I've read a lot of bad stuff about advertising on this board. While it's true that ads are often deceptive and manipulating they can also serve a positive social function.Some posters have written that Socialism requires a different sort of human nature to be successful, one that will not be so greedy, but will be satisfied with less.
The Advertisers have this one already figured out. Much of advertising is actually directed at getting the people to be happy with less material than they would otherwise demand.
It would be wonderful to begin each lunch with a glass of all-natural, fresh-squeezed, orange juice. But this product requires a lot of labor and environmental resources to produce. Until we get better technology, Earth can't supply this good to everybody.
Thank God for Coca-Cola! Coke's massive advertising has convinced hundreds of millions of people to be satisfied with Coke -- an affordable product -- rather than the fresh OJ they can't have.
Luxury goods also benefit society. Here in New York, we have expensive nightclubs where one has to pay $10 for a beer -- the same beer the nearby supermarket sells for 50 cents! Wealthy people go to these clubs and are willingly separated from their cash.
These clubs (like all luxury goods) are labor intensive and provide employment for many people.
When we consider advertising, we have to break it up into two components. If I'm an advertiser I want to:
1) Get you to buy more stuff.
2) Convince you my stuff is good.
While the first objective may result in "consumerism" (which is pretty ugly at its worst), the second helps people to be satisfied with less. Socialists should consider that any sucessful Socialist society will require a large helping of this sort of advertising.
We have limited resources. If we can make people a little happier by adding fragrance to their soap powder or by putting cool trademarks on their t-shirts, why shouldn't we?
More importantly, luxury goods are an excellent way to tax the rich. It's great to see a well-off Wall Street princess pay $3800.00 for a single designer cocktail dress. In return for that scrap of fabric, the economy will get another week's valuable labor out of her father.
Lastly, advertising is non-violent and non-coercive. You don't have to buy the stuff if you don't want to.
Let me repeat. You don't have to buy the stuff if you don't want to.
Rather than sign over all of our labor to some central planner, we can choose to only work for what we want.
Rather than lead the world on some wild Socialist adventure, wouldn't it be better to just modify Capitalism? We could stop advertisers from telling lies and hold them liable for damages when they did. We could redistribute *some* of the income so that people who don't have enough could have a chance to break out of poverty.
But I can't see any good reasons to start from scratch.
-nat
