From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Tue Feb 12 2002 - 11:16:24 MST
> Personally, my main complaint with the modern age is not any of these
> symptoms (poor farming, sweatshops and the like) but what is in my opinion
> the ultimate cause: advertising. Advertising is propagandizing and
> manipulation of desire, creation of need.
I would have to dispute the idea that advertising creates demand. Any
company attempting to produce a business plan predicated on engineering
demand for its product, i.e. a product for which no demonstrable market gap
can be shown and for which no market research showing existing interests or
needs can be demonstrated, is a company that would be unlikely to generate
funding. If it could generate funding I would submit that it would probably
fail. The legions of dot coms who lavished enormous amounts on advertising
but failed to serve any existing market should be a case in point. The only
exception I can think of are companies like Sony, which exists to create
markets for products that simply haven't existed before. Your point about
rationality is a more sound one - clearly advertising is not a rational
argument (or at least rarely so) it is an appeal to emotional behaviour. But
then human beings are not wholly rational; if they were memetics would not
exist.
> I'm all for modernity in every other sense, but what I think makes people
> sad beyond rational explanation is the dissapointment in our fellow humans
> for being so easily herded and brainwashed.
In truth, your argument is not that firms manipulate people - your argument
is that you dislike people for being so materialistic as to buy said
products. Like Bodie ('mindless consumers' is an interesting argument from
someone who can't even lay claim to basic literacy) you are essentially a
puritan. Why not admit it?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:43 MDT