LogFAQs > #908722255

Nrrr posted...

and I love ContraPoints, but how are you seriously going to have a post talking about how you love capitalism except for the bad parts like...advertising. I mean, ads are terrible and I hate them too...but its pretty far down my list of 'unfortunate effects of capitalism'

I mean...I was putting things into personal relateable terms as opposed to grand economic terms.

Income inequality is currently probably the biggest issue with the current system, but massive wealth gaps have been a big issue at lots of points for lots of political systems. The French Revolution was basically a bunch of peasants killing a bunch of nobles and installing capitalism so that they would not be ridiculously poor, and for this purpose capitalism worked.

Massive income inequality gaps is mostly a sign that the system is failing and needs to be replaced (historically this often meant violence, although 1930s America under Roosevelt was a pretty significant economic overhaul and happened in a non-violent way).

So like...outside of the massive wealth gaps, which I see more as just a sign of a system in decline, the stuff that stands out as uniquely bad about capitalism compared to older economic systems that came before (feudalism etc) is...among other things advertising (selling people things they do not need; encouraging people to buy more than they need), and the requirement to maximize profits (incentivizing addictive aspects to products like adding gambling aspects to games. Incentivizing increasing prices on life saving drugs to squeeze dying patients for as much money as possible. Incentivizing cheating and bypassing environmental regulations if it will squeeze out more profit).

These latter issues conflicting with hard requirements on climate change is why the UN report is saying that a capitalism replacement is probably needed (as opposed to a capitalism overhaul like what happened under Roosevelt). But yes, I do think advertising as a mechanism is one of the flaws with capitalism that may well make it incompatible with a sustainable future (the purpose of advertising is to make people buy things they don't need or want, which is not really compatible with massively reducing our energy consumption).
---

Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision