Industries That Do Not Add Value to Society

[SomeRandomGuy]

I have been thinking about this for some time, and finally decided to post it here to get thoughts from others on the topic.

I believe there are many industries in the US which add little or no actual value to society, while using up a lot of resources. The biggest offender that comes to my mind is the advertising industry.

Advertising, at least as far as I see it, is not intended to provide information to consumers, rather it is intended to convince people to use a certain product or service. Obviously there are many different methods of advertising, that employ varying degrees of honesty. I think, however, that even the most honest of advertising uses more resources than is justifiable for the amount of value added to society. In my opinion this means advertising is wasteful and harmful to our world.

When I speak of the resources used by advertising I mean not only physical resources, but also mean the money and time spent as well as the environmental impact. It seems to me that society would be better with no advertising. I think it would be great if only a small fraction of the effort/time/money put towards advertising were instead put towards providing unbiased information about products and services as well as a method to allow consumers to try out the products and services to make more informed decisions.

This thread isn't intended to pick on the advertising industry. I would like to hear about other industries that others believe are using up resources while providing little or no value. My goal isn't to compile a list of "bad" industries, but to open a dialog regarding this wastefulness and ways that it may be countered. Sometimes I just like to step back and look at things that seem "normal" and question if those things deserve my support (even if I am only supporting them indirectly by not trying to initiate change).

[ThoughtAddict]

Originally Posted by SomeRandomGuy

Advertising, at least as far as I see it, is not intended to provide information to consumers, rather it is intended to convince people to use a certain product or service. Obviously there are many different methods of advertising, that employ varying degrees of honesty. I think, however, that even the most honest of advertising uses more resources than is justifiable for the amount of value added to society. In my opinion this means advertising is wasteful and harmful to our world.

Advertising doesn't add value? Dude, I love some commercials! And they fund my favorite TV shows!

You're right, though, that advertising doesn't provide much direct value to society in light of the large amounts of capital (human and financial) used. My first question was whether advertising should be valued in itself or as a part of the product being sold. Like, if I'm selling a fantastic product that will help millions of people, should we just the benefits of the advertising based on the value it will help the product generate, or based on the value of the advertising itself as a collection of sounds and images? If the former, then we're going to do a sorta ad hoc analysis of each piece of advertising, I think. The latter just doesn't seem all that tenable.

[fountainAtlas]

Wow. The irony is so great, I can hardly resist myself. Considering that if it was not for advertising you may not even know who Steve is. Further, Steve might have still been a struggling game developer.


-FountainAtlas

[lifetimelearner]

things that make you go hmmmmm

this is wierd -
I journaled about this same topic this morning

I had a longgggggggg list of them
but fear of ridicule keeps me from naming them

[SomeRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by fountainAtlas

Wow. The irony is so great, I can hardly resist myself. Considering that if it was not for advertising you may not even know who Steve is. Further, Steve might have still been a struggling game developer.
-FountainAtlas

I actually found this site when doing a Google search for tips on getting up early, so even without ads I would have found the site. I did consider, however, the impact that paid ads had to the development of this site. Obviously Steve has determined that the ads were no longer adding sufficient value to the site to keep them.

I also considered the arguments that advertising adds value because it allows us to have free radio. My thought on that is, however, is that rather than the consumer paying for radio, they are instead paying more for the products that companies pay to advertise for on the radio. I might be getting free radio without paying more for products if I do not purchase the products that advertise on the radio. Someone, however, is buying those products and paying that cost. Ultimately someone is paying for the cost of advertising, which gives us free radio, so why not just pay for radio? In the end, the only difference to society is that the advertising exists, which in itself does not add any value.

I hope that made sense. It seems somewhat rambling to me.

[Brutha]

Advertising does add some value. Brand perception increases the enjoyment of people who buy a certain product.

I actually found this site when doing a Google search for tips on getting up early, so even without ads I would have found the site.

Advertising allows us to not pay money for things like Google.
How would Googles business model look like in an advertisement free world?
I also think that some google adverts give me information about the existence of products that I didn't know before.
Facebook or MySpace probably wouldn't have had the success that they have either without using an advertisement supported business model.

[SomeRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Advertising does add some value. Brand perception increases the enjoyment of people who buy a certain product.
Advertising allows us to not pay money for things like Google.
How would Googles business model look like in an advertisement free world?
I also think that some google adverts give me information about the existence of products that I didn't know before.
Facebook or MySpace probably wouldn't have had the success that they have either without using an advertisement supported business model.

