EPTThe utter vanity in decrying advertising as capitalism's nefarious brother. It's intellectuals presuming to know better than the rest of us what products we want or need. God save us from these moral busybodies.
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
The utter vanity in decrying advertising as capitalism's nefarious brother. It's intellectuals presuming to know better than the rest of us what products we want or need. God save us from these moral busybodies. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On September 13 2013 05:48 sc2superfan101 wrote: Indeed. Which is why bitching about the propagation of "useless things" in the capitalist system is, ironically, a complete waste of time and resources. not sure if you're continuing the irony or just not getting it in the first place. for clarification i wasn't serious. the "grand scheme of things" is just used arbitrarily anyways. | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On September 13 2013 04:57 JonnyBNoHo wrote: TV advertising exists as a means to convey information and increase efficiency. Advertising is tool to convey information. Quality of that information is completely different matter. Lie is also an information. And the efficiency (using economical definition of it) of that system is not as useful measure as you want it to present, because the whole proposition of advertising increasing efficiency being a good thing is based on the "assumption" that exhibited/observed preference is equal to internal preference of a person. You can hold such a belief and many do, but modern biology/psychology seems to disagree with such a simplistic view of reality. So you are technically correct, but that does not imply that advertising (as it is currently done) is in any way good for society or necessary for functioning market. It does not show that market without current style of advertising would work in any way worse. And by worse I do not mean efficiency-wise, but that the society would be worse off. How you define if the society is better/worse off is up for discussion, but efficiency of the market is not one of the attributes that people would agree to use. If there are some results that actually point out how presence of current style of advertising is better for consumers I would be glad to see it (that is not me saying that there are none, but I would really be interested in such results, be it empirical or mathematical). And it can "assume" the observed and internal preference equality, it would still be interesting to see if the advertising has any appreciable positive influence on the quality/price of the product. | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On September 13 2013 05:18 JonnyBNoHo wrote: That's flat out stupid. People can and do enjoy things they've been convinced to participate in. If a teacher has to convince a student to read a book the book must really be bad. Otherwise the student would have already read it, right? I am not really agreeing with him, but there are different methods of convincing. Some use reasoning and very little pressure and "trickery". Others use every possible trick to misuse our evolutionary baggage to convince us, mostly temporarily, of its value. You can take a stance I pointed out in my previous post and say if he bought it, he actually wanted it, but that stance simplifies reality of our minds/brains and thus misses a lot of real phenomena and is just not a good description of reality. | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On September 13 2013 06:44 mcc wrote: Advertising is tool to convey information. Quality of that information is completely different matter. Lie is also an information. And the efficiency (using economical definition of it) of that system is not as useful measure as you want it to present, because the whole proposition of advertising increasing efficiency being a good thing is based on the "assumption" that exhibited/observed preference is equal to internal preference of a person. You can hold such a belief and many do, but modern biology/psychology seems to disagree with such a simplistic view of reality. So you are technically correct, but that does not imply that advertising (as it is currently done) is in any way good for society or necessary for functioning market. It does not show that market without current style of advertising would work in any way worse. And by worse I do not mean efficiency-wise, but that the society would be worse off. How you define if the society is better/worse off is up for discussion, but efficiency of the market is not one of the attributes that people would agree to use. If there are some results that actually point out how presence of current style of advertising is better for consumers I would be glad to see it (that is not me saying that there are none, but I would really be interested in such results, be it empirical or mathematical). And it can "assume" the observed and internal preference equality, it would still be interesting to see if the advertising has any appreciable positive influence on the quality/price of the product. Advertisement entices people to spend money that is not being used (i.e. not being lent as credit nor being spent). In an economy of consumption, like our own, velocity of money is a great driving force of growth. At any one time, some fraction of the economy's income is dependent on the remaining fraction's spending. If the spending has slowed, income slows, and the economy shrinks. Advertising, whether with exaggerations (note: not outright lies) or not, helps