I was going to quote for context, but the exchange above is pretty convoluted. I’ll try to make this clear.
Yes, and obviously, I used a provocative comparison that’s on the edge of being offensive, but it was with a purpose, and at least two of you got it. That’s around a 100% improvement from most exchanges. 
Trinopus nailed my point about the comparison between someone of limited mental capacity being happy with an exchange that someone of more average intelligence might find unequal, or unfair, or even a scam. If I can skip over a lot of steps: exactly when does an exchange become “fair” to both parties? Exactly how “equal” does an exchange have to be to not be a scam? And in that equality, where is the connection (or division) between straight-up economic “fairness” and other levels of evaluation? I find it frustrating that so many people are willing to define “scam” and “fairness” purely on an economic basis, when that’s only one facet of most exchanges.
Consider this: your sweet but intellectually-limited sister comes into my store and I sell her something for $10 that most people would buy for the same amount… but it’s something for which she has no conceivable use, and I sold it to her because it happened to be pretty and pink and have a shiny tag on it. Scam? No?
I guess you could say that if she came into my store and saw that pretty pink thing every day and finally decided she had to have it, despite it being of less use than a two-handled quilt folder, that she had convinced herself and all limitations aside, it’s her $10 bill and now she has something she adores. Scam? I think you’d have to dig into some sublevels about marketing appropriateness, but we’ll let it pass.
Ratchet it up: suppose every day when she came in, I told her how happy she would be with the pink thing, something she might never have noticed or considered had I not pestered and reminded and suggested and planted the idea of owning it in her mind. Did I scam her? I’d say yes. But it’s still quite “fair” because it’s a $10 item I sold her for $10, right?
If you truly believe you’re immune to marketing forces, there’s not much more to say in this narrow channel. It’s a common belief and it’s even fostered by many stripes of advertising that tell you what a strong, independent-thinking, smart and thrifty person you are. But there are tens of thousands of papers in behavioral psych, marketing and the collateral fields that repeatedly and universally show this belief is bullshit - of course you’re affected by the endless onslaught of buy, buy, buy. (The most advanced work in the area is done by marketing firms and divisions and often published, if at all, many years after the effective aspects have either been integrated into campaigns or exhausted.)
So let’s jump to the end: if you sincerely believe that 25-30 years of exposure to intense, universal marketing for bottled water has had no effect on your choices of what you drink - from choosing water at all when it’s just one choice to buying specific brand names over others… if you sincerely believe you buy water for reasons that are completely uninfluenced not only by CoCoCo’s specific ads for the wonderment that is Dasani, but by the full-court-press of ALL advertising for branded water… okay. In a world of people who have been endlessly bitch-slapped into a form of intellectual misperception, $2 for an ice-cold Dasani or whatever probably makes you happy and feeling not in the least scammed. (That exposure is probably an entire adult/aware life for many of you; some of us can remember a world in which brand-name water was a joke.)
But if you stand outside the zone of those who consider advertising/marketing to be of no personal influence, that $2 transaction, repeated millions of times a day against demonstrable economic and nutrition sense… it’s pretty hard to tell your grin from your sister’s as she eats that $100 candy bar.
My position is not about bottled water. Every time I speak up in one of these threads about some individual product, there’s a contingent that goes all tapdance (here and elsewhere) about the idiot who can get so worked up over Fuck Me, It’s JUST BOTTLED WATER. For the record, I don’t have any one product I have a particular interest in - water, Nutella, potato chips, iPods, anything. I comment on what passes through here (and, as I’ve tried to say, I have learned that threads that spread from, say, Nutella to global economics are pretty much a waste of time).
My “hangup” is all of consumer economics - from convenience stores to global exchange. My view of most levels of it is radical. When confined to a discussion about, say, bottled water, it’s easy to pull it into nonsensical areas, just as it is with any discussion about one small part of a whole. (“Who cares what MP3 player you install - it’s just a Corolla!”)
So.
To whatever extent you think you might need to sit down with your sister and explain why she should make some better choices and use more sense and caution about dealing with sellers… that’s precisely where I stand with respect to the larger mass of Mah Fellow Americans. I think it’s plainly evident that you (we) are being scammed, on more levels and from more directions than the average person can conceive. I think it’s evident that some great majority of us have been conditioned into believing that $100 candy bar is not just a great deal, but truly essential for happiness.
I think there’s a better way; that it’s within each individual’s grasp should they choose to grasp it; I think a growing percentage of individuals and families who grasp a better understanding of how marketing drives our life choices (all of them) and learn to resist this influence can only lead to a better world, one person or family at a time.
If you think I’m a horse’s ass, you’re free to ignore me. I won’t bother you. Beyond introductory comments, I speak only to those who indicate an interest in listening.
If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them - but subject to the caveat I’ve learned in 30 years online: one topic, more or less, per thread.
If this is TL;DR, I can offer no help. Some arguments can’t be encapsulated in a few sentences, and the more I try to keep my comments on this meta-topic concise, the more confused (and enraged) the participants seem to get. So it’s long-form or nothin’. (And I’m good with nothin’; my participation here is a hobby, not a career.)