As a society, though, could we not have the same things without advertising? What if we did have to pay for Google, rather than paying more for the products produced by the companies that advertise on Google? What if there existed places to get unbiased information about products and services, so that people couldn't find out about Facebook and MySpace? I am not trying to argue that your points are wrong, rather I'm trying to question whether we have been conditioned to accept that advertising is necessary. Does the industry truly provide a net value to society? Or could we get the same benefits through other means while wasting less resources? It may very well be that the answer is no, we cannot get these benefits without advertising. I'd like to explore it as a possibility, though.

[floslib]

I think the thing to realize here, is that assuming advertisers are honest about their products, we really end up with a mutually beneficial relationship.

Advertisers pay money to get the word out about their products. This money funds services we like to have, such as radio, Google, and social networking sites, among many others. People who are looking for a product to do a particular thing find it via advertising and purchase it. If the product is valuable for a lot of people, then the advertisers earn more money than they spent.

If all of that is true, than advertising becomes extremely beneficial. Of course, as I said earlier, it's important in this system that advertising be honest. As well, I'd say it should be important that the advertising is unobtrusive, in order to keep everything convenient for end users as well.

[Brutha]

You shouldn't underrate the value of organization.

If you want to have a world without advertising you should describe how that world looks like.
Think in counterfactuals. What would have happend when the US congress had banned all advertising in 1990?
You will probably get some advantages and some disadvantages. As long as you can't see that world in your mental eye you can't answer the question whether advertising is valuable.

[SomeRandomGuy]

It seems that advertising may not be the best industry to use for this discussion. There are some arguable benefits of advertising and determining if those could easily be gained elsewhere is difficult.

Does anyone have any thoughts on other industries that do not provide real value? As I said in my initial post, my goal here isn't to crucify advertisers. I would like like some thoughts on what industries are a "waste" or cause more harm than good in our society.

[ar81]

Originally Posted by SomeRandomGuy

I believe there are many industries in the US which add little or no actual value to society, while using up a lot of resources. The biggest offender that comes to my mind is the advertising industry.

The biggest offender is the military around the world.
If we only had sticks and stones, violence in the world would be less destructive, than with guns and bombs. At least you can dodge a stone or hide behind a wall to protect against a stick.

Weapons industry is an industry of fear. Attack a population, make them fear, so thy buy your products. So the attacker and the seller could be in the same side.

Weapons expense is about using taxpayers money to produce ashes and corpses.

[ThoughtAddict]

Originally Posted by ar81

The biggest offender is the military around the world.
If we only had sticks and stones, violence in the world would be less destructive, than with guns and bombs. At least you can dodge a stone or hide behind a wall to protect against a stick.

Weapons industry is an industry of fear. Attack a population, make them fear, so thy buy your products. So the attacker and the seller could be in the same side.

Weapons expense is about using taxpayers money to produce ashes and corpses.

But without militaries, how will we ever solve disagreements?!?

Oh, right. Cage fighting. I'm in.

[carenkh]

I was sitting in a movie theater a few years ago, and I remember suddenly realizing how many hours and how much effort had gone in to produce the little movie theater intro before the movie - you know, with the little film guy surfing along, animated popping popcorn, etc. I was just like: Wow. Think if the people working on this had spent their time working to change the world! I'm more able to just enjoy the experience now, without judging - people are where they are - but every now and then, it hits me.

And does anyone else remember that when cable TV was first popularized, it was going to be ad-free television? We're paying the cable fee, so they won't need ads!! Now I pay to watch ads. How odd.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by carenkh

And does anyone else remember that when cable TV was first popularized, it was going to be ad-free television? We're paying the cable fee, so they won't need ads!! Now I pay to watch ads. How odd.

This trend has continued with the Internet as well..

I can't wait until ads get beamed right into our brains somehow.

[floslib]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

This trend has continued with the Internet as well..

I can't wait until ads get beamed right into our brains somehow.

They can already do so.

[fountainAtlas]

My point was that advertising has allowed the internet to expand to what it is today. Sure Steve might have kept writing his articles, but Google and certain type of web development tools wouldn't exist. Thus, you may never have known about him.

If I came to you and said "man/woman, you got to pay 5 bucks to check out this site cause it connects you to all your friends that also pay 5 bucks". How many broke college students would join in? How many developers would spend the time to develop third party applications?

