My rant including the "little man" was no so much directed at the article in question as it was at the movement in general. But Russels depiction of this hard-working professional as a victim is condescending. He can provide for his family, but can't in the face of a simple salesman say "no, go away, and if you come back next week I won't be this polite"? This is obviously a contrived example, because the real world don't lend itself well to the point he wants to make.
> the goal of (many) salespeople and advertisers is to make their targets sillier and stupider, and that's seldom in their interests or those of the community / nation / world as a whole.
Obviously there are scammers out there, but the average advertisement/sale caters to the average consumer, and by declaring that the actions of these consumers make them "sillier and stupider" (than what?) and that they don't act in their own interest or "those of the community / nation / world as a whole" is "holier-than-thou".
How do you objectively define the best interest of the "community / nation / world as a whole"? To take a very current example, the current financial crisis is caused in (a large) part by the political system (a democratic president and a republican house -- no-one gets away clean) deciding that is was in the best interest of the nation and its citizens is to lend a lot of money to a lot of people who couldn't really afford it to buy their own home.
In my experience your "targets" in consumer sales are comprised to two categories: Smart people, where you drop the act and give them the data they want (they probably wont buy unless you do a fine job at NLP or "Liking") and the rest. With "the rest" it is recommended as "best practice" to use the techniques of NLP, Reciprocation, Consistency, Social Proof (the salesman's favourite), Authority, Liking and Scarcity.
ALL of these tricks are tricks. They are all ways that make the target more likely to buy the product without improving the product.
You can play on someone's emotional weaknesses to make them buy shit. Fact. There is no "they're not being forced to buy". If you know the tricks and they don't you will be able to influence them.
Hell, I might even be able sell to you (someone smart) if I could place you in a Consistency trap and you're on a first date with someone you're trying to impress.
These are the kind of sales the article is talking about and I completely agree with the writer. They don't generate wealth and they probably don't improve the economy.
Yes, telemarketing. I didn't receive any particular training, but it was clear that the tactic was keep talking, so they'll agree to buy it to get rid of me. Yes, I was the piano salesman from the article. :)
Except -- I wasn't pushing a piano at the cost of a family vacation. I was selling a $5 for three issues ($25 off cover) re-subscription to a computer magazine. Experiencing how hard it actually was to push this offer gave me quite a bit of faith in humanity. 5 our of 6 said no and hung up before I got through my scripted pitch.
There's a certain sentiment against sales here. But where is that anger when someone is talking about their latest A/B test here? An A/B test is a test to find out which of two alternatives is better to make a visitor do what we want that visitor to do. Since the need for the A/B test, we can conclude that the visitor doesn't take that action be default. Thus, we're doing this design to manipulate the visitor to take an action that's not in his best interest? Because if it was in the his best interest, he should be doing it anyway, without the optimization, right?
"But where is that anger when someone is talking about their latest A/B test here? An A/B test is a test to find out which of two alternatives is better to make a visitor do what we want that visitor to do. Since the need for the A/B test, we can conclude that the visitor doesn't take that action be default. "
If you do an A/B test you aren't actively disrupting me when I am doing things totally unrelated with what you are selling and impinging on my time. Telemarketing does.
With A/B testing at best you are trying to optimize your website (and indirectly and mostly unobtrusvely impinging the time and energy I choose to put into using your website). The difference is between trying to optimize layout in your store for when I do walk in vs calling me when I am playing with my children.
Telemarketers are active nuisances and in my (politically incorrect) opinion should be lined up against the nearest wall and shot out of hand.
What I'd pay money for is an Eliza like "voice bot", clever enough to waste telemarketers time to the point where the whole idea of telemarketing becomes economically infeasible.
I also once heard a stand up comedian, an immigrant to Canada with poor English, tell a story about how when telemarketers call he hands the phone to his children.
Once, by happy co-incidence, I had a telemarketer call at the same time a door-to-door salesman knocked. I just handed him the phone and said "Here, talk to this guy".
Yeah but remember like mail drops, telesales is a matter of numbers. We know that the success ratio is going to be shit but the labour is cheap and the gems are easily minable.
However if you're going to "sell a grand piano" your margin is higher and thus you can employ someone who has better sales techniques.
I agree that it is the same game as A/B techniques but there are degrees of viciousness at play here and the classic "piano salesman" is well towards the devious end.
