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I wish economics and entrepreneurship, the lifeblood of the modern world, were mandatory subjects in school. It's more important to understand how democracies,

I wish economics and entrepreneurship, the lifeblood of the modern world, were mandatory subjects in school. It's more important to understand how democracies, governments, and business work than to understand long division. The reality is we need advertising to enable discoverability. No advertising = no new businesses = back to medieval, pre-growth times. If you like earning a living and ensuring your physical safety using your mind rather than physical bulk, you need to understand that this is only possible in an economy that is partially idea-based. How can this work if ideas and information aren't allowed to spread? How can new ideas and new information enter the fray if things like advertising is banned?

hkt 3y ago
No advertising = no new businesses = back to medieval, pre-growth times. That is a little bit absurd. Maybe the person you're talking about is on to something. Why not ban advertising? We could just list products and services in directories as is done with small business. It'd let startups compete more effectively by placing them next to the offerings of behemoths, with no presentational difference between the two. It'd be an amazing leveller between capital intensive enterprises and the rest. (That's also probably why it won't happen)
- FredPret 3y ago
  Why not ban utopian authoritarians? We could simply list each plan for how society must function along with it's cost in taxes and then pick which plan we'd like to pay for / obey. Or we could do away with the sinister notion that there is someone with the natural authority to ban things like this.
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    >Why not ban utopian authoritarians? Because we can’t ban everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t earnestly try. It’s not a viable option, but the lesson must be relearned every generation or so. It’s always self-nullifying. People want safety, but need freedom.
  - hkt 3y ago
    I mean, given that property as it exists in the modern world is a legal fiction allowing the few to extract from the many, do we not already live in a world of sinister authoritarians?
katbyte 3y ago
> The reality is we need advertising to enable discoverability no we don't. i live a near advertisement free life, and its great. no radio or tv, block all internet ads. the one ads i see are the ones in the physical world like billboards. never once has an ad been the reason i "discovered" something, and i discover all sorts of new products/services naturally in my life. if anything ads make actually make it so hard because they never can be trusted, often full of lies, and wading through all that to find the truth can be hard and is often why i don't actually go out and buy a new product cataogry.
RugnirViking 3y ago
> I wish economics and entrepreneurship, the lifeblood of the modern world, were mandatory subjects in school. I've taken both. maybe MAYBE 1% of the ads I see on any given day are for discoverability. But lets be real tracking cookies aren't there to figure out if you already know about a service. Advertising isn't about discoverability. > How can new ideas and new information enter the fray if things like advertising is banned? You're asking "if people can't pay to force other people to see things, how would anyone ever find anything?" The answer is that most "finding" is done because someone wants something, not because they are made to want it. When someone wants something, they usually start by looking for where that thing is. There are numerous resources for achieving this outside of advertisements. Of course companies will optimise these avenues, the old call-your-company-acme-to-be-at-front-of-phone-book or whatever. That's fine, so long as they aren't paying to put stuff in places other than where im literally searching for the service they offer. In other news, this amazingly staggerly large buisness, literally the biggest economy sector in the world, is laughably ineffective. Ask most people about the companies in any given sector and they can name only one or two.

hkt 3y ago

No advertising = no new businesses = back to medieval, pre-growth times. That is a little bit absurd. Maybe the person you're talking about is on to something. Why not ban advertising? We could just list products and services in directories as is done with small business. It'd let startups compete more effectively by placing them next to the offerings of behemoths, with no presentational difference between the two. It'd be an amazing leveller between capital intensive enterprises and the rest. (That's also probably why it won't happen)

FredPret 3y ago
Why not ban utopian authoritarians? We could simply list each plan for how society must function along with it's cost in taxes and then pick which plan we'd like to pay for / obey. Or we could do away with the sinister notion that there is someone with the natural authority to ban things like this.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  >Why not ban utopian authoritarians? Because we can’t ban everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t earnestly try. It’s not a viable option, but the lesson must be relearned every generation or so. It’s always self-nullifying. People want safety, but need freedom.
- hkt 3y ago
  I mean, given that property as it exists in the modern world is a legal fiction allowing the few to extract from the many, do we not already live in a world of sinister authoritarians?

katbyte 3y ago

> The reality is we need advertising to enable discoverability no we don't. i live a near advertisement free life, and its great. no radio or tv, block all internet ads. the one ads i see are the ones in the physical world like billboards. never once has an ad been the reason i "discovered" something, and i discover all sorts of new products/services naturally in my life. if anything ads make actually make it so hard because they never can be trusted, often full of lies, and wading through all that to find the truth can be hard and is often why i don't actually go out and buy a new product cataogry.

RugnirViking 3y ago

> I wish economics and entrepreneurship, the lifeblood of the modern world, were mandatory subjects in school. I've taken both. maybe MAYBE 1% of the ads I see on any given day are for discoverability. But lets be real tracking cookies aren't there to figure out if you already know about a service. Advertising isn't about discoverability. > How can new ideas and new information enter the fray if things like advertising is banned? You're asking "if people can't pay to force other people to see things, how would anyone ever find anything?" The answer is that most "finding" is done because someone wants something, not because they are made to want it. When someone wants something, they usually start by looking for where that thing is. There are numerous resources for achieving this outside of advertisements. Of course companies will optimise these avenues, the old call-your-company-acme-to-be-at-front-of-phone-book or whatever. That's fine, so long as they aren't paying to put stuff in places other than where im literally searching for the service they offer. In other news, this amazingly staggerly large buisness, literally the biggest economy sector in the world, is laughably ineffective. Ask most people about the companies in any given sector and they can name only one or two.