advertising and propaganda

[LovePrevails]

When you talk about a free market, many open-minded persons on the left are like "yes, well the freedom aspect does sound good, but these choices are not completely free, companies can advertise and propagandise and use subliminal messages to make people get their stuff." I was wanting to collect other peoples responses on this issue.

 

here are some of my thoughts

 

 

There is the implication that human beings are like zombies that are just waiting to be manipulated by the next advertising campaign to buy a product that they wouldn't have wanted if they hadn't seen the ad - but if that were true then businesses wouldn't spend so much money on market research to find out what consumers want and how to deliver it best. No firms would ever go bankrupt, they could just convince people to buy whatever they are selling. They have to figure out what these inscrutable consumers want. Selling is hard, as anyone who has ever worked in a caller centre can attest, you have to compete with every single other things people can do with their money, be it spending, saving or investing.

 

Almost everything that is marketed is aimed at the mass market, the elite always do well under every system including communism and fascism, whereas almost every firm is trying to produce things for the general public - someone who wants to a toaster, or a fridge. It's the masses who have the most to gain from competition in providing these products so that they are offered a higher standard of living at a cheaper price. The fact that record companies can sell a pop song, expertly, will not impress a Marxist professor who thinks they should be listening to classical music and getting cultured, but even that pop song will improve their standard of living marginally. If people are zombie-like, in a way, as consumers, the logical place to point the finger is not those who market to them, but the education system which is run by the state, not free-marketeers whose only recourse is to sell what people buy or go bankrupt.

 

If we are to talk about the use of propaganda, the state has clearly won the battle for control over hearts and minds hands down. Coca Cola do not own any schools, but if they did not many people would be drinking Pepsi. McDonalds do not set the curriculum, but if they did there would be very few vegetarians. Everyone goes through 12-14 years of mandatory education, bought and paid for by the state, and they receive a pro-government education from pro-government teachers, and thus there are very few anarchists but many statists. It is the government also decides who has access to television licences and the airwaves. Government has won the propaganda war.

 

 

 

I also want to write about how free-market advertising and manipulations  could be counter-balanced or regulated in a free market if you have any suggestions on that, or also other ways the state is more guilty of propaganda

[TheRobin]

Well, as a seller of products or services I'd use whatever works to sell stuff. If people can't really think critically at the moment, the only place to look is the failed school system (which ofc, isn't free market). Once children actually get educated instead of indoctrinated the advertising will change too, cause the current methods wouldn't really sell that well anymore 

[dsayers]

The zombie/subliminal claim is internally inconsistent. It claims that one party in an exchange is responsible for understanding the exchange but the other party is not.

 

Almost everything that is marketed is aimed at the mass market, the elite always do well under every system including communism and fascism, whereas almost every firm is trying to produce things for the general public - someone who wants to a toaster, or a fridge. It's the masses who have the most to gain from competition in providing these products so that they are offered a higher standard of living at a cheaper price. The fact that record companies can sell a pop song, expertly, will not impress a Marxist professor who thinks they should be listening to classical music and getting cultured, but even that pop song will improve their standard of living marginally. If people are zombie-like, in a way, as consumers, the logical place to point the finger is not those who market to them, but the education system which is run by the state, not free-marketeers whose only recourse is to sell what people buy or go bankrupt.

 

This paragraph was full of red flags for me. Who are "the elite"? Why is the free market being compared to communism and fascism? Seems like an attempt to color the conversation by likening the subject matter to things that will invoke a specific, unsavory reaction.

 

What does what the masses have to gain have anything to do with why a company would sell a toaster or a fridge? The people who make and/or sell anything do so for profit, not because it will make the world a better place.

 

Why would we point the finger to State schools? Children do not choose to go there. They are forced to by their parents, which would make the parents responsible. Parents have the ability to negotiate with their children and teach them rational thought even before the State tries to get their hands on them.

[Livemike]

"Free dating, well the freedom aspect sounds good, but these choices are not completely free, people can buy try to convince you to date them or use makeup or perfume to make people choose them".