Sure, as John Kenneth Galbraith argued, advertising can encourage people to buy things that may not make them happy. The solution to the advertising problem, however, is not less advertising but more. A society with a lot of advertising is a society in which advertising is not very powerful. In any case, the competitive cacophony of the market place where the very
desperateness of the advertisers is itself an advert for their
impotence is no real danger.
The real danger is not from Madison Avenue. At the very worst, when Madison Avenue tells us how white our shirts can be, we end up with lighter pockets but whiter shirts. It’s political advertising, which often creates social images that fuel the politics of hatred, where the real danger lies. Even in the best of democracies, political advertising is nowhere near as competitive as in the market for deodorant and the product being sold is much more dangerous.
Luckily for you, there’s been a serious attempt to regulate political
speechadvertising in the US in the past two decades. I’ll make sure to send Mr.s McCain and Feingold both some thank you notes on your behalf.I’m busting your chops above but seriously, Alex, I find this puzzling. In what instances are you thinking of where political advertising creates hatred?
It seems to me that the greatest harm caused by political ads is to politicians’ feelings.
If you’re classifying, say, anti-semitic propoganda as “advertising,” well, that’s a highly unorthodox use of the term.
political advertising is nowhere near as competitive as in the market for deodorant
There’s an old Bloom County cartoon of a television ad: “You are a Bolshevik Weenie if you Don’t Vote for Senator Glump”
What is the likelihood that I will change my preferences for political leaders compared to my preference for deodorant? I would argue that it’s possible to change political preferences past the margins through advertising, but think about how different the political “bundles” people require from a candidate are: persuading people would require addressing a far more complex set of preferences than smelling nice or wanting to be cool.
@c-cipher: political advertising often works by highlighting differences–i.e. the term of a “wedge issue” to build divides in a population that did not exist before. It’s hard to believe that this improves social welfare in and of itself.
Without question, propaganda is political advertising.
The solution to the advertising problem, however, is not
less advertising but more. A society with a lot of advertising
is a society in which advertising is not very powerful.
Silliness.
Advertising tilts the consumers either way. You either buy Adidas or Nike shoes. Advertising is Hotelling’s Main Street location, and the central location has the highest rent.
So low global advertising is as powerful as much advertising.
I had initially read Alex as saying that there isn’t enough political advertising, and was planning to defend (in part) BCRA. One good (the best?) way to change the lack of competition in political advertising is to move away from a first past the post electoral system.
If the distinction is Nike vs Adidas, imagine an ad for keeping your old shoes.If the solution is “more ads” (more ads for me to skip over with the DVR!), presumably the ads would need to cancel out. If you only have ads for new shoes, whatever the brand, the true ad is that you should get new shoes. Or a new car. Or whatever.
My first beef with advertising would be that I suspect it’s inefficient.
It seems like a classic arms-race situation, where if Ford and Toyota each spend a billion on advertising, most of what they’re doing is cancelling each other’s advertising out. Yes, I do learn information about rack-and-pinion steering and MPG, and yes, I may get more pleasure out of my Tacoma now that I have been persuaded that it boosts my virility. (Maybe my wife also gets pleasure out that.)
But my gut intuition is that after a certain point, the hard information has been learned and the social images have been internalized. Most of the marginal impact goes to tipping me ever-so-slightly in favor of one firm’s product instead of the other.
Doesn’t this argue for a Pigouvian tax on advertising?
As you said, the solution is not less advertising, but more — in this case, more entrants in the marketplace. The two major parties have created a duopoly, and used state and federal law, along with “balanced” FEC appointments, to erect barriers to the entry of other voices.
If there were more viable candidates in each race, they’d each have to rely more on their own merits and less on voters hating the other guy more.
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