Comment by sssilver
1 day ago
Am I right that the only truly systemic solution to the problem of ads is government regulation, with communism as its final degree?
1 day ago
Am I right that the only truly systemic solution to the problem of ads is government regulation, with communism as its final degree?
Something I believe but have no evidence for, and reality is continuing to, bafflingly, defy my expectations:
Ads are basically zero-sum in the sense that they mostly take customers that need something, and shift them to the brand that is advertised, instead of the one they would have heard of naturally (now, there is some element of ads actually increasing demand, but as people are quite cash-strapped or in debt nowadays, I guess it can only function up to some limit). Companies that advertise are engaging in an ever-increasing (more sophisticated, technical, and more expensive) competition to capture some allocation of this demand. Because we’re burning an increasing amount of money in a zero-sum competition, eventually the ecosystem must collapse under its own weight.
We can sort of see this, I think, in people becoming increasingly grumpy about how expensive everything is. But the system is very circuitous, so we misallocate blame all over the place.
Trying to regulate ads—I dunno, it seems hard to regulate without stepping on free-speech toes (US perspective, ymmv in other countries). I would rather regulate the collection of data, which doesn’t seem to be particularly protected in any sense other than that private entities can mostly just do whatever by default (it seems functionally similar to the sort of stuff that the 4’th amendment was intended to protect us against, except it is done by Facebook and Google so they get away with it) (but to be explicit, I think it is probably legal at the moment for companies to run vast surveillance networks, we need new laws).
Marx actually had stuff to say here.
He expected the end state of capitalism to be business owners just constantly fighting the markets to stay still. On the one hand, they'd be constantly trying to figure out how to make sure they were paying bottom prices for goods and services on which they relied, and on the other they'd constantly be fighting to try and sell in a saturated market. Eventually, collapse would ensue.
This was one of the foundations for his thinking.
He couldn't have predicted information technology, or ad tech, but the premise seems to hold up.
Of course, where he ended up was workers owning the means of production and every business basically being a "lifestyle business", with no need - or ability - to scale. This, as you know, became corrupted into government ownership, central planning of the economy, and all the other nightmares of a non-free market.
The ideal state - and I think this is where Marx would have wanted it - is that you might not have had a gazillion milk brands all screaming for attention (and the consumer ultimately paying for that, as it being priced into the amount they pay), but there being a free market of worked-owned businesses.
Or let all browsers track users, sell the info, shows ads over web sites, and so on. While blocking on page ads.
The market for ads shown on web pages and user info tracked by pages will crash, so companies will have to find more direct ways to make money again.
Why would communism be the end of the spectrum?
I actually don’t understand the thinking process behind that inevitability.
Mind to elaborate?
Because when you're the sole owner and provider of goods, advertisement loses all meaning.
I grew up in the Soviet Union. There was one type of milk on the shelf, it was called "Milk", and I don't remember the label saying anything else.
Compare with "HORIZON ORGANIC DHA Omega-3 Supports the Brain Health organic Whole Milk" dressed in bright red and contrasting yellow, with typography that begs "please look at me, I'm the better option".
> There was one type of milk on the shelf, it was called "Milk"
I love this. And for me - as a 40 year old western european - it's so unthinkable, so unreal. I usually don't look at the milk packaging at home, but I remember reading on the packaging all kinds of stupid sh!te like names of the farmers where the cow grazes (which might be true, but I guess it's b0ll0cks) with some feel-good illustrations, all kinds of childish texts on the packaging as well. It's just 'milk', I don't need a fake story around how good your milk selling company is.
Maybe your soviet milk was unhealthy or not tasteful, I don't know. Maybe it's just the same kind of milk we have here. My milk is pretty good, but jeezz... that marketing on the packaging over here.
1 reply →
Yeah but dropping advertising (or regulating it) does not necessarily imply a monopoly in terms of who provides what.
That what I wanted to understand. I understand the other way around, that a socialist panned economy with monopolies in terms of who produces what is shit. And leads to advertising not being necessary. But the other way round is what still trips me off and what I am still not able to wrap my head around.
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You sound like a 20th-century cigarette company representative using the fear of communism to keep the US government from restricting cigarette ads.
Edit: Now, I don't know if an ad exec actually said it, but I can find examples like:
> (2015) "Smoking ban is slippery slope toward communism" - https://eu.statesmanjournal.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/0...
> (1948) "Rep Flannagan told the House of Representatives that tobacco will also help in stopping communism." - https://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/tobac6.html
> (2007) "Smoking bans are an act of Communist aggression. " https://www.mesabitribune.com/news/smoking-bans-are-acts-of-...
More to the original point, Bern banned some outdoor advertising last year (!). https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-news/bern-approves-... says "SVP councillor Alexander Feuz was the most strident [opponent], calling the change a “step towards Stone Age communism.”"
Looks like São Paolo has a widespread advertising ban since 2006(!!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
Bern and São Paolo don't seem all that communist.
DPRK has been described as ad block for your life, but even under communism to have a consumer economy a limited number of regulated ads can be useful so ppl know products exist, but not this brand combat to the death oversaturation.
I would say communism is the final degree of "government as provider" not of "government as regulator". The final degree of regulation could be any variety of authoritarianism.
Much better to have capitalism replace political tyranny with economic tyranny. Where survival depends on serving someone else's profit with the requirement their margin grows every year.
When markets control basic needs, capitalism becomes its own form of authoritarianism that forces everyone to self comply. But it's freedom because they voluntarily choose to not starve to death/be homeless.
It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.
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