> This is obviously a contrived example, because the real world don't lend itself well to the point he wants to make.
You don't say... I think it is an excellent analogy of the process that goes on between producers, salespeople and consumers.
> How do you objectively define the best interest of the "community / nation / world as a whole"?
That's a tricky one, but I suspect that the maximum by any definition does not include large amounts of funds spent by people on things that do not benefit them.
> caused in (a large) part by the political system (a democratic president and a republican house -- no-one gets away clean) deciding that is was in the best interest of the nation and its citizens is to lend a lot of money to a lot of people who couldn't really afford it to buy their own home.
There were many more 'actors' than just a few government officials in the US that together brought about the crisis, equally culpable are the people operating the banks, the people that took on mortgages that they knew up front they would not be able to pay for ('ninja' applicants), foreign banks buying up the debt packages etc.
The goals of sales people and producers are generally not aligned with the goals of consumers. In an ideal world all consumption would be 'pull'.
Consumers would be informed about the available products in a neutral way, would know about the ins and outs of all the products they could choose from and would have an idea of the long-term benefits of the products if purchased.
Clearly, we do not live in an ideal world.
Most consumption of 'primary needs goods' is still on 'pull' basis, at least it is in most parts of the world.
But even there advertising is shaping consumers decisions more and more. Branding and marketing are gaining a bigger foothold than ever before even when it comes to buying everyday needs items such as drinking water, bread, rice, clothing and so on.
For other goods 'regular consumption goods and luxury goods' the situation is even more extreme.
> That's circular. How do you define what objectively benefits someone?
It's not circular, it is recursive ;)
But the recursion bottoms out where you run out of funds to buy something that you really need. Most income spent on useless stuff (for instance to feed addictions) goes at the expense of a real need (for instance to feed or clothe children). By having individuals compete with companies that have meanwhile spent upwards of a century honing their skills we are creating a completely uneven battle.
Nobody is able to make their decisions about what they need with any degree of impartiality.
The best way to describe 'to benefit someone' is to say that their lives have a maximized sense of happiness.
So all other things being equal, if you buy the 'wrong' car because a salesman pushed it down your throat somehow then your happiness will not be as high as it would have been had you gone through with what would have been the most rational decision.
If you look for a definition of what is in the common best interest I would suggest you look everywhere but to your government, almost by definition it does not have the common best interest at heart. In theory it does, in practice I don't think there is a single government on earth that would be able to make that claim and withstand an investigation into the veracity of that claim.
Maybe I'm old and cynical, but where ever I've lived I did not have the feeling the government had my interests in general at heart.
There are a whole lot of people in this thread who don't seem to understand modern economics. Economics is the study of why people make choices: why they forgo one opportunity in favor of a different one.
These choices need not have anything to do with money. In Russell's example, it would seem that there was something about the (contrived) piano purchase that made the buyer prefer buying that piano to using the money for some the other possible choices. And per Mises, we really can't know what those reasons are. Maybe he's lazy and thinks the cost of thinking things through exceeds the monetary value of the piano. Perhaps it was worth more to the buyer to preserve his politeness and civility, rather than giving the salesman the bum's rush. Perhaps he genuinely values giving his daughter the musical education that the piano would enable.
But in a society that we like to claim is tolerant of all values, who are we to say that any of the buyer's values -- his motivations for making some choice -- are wrong in any objective way?
In the bigger picture, it's incorrect to think of transactions as "pushing" or "pulling". In a free market, every transaction is by definition both a push and a pull. Both parties believe that the net result is a net gain to their total utility. The farmer's got tons of wheat and all his capital is tied up in it; the family's cupboard is bare, and you can't eat dollars. Trading a pound of wheat for a couple of dollars is advantageous to both.
These problems of advantage for one side or the other occur in distorted markets where one side doesn't want to execute the transaction, but is coerced into doing so because it's necessary to continue their overall business.
But in a society that we like to claim is tolerant of all values, who are we to say that any of the buyer's values -- his motivations for making some choice -- are wrong in any objective way?
Well, in the extreme cases there are things that society agrees are wrong, such as murder, theft, etc. Whether or not those are objectively wrong is a topic of much discussion in philosophy classes but society in general agrees they are.