On to the military comment: In a way military spending drives certain type of innovations/inventions. One that comes to mind is this little thing called a computer. In a great irony of life (the irony of the statement is that it really isn’t ironic), if it wasn't for the encryption technology used during WW2 it would take a lot longer for computers to develop.

It comes to that most of industries produce value for someone, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Now some are negative on society, but they still produce value.

Lastly, sure those dumb little skits in the beginning of a show seem like a total waste of resources, but some young kid may have used that to further develop his skills, in a financial sustainable way, which will allow him to really add value to the world.

This world is so wonderfully complicated. I love it. As in life, few, if any, issues are black and white, it is all grey. That is what makes discussion such a wonderful thing. To keep learning is exhilarating.

P.S. I couldn’t help myself, so I apology for my little rant.

-FountainAtlas
oy is something enjoyable among 1,000s of products out there.

[Byron]

The original role of advertising was to communicate information-- announce new products, companies, etc.

It has been corrupted, in the western world, to hawking, promoting, and associating unrelated elements and energies to products, including otherwise useless, derogatory, and dangerous products. (ie associating cigarettes with coolness in movies, and alcohol with sex in commercials)


It is not the industry or industries themselves, but a corruption of morals and principles in general, at least in the western world in this era.

[Brutha]

It seems that advertising may not be the best industry to use for this discussion. There are some arguable benefits of advertising and determining if those could easily be gained elsewhere is difficult.

Does anyone have any thoughts on other industries that do not provide real value?

I think the difference between simply complaining about the evil world and having a constructive vision for the future lies in weighing the pros against cons of an alternative that you are envisioning.

[missing]

Originally Posted by Byron

The original role of advertising was to communicate information-- announce new products, companies, etc.

It has been corrupted, in the western world, to hawking, promoting, and associating unrelated elements and energies to products, including otherwise useless, derogatory, and dangerous products. (ie associating cigarettes with coolness in movies, and alcohol with sex in commercials)

We have Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (the antichrist re-incarnate) to thank for steering us down that road.

[Still Growing]

Advertising doesn't add value? For who?

For the manufacturer it adds perceived value to the product.
For the consumer it informs them that the product exists.

In either case, the flow of information increases the communication of products to the consumer and therefore speeds up the development of an industry. Before TVs, for example, companies didn't have to compete as much with their products to get the business. Lack of information stunts the growth of product competition and product development and therefore new value doesn't get created.

Advertising also brings new companies to market, new products to your awareness and new solutions to your perception. We learn to tune out ads that WE don't think ads value and we TUNE IN to ads that do.

WOW, advertising ads tremendous value. You just can't see it.

[RRR]

YouTube - Bill Hicks on Marketing
YouTube - bill hicks drugs and music

[recordrustle]

I dont believe that the advertising industry adds value to society, its takes all our cultural and social values and sells them back to us. If you didnt have people stimulated by advertising to buy products they would still buy products but perhaps actually investigate for themselves which product is actually the best.

Companies (especially big ones) arent interested in giving you the best service/product anymore they are just about the image. Wouldnt it be better for society if people were more conscious consumers and businesses had to create quality products?

as for other industries, the beauty/cosmetic industry is a big pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, playing on peoples insecurities to get them to buy something which is often mostly water.

has anyone read No Logo by Naomi Klein?
there is also a film by the same name. its quite good.

[Hyperchiller]

I look at this thread title and thought, if the industry didn't add value, it wouldn't exist in the first place. So advertising wouldn't exist if it wasn't there for a purpose - which may be a double edged sword if you consider a MEDIUM such as advertising.

It's really the message behind the medium that makes the difference of whether it adds value or not.

[coollikeme]

York Rangers hockey team!!!!!! They are society losers, and add no value

[yossarian]

Originally Posted by ar81

The biggest offender is the military around the world.
If we only had sticks and stones, violence in the world would be less destructive, than with guns and bombs. At least you can dodge a stone or hide behind a wall to protect against a stick.

Weapons industry is an industry of fear. Attack a population, make them fear, so thy buy your products. So the attacker and the seller could be in the same side.

Weapons expense is about using taxpayers money to produce ashes and corpses.

