phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu wrote:
I've read some of Galbraith's books: I'm not impressed by his arguments.
>Rather, the fact that ads work at all (at
>least for demand creation; market share competition is a different matter)
>indicates that most people have, literally, more money than they know what to
>do with.
The problem, of course, is that outside of kids toys, I can't think of any area where there's any strong evidence that ads work for demand creation. In almost all cases I can think of, people want something, the ads just give them more choice as to who they buy it from. Most of us grow out of buying things we don't need after we stop getting toys at Christmas.
I mean, if I wanted to buy a car in an ad-free world, the only choice I'd have locally would be the Ferrari dealer... or the other Ferrari dealer. In the real world I'm surrounded by ads from Ford, GM and other manufacturers, and have more problem deciding which one to buy than finding information on the alternatives. But the ads only gave me choices, they didn't make me want to buy a car.
Mark