What we can often say objectively is that certain actions are detrimental to that person's stated goals. If your goal is to save enough to buy a new car with cash as quickly as feasible, then buying that piano at all is probably not smart, and doing so in the name of politness and civility is certainly contrary to his stated goal.
"But in a society that we like to claim is tolerant of all values, who are we to say that any of the buyer's values -- his motivations for making some choice -- are wrong in any objective way?"
If he regrets his decision, we're not judging him, but sympathizing with him. The salesman would have been more helpful to say, "I think what I'm offering is great. Here is all the information on it. Why don't you take some time to think it over?"
Then the man could take the time to separate his momentary emotions from his actual priorities. And he would be happier in the end.
Any salesman who is willing to do this earns my respect. There are salespeople who genuinely want to help their customers. The one described in this article does not.
> There are a whole lot of people in this thread who don't seem to understand modern economics.
The thread is mainly about marketing, not about economics, marketing changes the dynamics of why people make choices.
> Economics is the study of why people make choices: why they forgo one opportunity in favor of a different one.
Economics involves much more than that:
- production of goods
- logistics
- consumption
And plenty of people would include
- the services branch of commerce
- utilities
- government
> In Russell's example, it would seem that there was something about the (contrived) piano purchase that made the buyer prefer buying that piano to using the money for some the other possible choices.
Indeed, he valued the absence of the salesman more than his money.
> But in a society that we like to claim is tolerant of all values, who are we to say that any of the buyer's values -- his motivations for making some choice -- are wrong in any objective way?
Such as: Buying drugs ? Spending a lot of money to keep up with the Joneses ? (arms race on a small town level)
Teenagers spending a fortune on ringtones, phone applications ? (and they're buying this stuff on credit)
Some choices are simply objectively wrong. There are even some laws to protect consumers against this kind of thing, for instance in some countries if you buy something on-line you have a right to a refund within a certain period.
> The farmer's got tons of wheat and all his capital is tied up in it; the family's cupboard is bare, and you can't eat dollars. Trading a pound of wheat for a couple of dollars is advantageous to both.
The farmer is not 'pushing' his wares though, he makes them available at a fair price on a market. The family is free to buy their wheat from another farmer based on the objective criteria of quality, price and convenience. He's not going to go out of his way to try to get people to buy his produce at the expense of his neighbour.
Farmers are a particular bad example by the way, most individual farmers (at least those that I'm familiar with, there are probably plenty of counterexamples) are held by the throat by 'buying consortia' that consist of large supermarket chains. They set the price, not the sellers.
Hardly any consumers go and buy their food from the farmers directly, unless you live near a 'farmers market' in a rural area.
This is one reason why plenty of farmers go out of business, only to have their bankrupt farms bought up by fronts operated by those consortia.
Transactions on the free market have a 'middle ground', unfortunately the free market is an illusion, no transaction is completely free.
A 'free market' for instance assumes that parties do not collude.
> In an ideal world all consumption would be 'pull'.
I'm not sure that would be ideal. Well, yeah, sure -- but it's so abstract that it doesn't make sense. Even the simplest product has dozens of properties, which again are complicated to understand. There will always be some level of not understanding something, and then you fall back to rely on trusting someone, and that's the end of pure-to-the-core pull.
> Most consumption of 'primary needs goods' is still on 'pull' basis,
I don't agree. There has been advertising long before the ordinary consumer could afford anything luxurious. I'm talking about stuff like this: http://www.advertisingantiques.co.uk/
> But the recursion bottoms out where you run out of funds to buy something that you really need. (...) By having individuals compete with companies that have meanwhile spent upwards of a century honing their skills we are creating a completely uneven battle.
Never the less, in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases the individual wins that battle. When that doesn't happen, there are usually a general inability to prioritise resources behind it. And if it happens, if someone prioritises making a payment on a huge plasma TV rather than feeding their children, I would find it morally bankrupt to blame advertising for that failure.
> The best way to describe 'to benefit someone' is to say that their lives have a maximized sense of happiness (...) if you buy the 'wrong' car because a salesman pushed it down your throat
Sure, and that's fine on the individual level. On the other hand, most people are notoriously aware of especially car salesmen for exactly this reason. And sometime someone needs to get burned, that's how this awareness is kept alive. It's a feedback mechanism, and it's working fine. One of the reasons I bought my last (used) car from the guy I did, was that he insisted that I should take it to a third party mechanic to check it out before signing. The car I got was not the one I initially though I'd get. I'll never know if I'm happier or not (oh well, I'm happier, this one is faster :) ).