the spending side both directly through expanding the economy and indirectly by enticing the audience to keep spending their income. Of course, you can argue that people will spend their money inefficiently when faced with pressure from advertising, but as the money changes hands, it will eventually end up back in the hands of the inefficient purchaser. If it's truly inefficient, they will adjust their behavior. If it takes too long for this to take place, there are fewer chances for the purchaser to find more efficient uses for their money. In the case that it isn't maximally efficient, then there is an argument for public intervention on the scale to which the maximally efficient use outperforms the norm. On September 13 2013 06:53 mcc wrote: I am not really agreeing with him, but there are different methods of convincing. Some use reasoning and very little pressure and "trickery". Others use every possible trick to misuse our evolutionary baggage to convince us, mostly temporarily, of its value. You can take a stance I pointed out in my previous post and say if he bought it, he actually wanted it, but that stance simplifies reality of our minds/brains and thus misses a lot of real phenomena and is just not a good description of reality. Yea, except for the part where people can be compelled through trickery and yet legitimately be better off. We should have all had the experience to know that people often don't know what they want, to an almost comical degree. Sometimes it takes some mirrors and hand-waving to overcome biases put into place by bad experiences or a misplaced perception about some product. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 13 2013 06:44 mcc wrote: Advertising is tool to convey information. Quality of that information is completely different matter. Lie is also an information. And the efficiency (using economical definition of it) of that system is not as useful measure as you want it to present, because the whole proposition of advertising increasing efficiency being a good thing is based on the "assumption" that exhibited/observed preference is equal to internal preference of a person. You can hold such a belief and many do, but modern biology/psychology seems to disagree with such a simplistic view of reality. So you are technically correct, but that does not imply that advertising (as it is currently done) is in any way good for society or necessary for functioning market. It does not show that market without current style of advertising would work in any way worse. And by worse I do not mean efficiency-wise, but that the society would be worse off. How you define if the society is better/worse off is up for discussion, but efficiency of the market is not one of the attributes that people would agree to use. If there are some results that actually point out how presence of current style of advertising is better for consumers I would be glad to see it (that is not me saying that there are none, but I would really be interested in such results, be it empirical or mathematical). And it can "assume" the observed and internal preference equality, it would still be interesting to see if the advertising has any appreciable positive influence on the quality/price of the product. You can certainly throw legitimate criticisms at advertising. My broad point was that advertising does have its legitimate points. | ||
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
On September 13 2013 04:57 JonnyBNoHo wrote: TV advertising exists as a means to convey information and increase efficiency. Have I got a bridge to sell you!  Really though, even advertisers themselves openly disagree with this. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 13 2013 08:20 HunterX11 wrote: Have I got a bridge to sell you! Really though, even advertisers themselves openly disagree with this.Do they? smoothing demand: Marketing management in which demand for a product is dampened (such as by withdrawal of advertisements) when the firm's productive capacity is over stretched, and is stimulated when the capacity is underutilized. Link | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
What did the quote have to do with anything? | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 13 2013 08:51 Roe wrote: What did the quote have to do with anything? Smoothing demand is one way in which advertising is used to make production more efficient. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
On September 13 2013 06:44 mcc wrote: Advertising is tool to convey information. Quality of that information is completely different matter. Lie is also an information. And the efficiency (using economical definition of it) of that system is not as useful measure as you want it to present, because the whole proposition of advertising increasing efficiency being a good thing is based on the "assumption" that exhibited/observed preference is equal to internal preference of a person. You can hold such a belief and many do, but modern biology/psychology seems to disagree with such a simplistic view of reality. So you are technically correct, but that does not imply that advertising (as it is currently done) is in any way good for society or necessary for functioning market. It does not show that market without current style of advertising would work in any way worse. And by worse I do not mean efficiency-wise, but that the society would be worse off. How you define if the society is better/worse off is up for discussion, but efficiency of the market is not one of the attributes that people would