Wait wait wait...hold the effin phone here. Advertizing is now bribery? Of whom, and how? How is paying someone to essentially play "Pimp My Product" bribery?
What is bribery and why don't we like it?
Okay, so the legal definition of bribery is: "He offers, confers or agrees to confer any thing of value upon a public servant with the intent that the public servant's vote, opinion, judgment, exercise of discretion or other action in his official capacity will thereby be corruptly influenced;..."
(This is a definition applying only to public servants; obviously a bribe offered to a person who is not a public servant remains a bribe).
What are the elements? 1) Money offered, 2) in order for a person to exercise their power (et al) in a manner they would not otherwise, 3) improperly. What do we mean by improperly? Dishonestly. Why is it illegal? Bribery increases transaction costs, reduces the effectiveness and responsiveness of the bribed organisation, undermines public accountability, ect.
Okay, what is advertising? 1) Money offered, 2) in order for a person or corporation to exercise their "opinion, judgement, exercise of discretion", 3) in a dishonest and improper fashion. A person in an ad is essentially endorsing a product does not do so honestly, because it is a good product, but in proportion to the amount of money that corporation has paid them. The commercial station does not run advertisements because it thinks the product is good, but because it has been paid to do so. In a similar way, a corrupt judge does not let XYZ off murder because he thinks him innocent, but because he has been paid.
Now, you could argue that there is less
harm caused by this sort of bribery than through normal corruption. You could argue it, but you'd be wrong. The sole purpose of advertising is to distort market forces, and to clog up the natural price and information signals of capitalism. If we treated the bribery by commercial companies of television companies they way we treat their bribery of, say, judges virtually everything would work better.
Literally the only thing commercials do is negative. They should not exist.
How are people going to be "more informed" about products if you remove one of the simplest ways to convey information about effing products?
Far more informed. The purpose of advertising is to reduce the level of information available to people, or to encourage them to ignore it. If you want people to be informed about products, the best way to do so is to found some sort of independent agency that can rate products by quality. This would be then put on the soap or whatever next to the price tag.
You might also have a TV show to educate people about available products. The difference between this, of course, is that these would be honest, which advertising is by definition not.
The revenue they bring in is important, and not just to the companies that get the extra money, but society as a whole thru taxes.
Advertising reduces useful GDP, it does not increase it.
I'd be pleased as punch if we could make advertizing less blatantly idiotic, don't get me wrong, but banning it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There is no baby. There is just bathwater.
Ya see, the internet is a haven of knowledge, and people don't like having shit forced on to them. Net Nanny programs don't hold up to anyone with a few hours and Google. Unless you plan on arresting anyone who bypasses your shitty Nannyware, in which case, why not just cut out the middle man and move to fucking China?
Why would anyone
want to watch advertising?
Should there be consequences to free speech? Absolutely. But think consequences is the wrong word. Outcome or reaction is a much better word to use. Every action has a reaction. Every single one. Why is that bad?
Should one of those 'consequences' be prison? Okay, why not?
