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Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

But isn't it the well oiled marketing and advertising industry that is keeping us constantly unhappy and forcing us to compare our own (projected) shortcomings against others?

My hypothesis is that wealthier people are even deeper in this trap, as once you can afford nice clothes, accessories, cars, houses etc., you are immediately exposed to others in the same (or higher) wealth bracket, thus exacerbating these feelings of comparison and inadequacy. It is a self destructive feeding frenzy that can never assuage itself.

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I think this is partly why "old money" isn't flashy like nouveau rich money. It's easier to blow a fortune than it is to make a fortune.

Regardless of what other people are trying to get your to do, unless they actually force you, you're the only one responsible for your decisions. Stop trying to find a scrapegoat.

Look I agree with you. Everyman should make their their own decisions and do what is right for them. However advertising has had a massive impact on how we see the world. You only need read about how de Beers the world's largest diamond producer changed our perception of diamonds [1]. There all manner of adverts designed to make you feel incomplete. I don't have links now but there have been a few stories here on HN which show what we regard as the norm now was nothing more than advertising campaign.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...

Yes, people try to manipulate you all the time. My point is - it's fair game. It's exactly the game that all of us are playing all the time, it's pretty fun, it's challenging, and I see no point in painting someone as immoral just because they're winning at it.

Not all of us play this "game". Most of us aren't psychopaths.

But you have to coexist with everyone else in a society that finds advertising, manipulation (to an extent) and other things psychopaths excel at tolerable.

There's a whole range of "bad" things that society finds tolerable (I'm talking in general, not specifically advertising or trying to manipulate people) and if you cannot stand one/many of those things then you're free to live in a log cabin in the woods.

I'd love to not play the taxes game or put up with the paternalistic government I live under but it just so happens that it's a prerequisite to being part of society. I'm free to screw off to some log cabin in the woods but I'd rather live within society even if it had some problems.

Of course, and that's why a lot of billionaires are obsessed with flaunting their wealth and earning even more.

It is not advertisers who are all to blame. Pride and envy predate magazines and TV.

Pride and envy predate magazines and TV.

So does advertising.

So does cholera. But if you spend your work time trying to spread cholera you get a bit of blame.

It isn't the marketing and advertising industry. Greed, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony - 5 of the 7 deadly sins.. Aristotle might not have reduced it to such a short list, but he wrote plenty on similar ideas. So there's 2300 years on paper...

It's really human nature.

Yes but the marketing industry fans the flames. Edward Bernays has a lot to answer for.

that just remind me of the movie Seven, maybe the guy was right(?)

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