agree to use. If there are some results that actually point out how presence of current style of advertising is better for consumers I would be glad to see it (that is not me saying that there are none, but I would really be interested in such results, be it empirical or mathematical). And it can "assume" the observed and internal preference equality, it would still be interesting to see if the advertising has any appreciable positive influence on the quality/price of the product. False advertising is already illegal The law assumes that the legal construct of a reasonable person would be able to see through a bad deal that is not actually illegal And if you're not a reasonable person then well tough titty for you it's not the responsibility of others to stop you from wasting your money You can make a plausible argument - which you do - that the current situation is not idealistic but ideals are ideals and not examples for a reason It's not the responsibility of the current system to prove itself as "good" or that without it things would not be "worse off" because good or worse off compared to what? In any way good for society or necessary for the functioning of the market as opposed to what? No one should have to prove a negative to justify themselves. What we have now works and if you're going to allege it doesn't then you have to make a political argument the way samipanda is. Hopefully better than he is. And in this particular case solutions to the "problem" would more likely than not have unintended negative consequences far outweighing any positive ones. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On September 13 2013 02:21 DeepElemBlues wrote: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/06/27/new-york-times-is-all-hot-air-on-shale-gas/ Literally everything in your post is based off a very slanted NYT story that was heavily criticized. No, shale wells do not lose 90% of their capacity over a few years as a rule, particular or general. Only a few of them do. Thousands of new wells are constructed every year because it's a boom. The claim that these new wells are just to keep up production is false. That is not constructing thousands of wells just to keep up production. The claim that "quality plays" are "rare" and most have already been tapped is reminiscent of false claims made by peak oilists 15 years ago and once again is simply not true. Instead of making claims that look knowledgeable and common-sense and really are anything but, perhaps the numbers should govern regarding sustainability of production. The Bakken play is more productive today with half the number of rigs that it was using just a few short years ago. On top of all that, environmental claims have been proven exaggerated or outright lies time and again. Shale oil is not a temporary bubble, only the ignorant or the mendacious with an agenda would claim so. Shale oil is going to be a profitable and large industry for decades and there's nothing that can be done about it sorry haters http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/07/07/ny-times-asked-investigate-shale-gas-bubble-series http://www.masterresource.org/2011/07/shale-gas-hit-piece-times-reaction/ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17pubed.html Oops! http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/06/30/exposing_the_demonizers_of_shale_gas_99107.html http://www.thepelicanpost.org/2011/06/28/guest-commentary-new-york-times-misses-the-mark-on-shale-gas-story/ http://newsok.com/natural-gas-industry-strikes-back-at-new-york-times-article/article/3580924 Firstly, I've never read this allegedly false NYT article and didn't even know it existed. Secondly, yes, the vast majority of shale oil wells lose the vast majority of their productivity in about 5 years. You can't just say no, they don't and not cite anything. The revised 2013 average decline is 50% or more in the first year, 35% in the second year, 30% in the third year, 20% in the fourth year, etc. And that's in the Bakken oil fields, where there are already drilled wells. Meaning that the less lucrative oil fields are likely to have even steeper rates of decline. See: Drill Baby Drill, by David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute. 2013. Shale and Wall Stree, by Deborah Rogers of the Energy Policy Forum. 2013. The Shale Oil Boom, A US Phenomenon. Published by Belfer Center at Harvard University. 2013. The United States consumes about 7 billion barrels of oil a year. The most recent figures for recoverable oil from the known shale oil fields is about 7 billion. Revised upward from 2012, when only half that amount, or roughly 2% of the oil was thought to be recoverable. So the vast deposits that the media keeps citing include 95% of the oil deposits that are currently unrecoverable with current technologies at current prices. 