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Comment by malthuswaswrong | Hacker News Reader

>Take note of the goods and services we really need. Things like food, shelter, shoes, etc.

I assume someone must be in charge of determining what products are essential and what products are frivolous consumerism. I assume you have someone in mind for the job. Yourself perhaps?

I'm a big girl. I can make my own decisions on what is essential and what is frivolous in my own life.

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No. You’ve completely misunderstood. This is a free market. People decide for themselves what is essential. When a lot of people in a region buy certain machines which they considered essential, that region will have an abundance of those goods. It happens organically. I am 100% opposed to authoritarian control and there is always someone who makes this quip without bothering to actually consider what I have written.

You are conditioned from a young age by the ad industry to want a lot of things that are not essential in your life.

That's one theory. Another theory is that the ad industry is exploiting a human nature that has been there long before ads or industry.

How would we test that theory? How would we test if humans have always wanted things or if nobody wanted things until ads were invented?

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the public relations industry. Sigmund Freud’s newphew Edward Bernaise is regarded as the creator of public relations, and he wrote multiple books and talked widely about his theories for manipulating the public. These theories have been put to the test multiple times and they proved successful enough that the industry is thriving 100 years later.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-...

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