Comment by amelius
17 days ago
> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.
Don't you see the problem with that statement? Ads are profitable, and we are paying for them, indirectly, through buying products and services. Adtech takes a chunk of that profit. Therefore, we pay more than we should!
So you are paying more than you should for a loaf of bread because your local shop is making a profit? because if you went to the factory you could buy the same loaf for less? Of course you could make the bread yourself for even less because the factory is making a profit, and grow the wheat yourself for even less because the farmer is making a profit.
You are not 'paying more than you should'. Not least because there is no price you 'should' be paying. Further I'm not sure how you imagine this working? The retailer gets to decide prices or not? They get to decide if they advertise or not? The advertiser's have competition? The retailers? Retailers are presumably choosing to advertise because they think it's worth it, thus it is? You are free to choose to buy those products, that will feed into their decision whether and how to advertise.
That's a fallacy like the broken window fallacy.
In no way is the consumer helped here, in the end.
To make things worse, the consumer is nudged into buying more stuff and thus contributing to global overconsumption.
I'm not saying the consumer is helped.
I'm saying that all businesses aim to make money, so the fact that this one is doesn't make it morally wrong.
Further you've ascribed some price we 'should' be paying. There's no such thing, and you can't even say that prices would be lower without it. Tobacco companies haven't lowered prices in countries where advertising is banned.
>To make things worse, the consumer is nudged into buying more stuff and thus contributing to global overconsumption
A. Surely the consumer would have bought something else? Although gambling advertising is popular...
B. You are now contradicting yourself. You made the claim that advertising was essentially an economic dead weight. Now you're saying it contributes to over consumption. If advertising only puts up prices, that means we can buy less things than we would be able to.
C. This is assuming only bad things are advertised.
In summary. You're trying to make a quasi economic argument against advertising that isn't really correct. I have my own issues with advertising, so I'm not particularly defending it. But that doesn't excuse making up an argument that doesn't make much sense.
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The point of ads is generally to tempt you to make purchases where the alternative is having nothing. So the comparison I think is more like grocery stores putting junk food right in the checkout to try and have you buy some on impulse?
I'm pushing back against the argument that the advertiser make money, ergo we are paying more than we 'should'.
That's how businesses work. The shop makes money when you buy things, so surely the same argument should apply. Except it doesn't, because that is an acceptable business, so the argument isn't really an argument.
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Are you equating the shopkeeper across the street earning 15 an hour to sell me my loaf of bread to the advertisement industrial complex?
Why are we appealing to emotion?
Why a shopkeeper on 15 and hour and not Walmart?
Why the advertising industrial complex and not some small 1 man advertising firm?