A tax to discourage unapproved ads

Dr David Chapman

Extracted from a paper by Dr David Chapman on 'Consumer Information and the Control of Advertising', prepared for submission to the Green Party, and which slightly softens their draconian policy of 'limiting advertising to the informative, classified kind.'

There is little doubt that advertising is a major cause of the excessive and wasteful use of resources in our present society. Advertising stimulates the desire to consume, so that to satisfy this, people work more and earn more. More is consumed, and more damage is done to the environment. But at the same time, people get less satisfaction from this greater consumption. For much of advertising works by playing on people's anxieties and fears, and makes them insecure, envious of each other, and discontented with what they already have. People are persuaded to buy, for reasons such as status, goods which give them little satisfaction; and then to buy more.

Our aim needs to be to live better on less. Advertising makes us live worse on more.

'Normal advertising would be highly taxed, at two rates. The lower rate would apply to advertisements which were approved by a representative committee of consumer representatives'

I propose that advertisements should be taxed, except for such categories as small ads for one-off sales of second-hand goods, etc. Normal advertising, directly by the sellers, would still be allowed, in any medium used at present. But it would be highly taxed, at two rates. The lower rate would apply to advertisements which were approved by a representative committee of consumer representatives. The higher rate would be for the others. The consumer representatives could if they wished, write, or otherwise make, their own comment on an advertisement, and next to it.

The proposal is that consumer representatives should be elected by the consumers, ie by vote of everyone above a certain minimum age (which should be much lower than that for parliamentary elections). The candidates would stand in multi-member constituencies. They may if they wish stand as members of a named group, either an existing one, or one specially formed for this purpose, eg the Green Consumers, Friends of the Earth, etc. Voting is preferential, ie voters indicate their first, second, third, etc preferences, as far as they wish. In the counting, votes in a constituency are first allocated to their first preference. The candidate with fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are transferred each to their next-preferred candidate. The candidate who then has fewest votes is eliminated, and so on, until there is the correct number of candidates to be elected for the constituency.

- Dr David Chapman goes on to describe how each consumer representative would be given a salary and newspaper space, both national and local, in proportion to his/her votes. The salary and space would be paid for by the state. They could publish Which? style reports on goods, with many sellers coming to rely on these reports rather than normal advertising.
- Dr David Chapman, Democracy Design Forum, Coles Centre, Buxhall, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 3EB (tel 0449 736 223).

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