If we only had sticks and stones the big and strong would not be motivated to make peace with the weak and sickly

You'd have tribes of people dominated by the strongest man who has his way with everyone

Guns are an equalizer - a 3ft female midget with a gun is just as dangerous as Kimbo Slice (lol) with a gun

[SomeRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by recordrustle

I dont believe that the advertising industry adds value to society, its takes all our cultural and social values and sells them back to us. If you didnt have people stimulated by advertising to buy products they would still buy products but perhaps actually investigate for themselves which product is actually the best.

Companies (especially big ones) arent interested in giving you the best service/product anymore they are just about the image. Wouldnt it be better for society if people were more conscious consumers and businesses had to create quality products?

as for other industries, the beauty/cosmetic industry is a big pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, playing on peoples insecurities to get them to buy something which is often mostly water.

has anyone read No Logo by Naomi Klein?
there is also a film by the same name. its quite good.

This was my line of thinking as well. I do not believe that advertising provides any value that could not be obtained through other, less wasteful means. It is possible to inform consumers of new products without spending millions of dollars, hundreds or thousands of man hours, loads of electricity, etc. I think that what really got me thinking about this was see a picture of Time Square recently. Obviously I had seen it many times, but this last time it made me think, what value are all those adds creating? What benefit is there from wasting all that electricity that goes to power the neon signs?

I agree that there are benefits gained from advertising, both to the manufacturers and consumers. I guess my argument is that by doing a little research consumers could get the same (probably better) info. If we took a fraction of the money/time/resources spent on advertising and created an unbiased system for compiling information on products and maybe providing a way for consumers to try the products out I feel it would be much more beneficial, and much less wasteful.

[SomeRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by Hyperchiller

I look at this thread title and thought, if the industry didn't add value, it wouldn't exist in the first place. So advertising wouldn't exist if it wasn't there for a purpose - which may be a double edged sword if you consider a MEDIUM such as advertising.

It's really the message behind the medium that makes the difference of whether it adds value or not.

You are right, the fact that an industry exists means it must be serving a purpose. I guess my point was that maybe we have left these industries convince us that they are required, when really they are not providing value that could not be obtained otherwise.

[RRR]

According to Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, C.C. (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communications theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. McLuhan is known for coining the expressions "the medium is the message" and the "global village."

The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.[1] McLuhan proposes that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study; he said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.

Hence in Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. [2] This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time.[3] As the society's values, norms and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium. We sometimes call these effects "unintended consequences", although "unanticipated consequences" is more accurate. [3] The "unanticipated consequences" work silently to influence the way in which we interact with one another, and with our society at large.[3] These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents,through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions [3] that we are not aware of.

More controversially, he postulated that specific content might have little effect on society — in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to give one example — the effect of television on society would be identical, and profound. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it. So the medium through which a person encounters a particular piece of content would have an effect on the individual's understanding of it.

McLuhan also claimed in Understanding Media that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium. Some media, like the movies, enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part of viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which due to their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition", requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value.[4] This concentration on the medium itself, and how it conveys information — rather than on the specific content of the information — is the focal point of "the medium is the message".

He pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."[5] Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less the individual news story itself — the content — and more the change in public attitude towards crime that the newscast engenders by the fact that such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner.[3]

McLuhan frequently punned on the word "message" changing it to "mass age", "mess age", and "massage"; a later book, The Medium is the Massage by McLuhan and Quentin Fiore,[6] was originally to be titled The Medium is the Message, but McLuhan preferred the new title which is said to have been a printing error.

[Brutha]

I agree that there are benefits gained from advertising, both to the manufacturers and consumers. I guess my argument is that by doing a little research consumers could get the same (probably better) info. If we took a fraction of the money/time/resources spent on advertising and created an unbiased system for compiling information on products

Nobody has the time to go through all information about the products that he buys.
Humans need narratives that connect information to make decisions.

Creating systems to turn information into good narratives that compel people to act is a very hard task.
Organization comes out of nowhere if you allow free market principles like advertising. If you don't you need some other system to produce organization.

[Hyperchiller]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Nobody has the time to go through all information about the products that he buys.
Humans need narratives that connect information to make decisions.

Creating systems to turn information into good narratives that compel people to act is a very hard task.
Organization comes out of nowhere if you allow free market principles like advertising. If you don't you need some other system to produce organization.

Wow that is really profound. I totally agree with you there.

Advertising is like getting a cheat sheet for the exam. And buying the product or service is like taking the exam.

haha I've still got to get over my exam mentality.