Not a hot take but I’m driving across the county rn and there’s so much natural beauty I can’t fully appreciate bc every time I see a god damn fucking billboard I am so enraged. Especially the ones that are just advertising the billboard itself, “if you’re looking at this it means it works! Rent today!” SHUT THE FUCK UP!! I wanna pull over and torch them so much
An underused argument against the efficiency of free-market capitalism is the extreme wastefulness of advertising. Sure, even in a leftist utopia you'd want everyday goods to look pleasing, and sure, people need information about what things best fit their needs, but think of how far beyond that the advertising industry goes. A real-life, common advertising strategy is "make your brand so ubiquitous that people can't think of the product/service you're selling without thinking of your brand." Think of the mountains of cash lit on fire to facilitate an approach like that.
It creates ridiculous arms-races, too. Coke and Pepsi have no reason to advertise anymore. None. Not even new products, if they just put them out there regular folk will do 99% of the work for them. They are as ubiquitous as it gets. But neither company thinks they can afford to stop, or at least significantly reduce, their advertising because then the other company would spend tenfold in an attempt to dominate. Both could just agree with one another to stop altogether and pocket the savings to pad their quarterly reports and it will never, ever happen.
If aliens landed tomorrow and spent five minutes studying this single aspect of human culture, they would conclude we were all lunatics and collectively incapable of progress.
Of course "cash" is not the problem, it's the hours of work of so many people wasted, instead of those same people and resources being allocated to idk, teaching children, being social medics, repairing infraestructure, cleaning a contaminated river, being scientists, finding a cure for ligma, etc etc etc . BUT HEY! THAT DOESN'T MAKE A PROFIT SO WE SHOULDN'T DO IT!
What's a social doctor?
PhD in Socialism
Sorry, not english speaker, I meant community medics/social workers: medics asignated to a neighborhood that know the people living there know their medical-and-socio-economic problems, and monitor them by visiting regularly each family even when not called.
Check this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_medicine
I would bet that at least 10-20% of jobs that we have under capitalism wouldn't be needed under socialism: sales, marketing, most lawyers, most cops... not to mention all the redundant companies that make the same shit. That's a 10-20% efficiency advantage to socialism right there.
Only 10-20%? You have the entire marketing industry (an industry whose only purpose is to balance out to net zero by cancelling out other marketers), almost the entire financial sector (moves money around, produces nothing), real estate (same), a huge chunk of manufacturing since goods are built to last rather than to fall apart as soon as next year's model comes out, consulting, recruiting, and a great deal of mental health support since capitalism exacerbates mental illness so much.
Sp much of the "economy" is functionally useless, or holds up the damage it itself causes.
Yeah I was being conservative with that estimate.
I really need to read "Bullshit Jobs."
In theory a socialist state could use far more lawyers. We should really prioritize giving public defenders (and prosecutors, too) a more reasonable workload, and tons of people get into situations where representation would help immensely but is too expensive to be practical. Even though tons of legal jobs would be eliminated (by dismantling the carceral state if nothing else), it's too optimistic to believe we'll establish a frictionless society, and when there is friction people shouldn't get fucked over because they have no attorney or are working with attorneys who can't dedicate adequate time to their case.
I'm thinking more of the corporate lawyers, trial lawyers IIRC are a much smaller part of the overall picture.
Not to mention less crime to deal with in the first place.
Yeah the constant stream of psychologically manipulative advertising that’s beamed straight into our brains is also such a clear flaw in the idea that in a free market ppl get to look at a myriad of options and then rationally choose the best product at the price that works for them.
Also funny how ppl say that living under an ”oppressive” communist regime means being subject to an inescapable stream of propaganda...like that’s literally the US but somehow when it’s advertising it’s normal and ok?
For anyone who thinks this is hyperbole: check out "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. The whole premise is that people do not make rational choices, and here's how they're irrational, and here's how you can play to that. It's certainly manipulative, even if you want to argue that it can be used in non-harmful ways (e.g., to improve education or communication instead of to get people to buy more Pepsi).
There's also voluminous research on stuff like "The Influence of Color and Shape of Package Design on Consumer Preference". Literally just tweaking the packaging -- without changing anything about the product itself -- to sell more of the underlying product. It's the exact opposite of "look[ing] at a myriad of options and then rationally choos[ing] the best product at the price that works for them."