5 ms·

Finance funds hospitals and cancer research institutes - or at least, it enables the gathering and concentrating of resources to do so. Now, advertising...

rwmj 11mo ago
Some finance is needed and beneficial. The ability to form corporations and raise money through the stock market enhances many other fields of endeavour. But this can go too far. In London during 2000-2008, finance consumed every spare IT worker, as well as mathematicians and physicists. Salaries were far higher working for a bank than working in any other IT-related industry or start-up. Did this produce great works? Is London now better off because of this? In a word, no.
- nospice 11mo ago
  The problem I have with these arguments is that they're awfully close to the anti-tourism arguments you hear in tourist towns such as Tahoe. You have this influx of visitors and money, and there's a considerable number of residents who see it as uniformly negative: congestion, high property prices, and so on. Imagine what it could've been without all these rich tech bros! But then, the US is full of picturesque small towns where the original heavy industry (logging, copper mine, steel mill) disappeared and tourism did not fill the gap. And all the young people moved out in search of better opportunities, except for the ones addicted to meth. There's no money, no jobs, no hope. Every socioeconomic shift has downsides, but it doesn't automatically mean that the alternative is better. Broad economic gains tend to lift all boats because money changes hands.
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    It also doesn’t mean the alternative is worse. Nothing says such a shift had to be overall good.
  - rwmj 11mo ago
    In the case of London, it was misallocation, not an influx of anything. It would have been better if the programmers had been founding start up companies, and the physicists had been researching science, instead of working for banks.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  What’s your basis for concluding “no”? London is a very desirable place to live.
yunyu 11mo ago
Advertising enables innovation-producing firms to drive awareness of their services in a cost effective manner, and for less informed consumers to understand what is available on the market. Your typical physician might not be fully caught up on what is the state of the art in arthritis treatments, but advertising enables this to happen.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  The only way this should happen is if it’s a fake arthritis treatment meant to detect doctors who learn about treatments from advertising instead of legitimate sources, so they can be prevented from practicing medicine.
  - yunyu 11mo ago
    What are legitimate sources in your definition? Should physicians be expected to spend all their free time reading every single study in every medical journal or conference, even for niche areas that they don't usually encounter? Should the average diabetic/arthritic patient need to obsessively pore over academic reports to stay informed about their condition? Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? This is an extremely ill informed line of reasoning.
    - wat10000 11mo ago
      I don’t know what counts as legitimate sources. I’ll let the professionals figure that one out. > Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? It baffles me that you apparently think this is some kind of zinger. Yes!
      - yunyu 11mo ago
        Got it. So you want attention to be controlled by the whims of academic/government/publishing bureaucrats or black-box ranking algorithms who are the arbitrators of legitimacy. I can't say I agree with that opinion, but different strokes for different folks.

rwmj 11mo ago

Some finance is needed and beneficial. The ability to form corporations and raise money through the stock market enhances many other fields of endeavour. But this can go too far. In London during 2000-2008, finance consumed every spare IT worker, as well as mathematicians and physicists. Salaries were far higher working for a bank than working in any other IT-related industry or start-up. Did this produce great works? Is London now better off because of this? In a word, no.

nospice 11mo ago
The problem I have with these arguments is that they're awfully close to the anti-tourism arguments you hear in tourist towns such as Tahoe. You have this influx of visitors and money, and there's a considerable number of residents who see it as uniformly negative: congestion, high property prices, and so on. Imagine what it could've been without all these rich tech bros! But then, the US is full of picturesque small towns where the original heavy industry (logging, copper mine, steel mill) disappeared and tourism did not fill the gap. And all the young people moved out in search of better opportunities, except for the ones addicted to meth. There's no money, no jobs, no hope. Every socioeconomic shift has downsides, but it doesn't automatically mean that the alternative is better. Broad economic gains tend to lift all boats because money changes hands.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  It also doesn’t mean the alternative is worse. Nothing says such a shift had to be overall good.
- rwmj 11mo ago
  In the case of London, it was misallocation, not an influx of anything. It would have been better if the programmers had been founding start up companies, and the physicists had been researching science, instead of working for banks.
jimbokun 11mo ago
What’s your basis for concluding “no”? London is a very desirable place to live.

yunyu 11mo ago

Advertising enables innovation-producing firms to drive awareness of their services in a cost effective manner, and for less informed consumers to understand what is available on the market. Your typical physician might not be fully caught up on what is the state of the art in arthritis treatments, but advertising enables this to happen.

wat10000 11mo ago
The only way this should happen is if it’s a fake arthritis treatment meant to detect doctors who learn about treatments from advertising instead of legitimate sources, so they can be prevented from practicing medicine.
- yunyu 11mo ago
  What are legitimate sources in your definition? Should physicians be expected to spend all their free time reading every single study in every medical journal or conference, even for niche areas that they don't usually encounter? Should the average diabetic/arthritic patient need to obsessively pore over academic reports to stay informed about their condition? Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? This is an extremely ill informed line of reasoning.
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    I don’t know what counts as legitimate sources. I’ll let the professionals figure that one out. > Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? It baffles me that you apparently think this is some kind of zinger. Yes!
    - yunyu 11mo ago
      Got it. So you want attention to be controlled by the whims of academic/government/publishing bureaucrats or black-box ranking algorithms who are the arbitrators of legitimacy. I can't say I agree with that opinion, but different strokes for different folks.