Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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>Your message is a little disjointed. Are "other parts" marketing or not-marketing? Take your pick.

Oh, I see what you mean. I meant to write: "are essential to the production of the item" (scrap "not").

>Anyway, the article doesn't discuss where ad money goes. It would need to use figures for that.

It would only need figures to do that in detail, whereas the article wants to give an overview of where money goes, not go into numbers.

>It's irrelevant whether a cost is "essential" to the production of the item. Distribution is a cost that's not part of production.

Well, even if I got the wording wrong, I obviously consider "distribution" an essential cost too. It might not be part of production per se, but it's necessary for getting the item to the buyer. Advertisement, much less so.

There are tons of products that are sold without any advertising, but very few sold without distribution (e.g. some products you get directly from their makers' facilities), and it's totally inconvenient for larger items or items manufactured abroad.

>You seem to suffer from the very common bias of "build it and they will come."

Well, if we're to discuss my preferences on the matter, that (non advertising) is how most commerce worked for milenia, and how it's working even now for millions of non-advertised products.

Sure, for people to know and buy specifically an X brand, it takes advertisement.

But that's neither essential to society's functioning, nor beneficial (e.g. allows crappy products to advertise more than good ones, and be preferred over them, and also makes people over-buy with ads as constant reminders for consumption).

As a consumer why should I care whether brand X sells -- except if I'm its owner?

People can still buy whatever they want and need, without advertising. And in that world the best products can get word of mouth and organic growth unobscured by paid advertisement. As for further "discovery" there are always articles and posts about upcoming products, reviews, etc.

> It might not be part of production per se, but it's necessary for getting the item to the buyer. Advertisement, much less so.

Is that so? How do you figure? How do you get an item to a buyer that will never be a buyer because he never heard of your product?

> As a consumer why should I care whether brand X sells -- except if I'm its owner?

Well, thank you for unearthing what I believe is the crux of the question so concisely.

Let me put a twist on your question: As an employee, why should you care if the company you work for sells?

Society is not made of people who are 100% consumers.

People need to sell stuff to make a living. Advertising is a way to sell stuff.

I don't like to pigeonhole people, but I've heard the arguments you're making a million times. Almost invariably, they came from people who'd never had to sell anything themselves to make a living.

Go ahead an try to sell people "crappy products" with advertising. See if they buy. What you'll discover is that people don't buy crappy products. They buy "good enough" products. Sorry people's standards aren't up to yours.

We can argue until the sun comes down about what is "essential" or "beneficial" to society, but that's entirely subjective.

I also don't understand the very common belief expressed around here that it would somehow be a good idea if humanity were reduced to its "essentials" or to stuff that they "really need". Art isn't essential. The internet isn't essential. Comfort isn't essential. Entertainment isn't essential.

>Is that so? How do you figure? How do you get an item to a buyer that will never be a buyer because he never heard of your product?

That's a problem of the seller. Including the seller of bad goods (who has the opportunity to promote them over good stuff via a bigger advertising budget). Not a problem of the buyer or society at large.

Besides, as I said, billions of products are sold every day with zero advertising (all the generic brand items we buy).

>Society is not made of people who are 100% consumers. People need to sell stuff to make a living. Advertising is a way to sell stuff.

Selling stuff without advertising is also a way to sell stuff. We managed to do with 1/20 the advertising just few decades ago, and almost 0 targeted advertisement compared to today.

Besides buying stuff you don't really need just because you're conditioned by 24/7 advertising is not that good for consumers anyway. That's how people end up in debt.

>Go ahead an try to sell people "crappy products" with advertising. See if they buy.

You mean like the $100 billion "bottled water" industry?

http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/27/news/companies/pepsi_coke/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/19/nestle-...

Or selling "brandname clothes" to 10-20x markup all around the world similar to quality (and often made in the same factories by the same people) to much cheaper alternatives?

In fact you could take away "crappy products" and replace it with "equal quality products" and my argument would still hold: you can artificially promote the brand who spends more on advertising over the brand who is equally good, and might even be cheaper.

>We can argue until the sun comes down about what is "essential" or "beneficial" to society, but that's entirely subjective.

Something being "subjective" is not the same as "entirely arbitrary and "anything goes", unless we've lost all sense of purpose and reasoning.

Taste is subjective too, but a home cooked meal with fresh ingredients is better for you than McDonalds and Hot Pockets, and that's a scientifically verifiable fact.

>I also don't understand the very common belief expressed around here that it would somehow be a good idea if humanity were reduced to its "essentials" or to stuff that they "really need". Art isn't essential. The internet isn't essential. Comfort isn't essential. Entertainment isn't essential.

Only if by "essential" we only take into account the survival aspect. If we take into account our emotional well being, then arts and entertainment, and occasionally comfort, are essential too to one degree or another.

On the other hand, an always updated smartphone, the latest adidas, a sports car, etc, are not "essential" by any measure. And it's a good idea to reduce them, because their endless production is also environmentally harmful.

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