> I would suggest you look everywhere but to your government, almost by definition it does not have the common best interest at heart
I agree. My point, and basic premise, is that the greater common best interest can't be defined.
Obviously there are scammers out there, but the average advertisement/sale caters to the average consumer
If a person needs or even just wants a thing, then they just go out and buy it. The purpose of advertising is to persuade people to buy things they don't need and had no preexisting want for. The latter is the interesting case. Sometimes advertising can be used for good to inform people that new solutions to their problems are available, e.g. a new technology (no-one wanted say a microwave oven before they were invented). But often it's not.
He can provide for his family, but can't ... say "no, go away ..."? This is obviously a contrived example: sure, it's a contrived example; mostly the effect of advertising is more subtle than that. This is only a problem for Russell's piece if (1) he's claiming that his example is realistic and/or (2) the more subtle effect is usually in the other direction. I don't think either is true.
the average advertisement/sale caters to the average consumer: Very likely. I'm failing to see how you get from there to saying that those advertisers and salespeople aren't trying to make their targets sillier and stupider. Does being an "average consumer" somehow confer immunity to being fooled or manipulated?
than what? Than they would have been without the advertising, of course.
holier-than-thou: I'm wondering whether you mean by this something different from what I would. To me, calling someone h-t-t means saying that they think too highly of their own virtue; that they're either trying to promote themselves or criticizing other people for faults they have themselves. I don't see that in Russell's piece, nor in the attitude of other later people who dislike advertising. (Nor, in case this is what you mean, does it look to me as if Russell thinks that he himself has especially strong "sales resistance" or that he should be admired for it if so. Though I wouldn't call that "holier-than-thou" in this context even if he did.)
How do you objectively define ...: of course I don't, or at any rate I don't claim the ability to know for sure whether any particular action is going to work out well. But if that's a reason for never saying anything of the form "X seems to me not to be in Y's best interests", then I don't see how anyone can ever say anything of that form, and that seems like, well, rather a nuisance.
the current financial crisis is caused ...: you're talking about the Community Reinvestment Act, yes? If so, then I'm afraid you have been taken in by propaganda: (1) most subprime loans were not made by lenders subject to the CRA, and (2) CRA loans did not produce a whole lot of foreclosures. See, e.g., http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives... and the other things linked from there.
> sure, it's a contrived example; mostly the effect of advertising is more subtle than that. This is only a problem for Russell's piece if (1) he's claiming that his example is realistic
He may not claim that it's realistic, but on the other hand it's not exactly presented as fiction. My point is that I don't think he'd be able to arrive at the same conclusion without exaggerating like that, because the subtle effects of advertising doesn't have such damaging effect.
> (2) the more subtle effect is usually in the other direction.
What you're saying is that most people more often than not are influenced to make decisions that are not good for them or their families? I don't agree. Most consumers might make sub-optimal decisions (to the extend that it's even possible to define the optimal decision, which I don't agree it is) some of the time, but the question remains if there's any evidence at all that they'd make better decisions without advertising.
> Does being an "average consumer" somehow confer immunity to being fooled or manipulated?
No, but empirical evidence suggests that people at large don't systematically make bad decisions. Since the charge against advertising is that it causes that, my conclusion is that the average consumer isn't being fooled or manipulated on any significant scale.
> than what? Than they would have been without the advertising, of course.
I think advertising on a grand scale sharpens the awareness that there might be a better (for however you define better) solution for a problem you have than the one you're currently using.
> h-t-t
When someone claims that advertising makes consumers act against their own interest, they necessarily concluded that there is a better choice for the consumer in the given situation that the consumer should have picked over what he did, and that this lapse of reasoning was caused by advertising.
I do think that yes, that is thinking "too highly of their own virtue". I don't think anyone has any right to tell me that the good feeling I get from buying expensive brand-name clothes from a fancy store in a fancy location from a staff that "manipulates" me into feeling good about my purchase (case in point, the Ralph Lauren store in Georgetown, DC). I know I can get perfectly functional clothes cheaper other place, but I like the experience.
