years ago is still going. Adjusted for purchasing power, how much did the former cost and how much did the latter cost?
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    The argument the poster is making isn’t that garbage implementations aren’t cheaper, it’s that their externalities are terrible.
    - feet 4y ago
      Unfortunately some people only seem to consider money as important, all else be damned
    - eropple 4y ago
      Of course--that's my point. Those externalities aren't priced in, which is a large part of the purchasing power change for consumer goods over the last couple decades. We can start with the cost of salvage and recycling being priced into COGS, amortized across expected lifetime (and refined as data comes in--make something good that lasts longer, get a refund against your up-front deposit as a manufacturer). Sorry, I should've been more explicit in my first post. My bad.

tinalumfoil 4y ago

If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses There was genuine skepticism over the horseless carriage when it was first becoming available. Vaccines wouldn't be in widespread today use if significant money and resources weren't spent convincing people of their safety. Lots and lot of useful technological innovations requires advertising before people were convinced to use them.

anxiously 4y ago
Fair enough, but there's a huge gap between vaccines and products like Raid Shadow Legends and Snuggies.
- wellareyousure 4y ago
  There is a tremendous amount of pharmaceutical advertising. I understand it's appealing, oh let's hate on the influencers. We DO see influencers advertise pharmaceuticals / health adjacent products, like with public health campaigns, that is a regulatory distinction and not a substantive one. When asked what was the one thing he wanted, Dr. Fauci said, 'Leonardo DiCaprio to encourage people to advocate for COVID measures.' They use ad inventory, they use ad techniques to reach their audience, they ARE ADS. Seemingly regulators have figured out a process for them. Video games are really interesting too. For some people, they are medicine! For some people, they substitute alcohol!
ctoth 4y ago
You know, I often see this faster horses thing quoted to point at how dumb consumers are. Wouldn't you agree, however, that a car which doesn't drive itself home after you've had a bit too many drinks at the local saloon is a downgrade? A car which doesn't graze its own food is a downgrade? A car which doesn't automatically make more cars is a downgrade? Perhaps if someone had figured out 'faster horses' sooner we wouldn't have literally millions of people dead from car crashes. Perhaps we wouldn't have an atomized society with little social interaction. It seems to me that once people know that something exists, which is possible through way more methods than the constant cognitive assault of our advertising-based culture, then they can do just fine at figuring out if the thing is useful to them. But yeah, keep gloating about how dumb people are for not just wanting a better version of what works.

tonymet 4y ago

this assumes humans are capable of understanding the value of things. They aren’t and values shift over time. advertising helps to inform and influence these changing values

mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Why do humans need advertising to understand the value of things? I'd agree with you if your statement was more along the lines of, "people may not know that widget X exists and solves their problem well." But that's wholly different from understanding the value of things.
- tonymet 4y ago
  People aren’t rational, they lack awareness, and even when they are aware of a new behavior they are hesitant to change behavior unless there are significant signals from media & peers that the new behavior will bring value . Besides all of this, the cognitive load of being aware of every possible new behavior, activity and product in the world would be overwhelming. I’m not advocating for more advertising (i live somewhat of an ascetic lifestyle myself), nor soft or hard paternalism. But assuming people will be able to discover and adopt high value behaviors without advertising (or other outside influence) is preposterous.

sublinear 4y ago

I agree with the general observation that "needs" are a more powerful means of making a sale. Advertising tends to focus on "wants". Yet, at the huge risk of getting downvoted into oblivion isn't rejecting "wants" as a legitimate source of growth a bit Marxist? If the economy only served needs and not wants we would be living in a very bleak and oppressive world.

pphysch 4y ago

I strongly disagree with Galbraith's argument essentially about "the end of quality". We did not reach an absolute zenith of product quality in the 50s. What did change was the coverage of mass media. Instead of relying on long and expensive genuine user feedback loops to generate positive buzz around a product, advertising manufactures that buzz directly. This is why is it everywhere, and influencers are just the latest innovation. Not because product quality/QoL reached a high point.