7 billion recoverable barrels means a US supply for 1 year. A bubble. You linked a bunch of Forbes, standard media hype articles that reacted against some alleged NYT "hit piece". The gist of these articles is, "hey look at the amazing production we are getting, clearly the production itself is evidence that it can't be a bubble." This is clearly wrong. Shale wells produce their greatest amount in the first year so it's not a surprise that the 4,000 wells drilled in 2012, over 10x as many as anywhere else in the world (excluding Canada) have brought in a boom. All of these media fluff pieces that you are citing are referencing total resource numbers, not what is recoverable which is the only important factor in determining the long-term sustainability of the boom that you are seeing now. Moreover, most of these plays are not examined by independent sources and we only have the numbers for wells that are on the corporate books, which are bound to be inflated so as to make the company appear more profitable on paper. As an illustration, the big three oil plays, Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian have an optimistic combined potential of about 100,000 shale producing wells, or about ten times the number of those already on line. If the wells lose 50% of their productivity in the first year, you need to be drilling 5,000 wells the next year just to maintain current production, which despite the boom, isn't replacing a majority of the oil we use every year. If you factor in continued decline and ramping up total production output, you have maybe 10 years before oil production drops precipitously. Of course this doesn't discount some miracle technology that preserves the price it costs to produce a barrel of oil, but there might also be solar/wind energy technologies by 2025 that are competitive with current oil prices. So why even bank on a dirty carbon source getting substantially cheaper to pull up, even as we have already sucked up the easy to grab stuff already? Let's also make clear what I am saying and what I am not saying. I am not saying that no money is being made. I am not saying there is wholesale fraud in the industry and that it's some kind of conspiracy. I'm not saying that we won't have shale oil for probably the next 10 years. What I am saying is that it's a temporary bubble that will burst sooner or later (hopefully sooner) and is in no way some kind of miracle that is going to save the American economy throughout the next 10 or 20 or however many years. There is a reason that shale oil hasn't been tapped before now. We are getting desperate, and the boom is just the easy pickings off the top of the huge resource reserve of nonporous, trapped organic matter in the various plays. Regarding subsidies. You might not like the term as applied in this case. But it captures an essential point. The point being that the shale oil boom has been financed and capitalized by wall street because wall street sees a short term opportunity to make money, which has resulted in overvalued assets and unrealistic hype, or a bubble. This is very similar to the mortgage bubble, where lending practices essentially became a subsidy for housing, growing the bubble, and then banks washed their hands of the mess when it burst, collected some federal money, and moved on to the next easy sell. I don't really care if you don't like the term. The point is that the boom itself is hardly a sign of the value in the shale oil industry, because the boom has been pushed by those who have interests in making money off of the boom in a peripheral fashion (i.e. merger fees, transactional fees). | ||
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
I was talking about the providing "information" part. Plenty of ads provide no information about any products at all. I mean, do you really think people out there don't know what Coca-Cola is? | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:30 HunterX11 wrote: I was talking about the providing "information" part. Plenty of ads provide no information about any products at all. I mean, do you really think people out there don't know what Coca-Cola is? What does that Dove ad sell you? Is it just conveying information and increasing efficiency? Ha. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:30 HunterX11 wrote: I was talking about the providing "information" part. Plenty of ads provide no information about any products at all. I mean, do you really think people out there don't know what Coca-Cola is? One function of advertising is to convey information. That doesn't mean that all advertising conveys useful information. In other words, advertising has many useful functions but it doesn't always have to use all of them. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote: One function of advertising is to convey information. That doesn't mean that all advertising conveys useful information. In other words, advertising has many useful functions but it doesn't always have to use all of them. Doesn't always have to be useful either | ||
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote: One function of advertising is to convey information. That doesn't mean that all advertising conveys useful information. In other words, advertising has many useful functions but it doesn't always have to use all of them. Advertising also has functions that aren't useful to the consumer or to productive efficiency at all. That's the problem. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:45 HunterX11 wrote: Advertising also has functions that aren't useful to the consumer or to productive efficiency at all. That's the problem. Hammers also have functions that aren't useful to society, like killing people. Let's lament the evils of hammers for a while. | ||
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
On September 13 2013 09:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Hammers also have functions that aren't useful to society, like killing people. Let's lament the evils of hammers for a while. I think a better analogy would be to propaganda: it can be used for good purposes, but we have every reason to be wary of it. It's hardly even an analogy at all since advertising is essentially commercial propaganda. | ||
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