US Politics Mega-thread - Page 431

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.

On September 13 2013 09:50 HunterX11 wrote:


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.

On September 13 2013 09:57 IgnE wrote:


It's funny because your initial response to sam implied that he was wrong, and that the major point of advertising was to convey information.

On September 13 2013 09:21 IgnE wrote:
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).

On September 13 2013 10:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

What point are you trying to make? Advertising isn't perfect?

Even your Dove commercial conveys information. It's not particularly useful information, but it's there. In my initial reply to Sam I have two major functions of advertising, not one.

On September 13 2013 10:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Are you basically just saying that shale oil is over valued relative to market expectations?

If so... great! That's what makes a market!

On September 13 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:


Not sure what you mean by relative to market expectations. I mean overvalued relative to its value.

On September 13 2013 10:09 IgnE wrote:


To say something conveys information is trivial. Everything conveys information.

How does the Dove ad increase efficiency? And whose efficiency?

On September 13 2013 10:16 sam!zdat wrote:
'b school teaches people to think for themselves'???????

jonny you've never had a vaguely subversive thought in your life. Everything you think is nice happy safe status quo approved. Think for yourself. What a joke. You are the definition of a running dog. The entiety of your intellectual contribution to this thread is 'dont worry guys everything is fine ' with this big Mr. Cleaver shit eating grin on your face

as for your economic prophet nonsense, I say stuff that flies in the face of marxist orthodoxy on a regular basis so this is just stupid, as anyone who knows the first thing about it realizes. I'm a heretic in every room I walk into. Do I know everything? Absolutely not I don't know fuck all about anything. Am I an original thinker? Quite obviously yes

good grief

On September 13 2013 10:40 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Oh, Sam, you're so cute

<3

On September 13 2013 10:41 Roe wrote:
"reminding" is a polite, euphemistic way of saying psychological engineering or positive reinforcement. I haven't been convinced for the need of advertisement. People already know what products they've already bought, and it's senseless to argue they want to pay more to be reminded of what they've already consumed. You may say that in the case of a new product ads would help garner a base, but that again is just propaganda and has no valid informational basis.

On September 13 2013 10:41 Roe wrote:
I looked through the last couple pages and was glad to be unable to find where you said that business school teaches people to think for themselves

On September 13 2013 05:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Yeah b-school is a lie made up by the shadowy capitalist conspiracy. Universities are just in on it too.

How about you start using facts and making logical arguments rather than just conspiracy theory ravings and insults?

Edit: What's wrong with b-school anyways? Is your problem that b-school teaches people to think for themselves rather than blindly follow in whatever economic prophet you believe in?

On September 13 2013 10:44 ziggurat wrote:

What is the point of this discussion? Is someone arguing that advertising should be outlawed? Or are you just saying you don't like it?

On September 13 2013 10:44 ziggurat wrote:

What is the point of this discussion? Is someone arguing that advertising should be outlawed? Or are you just saying you don't like it?

On September 13 2013 10:48 sam!zdat wrote:




he's completely serious when he says this folks. he thinks that busyness school is the bastion of critical thinking in today's society, and that jonny himself is an example of someone who "thinks for himself." no joke. this is what he believes. this is our jonny who thinks this. you guys have met jonny right?

On September 13 2013 11:07 sam!zdat wrote:
wtf are you talking abt information? I'm a cultural critic not a busyness man. What information would you like me to give you about what

On September 13 2013 10:41 Roe wrote:
"reminding" is a polite, euphemistic way of saying psychological engineering or positive reinforcement. I haven't been convinced for the need of advertisement. People already know what products they've already bought, and it's senseless to argue they want to pay more to be reminded of what they've already consumed. You may say that in the case of a new product ads would help garner a base, but that again is just propaganda and has no valid informational basis.



I looked through the last couple pages and was glad to be unable to find where you said that business school teaches people to think for themselves

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).

On September 13 2013 10:49 Roe wrote:


I think advertising is a complete waste and essentially like a "reminder" tax that's levied onto your free market products. It's a sham my man.

On September 13 2013 11:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I asked you to defend your position on advertising being a waste with information (facts and logical arguments) instead of insults.

On September 13 2013 11:24 ziggurat wrote:

Why do you think businesses spend so much money on it then? Do you think you know how to sell soap better than the people at Dove?