jason-phillips 4y ago
> I strongly disagree with Galbraith's argument essentially about "the end of quality". We did not reach a zenith of product quality in the 50s. As someone who actively seeks tools, furniture and other consumer products from that period, I tend to disagree. Let's take furniture. Mine was made during this period by Stickley in New York state. One cannot find commensurate quality today unless you wish to commission handmade pieces. We have devolved to the point of disposable $5 extruded-plastic chairs, which may provide service for a time, knowing full well that the inevitable trip to the landfill is just around the corner. I reckon we're a ways past said zenith.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Yes, plastics hadn't been invented yet and there were still enough forests around to deforest that furniture could economically be made out of large chunks of solid wood. Nowadays, forestry requirements in most developed countries have (understandably) become tighter and it makes more sense to use less wood to make engineered wood products to build furniture than solid wood. Engineered wood products last a long time but still less than solid wood. Also, when new, a lot of old furniture was quite expensive and families would save up for pieces. We get the benefit of that being used and transmitted now (though obviously particularly striking pieces will not have a reduction in value.) While I certainly appreciate older, sturdy furniture (especially solid wood furniture as someone with some cabinetry background), I prefer modern lightweight materials, even if they last less long. They still last most of my lifetime which is enough for me. Marketing is not the issue, sustainable materials usage is.
- 4y ago

syrrim 4y ago

There was a commentary somewhere that while someone in france had discovered the cure to smallpox in the form of variolation, the king of france was dying of it. The reason he died was not because no cure existed, but because his doctors weren't aware of it and thus didn't know to apply it. The spread of knowledge is not magical. It will happen over time, but in that time knowledge will be lost. Variations of variolation have been used for thousands of years, but smallpox was only eradicated after galbraith wrote his book. The application of capital to the spread of useful knowledge can still happen even when the knowledge ought to be obvious and important to everyone that encounters it.

bamboozled 4y ago
Wouldn’t it be better to “push” or “advertise” these things science and medical journals though ? That’s what I’m assuming they’re for. So it’s not advertising rather journalism which is required.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Similar thesis with Goodburn, Klien, Rumpfhuber Till - "The Design of Scarcity". A short, kooky but enjoyable read.
throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
Sure but do we need a push or pull based model. Ads are pushed into our attention. Google searches and "research" are pull based. If you solve the pull based model the king's doctor just looks it up, discovers something exists, and obtains the treatment. Recommendations are similar to ads in this regard as well. Maybe blurring the lines between the two depending on how the algo is designed. I'd personally be in favor of recommendation type approaches with combinations of human curation, and an adjustable spectrum of push/pull based results; and the ability to swap between these on a whim as needed.
- muffinman26 4y ago
  I'd argue that you definitely need a push-based model for preventative measures: vaccines, smoke detectors, Personal Protective Equipment to reduce the spread of disease. If you don't know how serious a danger is, you won't start doing research on it until it actually occurs, at which point it is too late. It doesn't do much good to remind someone they need to have smoke detectors and check them regularly after the house burns down, or that a vaccine is available after they're infected.

olalonde 4y ago

> He then attacks planned obsolescence as the dumbest outcrop of this process, Planned obsolescence is an economic myth. There is very little evidence that it actually exists in the real world, unless you are really willing to stretch the definition. It's just not possible to successfully pull it off in a competitive market.

svachalek 4y ago
I guess "selling things that will wear out soon even though it wouldn't be hard to make better ones that last way longer" is stretching the definition? Because that's everywhere.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  People aren't willing to pay more for things that last longer.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    Individuals are. I buy more expensive boots knowing they'll last longer. Communities like the BuyItForLife or the Frugral subreddits discuss products and durability. A large enough cohort of consumers to influence manufacturers aren't doing so, unfortunately.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  There is no strong incentive for companies to make products that last longer than a certain period of time, so they put no effort into it. I think that's really what people are calling "planned obsolescence." I think "unplanned obsolescence" would be a more accurate term. I really doubt any companies have teams of engineers tasked specifically with reducing product longevity.
  - fhd2 4y ago
    Companies evolve whatever strategies work best to extract the highest amount of consumer dollars at the lowest cost. I also doubt most of them have specific goals to make their products worse, but brand power, walled gardens, monopolies and cartels let them get away with quite a few tricks that _end up_ making them worse.

