Am I the only one who finds the emphasis on advertising in neoclassical economics to be highly irritating. I’m not sure if it’s just my textbook or neoclassical textbooks in general, but I’m sick of hearing about “aggressive” advertising campaigns.
You are not the only one.
We just had a lesson on advertising (today) by our monetarist/“sophisticated neo-Keynesian” economics teacher.
It went like this:
“You’ve got two types of advertising, one that is generally agreed to be good, informative advertising, and one that some people would say is bad, persuasive advertising. They would say this because sometimes advertising causes people to buy things that they don’t actually want.”
To be fair to him, he doesn’t really follow that viewpoint - but there are many that are - and they piss me the hell off.
I usually get this response from opponants: “well if advertising doesn’t work, why is there so much money spent on it?” By “work” they mean “coerce people into buying stuff”.
The key is to point put that advertising works, but it does not work in the way people think it does.
I’ve never bought something I don’t “actually” want, so I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean. Perhaps I’ve regretted certain purchases, in which case I’ve not repeated them. Wow, must take a genius to do that, everyone else is simply under the spell of advertising!
Paternalist, whim-worshiping morons. [^o)]
Indeed, I think the best criticism I’ve heard of this overall view is the Misesorg article “Galbraith and the Sin of Affluence” or something along those lines. It comepletely demolishes his case, like literally pwns him.
For me it’s not even the idea of people being forced to buy a pair of whatever because they see a cool picture of somebody using it. It’s the terms “aggressive advertising” or “price wars”.
That’s not even mentioning the amount of value claims that the book makes still maintaining the fact that it’s value free.
That’s spot on. I’ve never seen anyone’s book pwnd so hard and so quickly as Rothbard pwnd The Affluent Society.
Anyone who hasn’t read it I suggest you should:
John Kenneth Galbraith and the Sin of Affluence
the fact that advertising works at all indicates to me that humans are too stupid for any rational system to work. The idea of buying something due to advertising seems like insanity to me.
$60 $50
[;)]