> But if that's a reason for never saying anything of the form "X seems to me not to be in Y's best interests", then I don't see how anyone can ever say anything of that form, and that seems like, well, rather a nuisance.
There's nothing wrong with saying that, but there's something wrong with picking a fight on behalf on someone else, saying that. And there's something wrong with legitimising reckless actions by blaming it on advertising.
> CRA
You may very well be right (even though the business week column isn't exactly unbiased). I don't have my facts sufficiently in order to debate that point.
What is your evidence that the subtle effects of advertising aren't harmful?
What you're saying is that most people more often than not are influenced to make decisions that are not good for them or their families? Yes. Not, of course, because every advertisement anyone ever sees is pushing them in a bad direction -- of course sometimes you'll see advertisements for something that really would benefit you -- but because the overall effect is bad. Seeing or hearing an advertisement does two things to you. (1) It provides you with some new information: such-and-such a product exists, you can get it in such-and-such a place, it has features X and Y and Z, it costs $P, etc. (2) It attempts to make you want to buy the product by other means besides merely informing you about it. It's an empirical question how these two balance out. Take a look at some advertisements, look at their actual information content, and see what you think the ratio between the two is: I reckon probably 10:1 in favour of those "other means". So, now, if I'm exposed to a bunch of advertisements then I get some extra information that helps me make a more informed choice, but I also get manipulated in ways that advertisers think effective enough to spend billions on. And it looks like there's much more of the latter than the former. Sometimes the manipulation will be towards things that really benefit me. Sometimes, not so much. There isn't likely to be much correlation between the manipulation and what's actually in my interests. (Actually, what would be needed for the ads to benefit me would be a correlation between the manipulation and the difference between what's in my interests and what I'd guess for myself without the ads. Very, very unlikely, I think.) So, basically I get a whole lot of noise injected into my decision-making process. Or, in other words, I get made sillier and stupider.
empirical evidence suggests that people at large don't systematically make bad decisions: I would be interested to see this empirical evidence of which you speak. I am skeptical of its existence.
advertising on a grand scale sharpens the awareness that there might be a better solution: yup, I expect it does, and that may be a benefit. It seems to me like a benefit that's heavily outweighed by the dangers of being made "aware" that something is a better solution when it actually isn't.
I do think that, yes, that is thinking "too highly of their own virtue": Well, that's very strange to me, since the thing you're describing in that way says precisely nothing at all about the virtue (or cleverness, or anything) of the perseon who's making the claim.
I don't think anyone has any right to tell me ...: Er, I wasn't suggesting that anyone should be complaining at you about the decisions you make. Nor that paying more money for brand-name clothes from fancy shops is a decision you shouldn't be making.
there's something wrong with picking a fight on behalf of someone else, saying that: Why? Here's a concrete counterexample (as it seems to me) that may help us work out where our disagreement is coming from. Consider someone engaged in outright fraud -- a 419 scammer, let's say. Suppose this person is new to the job but very good at what they do. At the moment they have hundreds of victims whom they're stringing along, bleeding money from; but all these victims are happy about what's being done to them because they expect to get rich. Now, suppose you discover this scam. Is it wrong for you to publicize it, and denounce the scammer to the police or other relevant authority? I say: no, of course it isn't, even though it involves picking a fight on the behalf of other people on the grounds that they're being fooled into doing something that isn't in their best interests. How about you?
legitimizing reckless actions by blaming advertising: Neither I nor Bertrand Russell (it's not often that one gets to say that...) is "legitimizing reckless actions" here, so far as I can see. And perhaps I'm being dim, but it seems to me that you're now making exactly the sort of complaint about what others do that you earlier called "holier-than-thou".
> the goal of (many) salespeople and advertisers is to make their targets sillier and stupider, and that's seldom in their interests or those of the community / nation / world as a whole.
Obviously there are scammers out there, but the average advertisement/sale caters to the average consumer, and by declaring that the actions of these consumers make them "sillier and stupider" (than what?) and that they don't act in their own interest or "those of the community / nation / world as a whole" is "holier-than-thou".
How do you objectively define the best interest of the "community / nation / world as a whole"? To take a very current example, the current financial crisis is caused in (a large) part by the political system (a democratic president and a republican house -- no-one gets away clean) deciding that is was in the best interest of the nation and its citizens is to lend a lot of money to a lot of people who couldn't really afford it to buy their own home.