Radim 4y ago

And the remedy (if you believe the status quo needs a remedy) is right in the closing sentence of the article: > The promoters want our attention more than our cash. Try to avoid mass media, minimize exposure to advertising, question externally imposed values. Our human status-seeking rat race is real, but individual degree of participation optional. (I say "optional" but it may be in the same category as "simply choose to stop shooting heroin", for some psychological profiles, I realize.) Even here on HN I see comments celebrating that culture of demand-generation driven innovations, apparently the staple of progress in our society. Without which value discovery would collapse overnight. As if inventing a car was on the same level as producing a bottle of Clooney's Casamigo. Which is what the OP is really about, it's a lengthy but fairly focused article.

mym1990 4y ago

Hasn't advertising been around since way before the 50s? But anyways, I think the capitalist society cannot keep churning unless there are new products/services being created regularly...the whole thing is like a house of cards. If production slow down, people lose jobs, no disposable income, consumption goes down, etc...

bvirb 4y ago
Yeah this is the argument I usually hear for why things are this way. You have to keep the guy in the factory slaving away making widgets so he can afford the Mercedes that the ad promised would make him happier so that the girl in the lab will slave away on the cure for cancer to pay for the widgets the guy in the factory made that the ad told her would make her happier. The above sure sounds sad to me, and I can imagine another system might be better for many people in many ways, but I think it's at least an argument worth acknowledging that there is still meaningful progress to be made, and economic growth might contribute to it.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

There are two kinds of advertising. One is a grocery store putting signs in the windows that say "Fresh cantaloupes, 99 cents". This was back when food was seasonal. People knew what cantaloupes were, but may have kind of forgotten about them, because it's been nearly a year since they could get them. So the store advertises that they have cantaloupes. This advertising just says "we have this thing". Now think of Coke and Pepsi ads from during the "cola wars" era, or beer ads from a wider era. It's all about cool people and beautiful women, and you're supposed to think that maybe you could be cool like that and have a girl like that if you drank that. It has nothing to do with the properties of what's being sold; it's all about image. The first kind of advertising is what you see when things are scarce; the second you see when things are abundant. I don't have a problem with the first kind of advertising.

planetsprite 4y ago

You'd have to be naïve to assume the standard of living in Western countries today is comparable to how it was in the 1950s.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I agree with you, but if you actually polled people on this issue you would perhaps be surprised how naive the US populace generally is.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I think looking at a single metric is a mistake, though. Certainly, there was a lot more poverty, especially in areas where we've made giant strides, like elderly poverty. And we've made other huge strides in some areas of health, like reduction in smoking rates in the US. But, if I look at my parents, who were raised in "average" middle-class families in the US, there are many ways today's families' "standard of living" is worse, despite the fact that they can buy a lot more shit. 2 simple examples: 1. There is a ton more obesity today, and it has a disastrous effect on standard of living. 2. There is a ton more anxiety about maintaining a standard of living. My grandfather worked for "Ma Bell" for 47 years and raised 4 kids on that single salary. They ate dinner together as a family every night. Today your "average" middle-class family has both parents working and still with a constant undercurrent of economic anxiety. Look, I'm in no way arguing the 50s were some idyllic "Leave it to Beaver" utopia, but I am arguing that once you get to a "comfortable" middle class existence that focusing on "ability to buy more stuff" as the primary driver of "standard of living" is a mistake.
- lmm 4y ago
  The '50s weren't when advertising was invented. They are, however, when planning laws were invented, artificially suppressing the housing supply and ensuring that as the population grows, a "comfortable" existence requires ever more struggle in order to be able to afford a place to live.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Regarding #1 it's because our cities have become hopelessly auto dependent. In the 50s, much of the US was still walkable and nutrition was less easily available. It was hard to see what car dependence would do to human well-being and scaling human cities, but the US is trying to fix these mistakes piecemeal. #2 was unique to the US. The rest of the world was either in shambles from colonialism or from WW2. Factories were destroyed and the US produced much of the world's manufacturing output. This temporarily gave a huge boost to American industry. As other countries recovered, competition became stiffer. Moreover the US labor market at the time was compromised almost completely of white men, so there was a lot less labor competition. The story was very different for others.

avgcorrection 4y ago

> This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad social sciences. Oh? What ideological indoctrination does it provide? > In it, he argues that, at the time of writing (late 50s), the industrialized West has largely solved what had previously been the main preoccupation of economics - improved standard of living. As evidence, Galbraith points to advertising. Oh right, taking the stated goals of an established field which has been central in the shaping of modern nation states at face value—its advertising. It’s not social science but I find the narrative of The Century of the Self to be convincing. It makes a lot more sense to sell things by way of manipulation than it does by just stating facts. But then you ask, why manipulate instead of just selling things that people more or less organically want? Because the economy has to grow. Into infinity. Is this a controversial point to make? And further, what is the current iteration of capitalism called? Consumer capitalism. It is not merely a culture of consumption since the system itself is built on consumption.

baxtr 4y ago

Interestingly enough you are spreading word about his work on social media to people (incl. myself) who have not heard about him. I wonder if that makes you an influencer.

fleddr 4y ago

Great take. A large section of our economy (say 50%) is supply driven, not demand driven. Just busy work.

ROTMetro 4y ago

When I did consulting landing gigs was mainly based on knowing tools others didn't. From frameworks to speedup the project to knowing of existing software that filled their need that others simply didn't know about. Tech wise one of the biggest drawbacks to no longer living in the Bay Area is that lack of exposure to what most consider the unimportant stuff. I used to go to all kinds of meetup style events and learned as much just from watching people work and seeing the tools they used and ways they used them I never thought of versus the main point of the meetup. That almost made the drive over 17 worth it. Better advertising would have killed that niche for me, instead it was left to the unaffordability of healthcare when you are self insured at have a family to do me in.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> The argument is simple: when important productivity improvements take place, say the invention of a new way of baking bread, they don't need advertising to gain mass use. I mean, to look at your example again, in the United States, where technology gets adopted the quickest, 99% of bread sold is utterly disgusting (and expensive) and would be illegal to sell in many countries. A $100-150 automated bread maker fixes this, and yet they do not have mass adoption. Everything is marketing driven.

tjr225 4y ago
nradov 4y ago
While this might seem shocking to a Frenchman, many Americans (including me) just don't eat much bread.
kelnos 4y ago
The reason you like the bread that you eat in your country is because it's the bread that you grew up with. While there are certainly some breads in the US that I don't like (mostly the mediocre-quality mass-produced stuff[0]), the variety of good bread is pretty amazing. If you don't like it, that's fine, you do you. [0] Which is undoubtedly made by an automated bread maker, so I don't think using a machine "fixes" bread.

lupire 4y ago

So if someone invented the best thing since sliced bread, it wouldn't need advertising? https://wcsa.world/news/world-almanac-event-academy/wcsa-on-this-day-july-07-2018-sliced-bread-sold-for-the-first-time-by-the-chillicothe-baking-company-in-1928 https://wcsa.world/news/world-almanac-event-academy/wcsa-on-...

im_down_w_otp 4y ago

The last time I was at CES I went to one of the outer wings of the event where they had all the random booths of people shilling cheap backpacks, cheap cell phone cases, cheap Bluetooth speakers, etc. etc. etc. Every booth basically the same as the next and each one promoting what was definitely nothing more than near-future landfill filler. I remember having two really clear thoughts. 1) CES is mostly a megachurch dedicated to buying crap we don't need with money we don't have. 2) It's a special kind of existential debasing that goes into being a person who has to tend one of those booths and stand there pretending like your hot pink camouflage backpacks are so much better than the ones that look exactly like them in the booth next to yours. A lot of people get really excited to go to CES. I've had to go for work several times, and it always just makes me depressed.