# "Is Advertising Morally Justifiable?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 20, 2015, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672 "2015-07-20T07:48:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/1 "2015-07-20T07:48:14Z")
That’s the title of [this article](http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/07/14/4273200.htm), as discussed in [this Slashdot post](http://slashdot.org/story/15/07/19/2031220/is-advertising-morally-justifiable-the-importance-of-protecting-our-attention). > [@Thomas Wells](#): > > Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted. Two problems result from this. The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention. First, advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties. Second, you may have noticed that the world’s fisheries are not in great shape. They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource. Expensively trained human attention is the fuel of twenty-first century capitalism. We are allowing a single industry to slash and burn vast amounts of this productive resource in search of a quick buck. The title is, as you can expect, a popular thesis, as a perusal of the commentary on the linked thread will tell you. However, I’m kind of skeptical about the angle Wells seems to be taking based on the quote provided. Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/2 "2015-07-20T08:40:44Z")
Seems to me a silly discussion made worse by false analogies. It seems like he is confusing marketing with advertising. Oh…the author is a philosopher. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/3 "2015-07-20T11:12:55Z")
Attention isn’t a commodity resource like fish or gold. From the outset this thesis fails. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/4 "2015-07-20T11:47:09Z")
It seems patently ridiculous. As MrDibble correctly observes, our attention is not a commodity like fish or gold. > [@Thomas Wells](#): > > Our right to preserve our own attention and to make our own decisions about how we spend it and with whom our personal information is shared must become part of the political agenda. We need a legal and policy response to the market failures of the advertising industry, and we need it soon. This isn’t just about advertising it’s about speech in general. Doesn’t some guy standing on his soapbox at the park railing about the evils of capitalism, the state, and public restrooms segregated by sex also violate my right to my own attention making it impossible for me to decide how to spend it? ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/5 "2015-07-20T11:49:34Z")
well, just think about how much stuff you have in your house that you don’t need ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/6 "2015-07-20T11:54:16Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Attention isn’t a commodity resource like fish or gold. From the outset this thesis fails. If attention is not a commodity then why do they spend a million dollars per as in the superbowl? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/7 "2015-07-20T12:24:41Z")
Advertising is the monster’s shadow. Far too much time and invective and “opposition” is wasted against it. And, it’s often used for just that purpose, as something of a stalking horse, to deflect and defuse more significant attention. You can throw punches at it all day and only end up feeding the marketing campaign behind it. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/8 "2015-07-20T12:38:58Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Advertising is the monster’s shadow. Far too much time and invective and “opposition” is wasted against it. And, it’s often used for just that purpose, as something of a stalking horse, to deflect and defuse more significant attention. You can throw punches at it all day and only end up feeding the marketing campaign behind it. please explain that in a little more simpler terms ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/9 "2015-07-20T12:59:28Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > please explain that in a little more simpler terms Advertising is only one facet of marketing. (That’s as simple as I can make it.) It’s the most \*visible \*facet for most people, but to make the assumption that advertising\<\>marketing is to miss the forest for the kudzu growing all over it. Advertising is an important component of marketing, but not so important that a campaign can’t omit it and still have a successful outcome (admittedly, that’s a selective situation, but it does illustrate that ads are not the whole of product promotion). For a number of major campaigns - and to make it clear, I am not talking about local grocery store, business-to-business product or regional product ads, but the major national-brand, flagship-product campaigns - the advertising can be used as much to mask the rest of the promotional effort as to support it directly. Particularly if a product is controversial, questionable or has detractors (e.g., Greenies hate Swiffers), using the ads to self-mock or draw attention to some minor debatable point makes them just as effective at promoting the brand and product, but lets the other facets of the marketing campaign proceed with little opposition or consumer backlash. That is, those Greenies will scream and yell at P&G for their Swiffer ads, but they won’t boycott all the local stores with the end-cap promotions of the product. This is why “anti-advertising” efforts all fall somewhere between useless and counterproductive, with “laughable” sprinkled across the spectrum. Except from a beautification standpoint or very select product bans (say, not allowing a strip-club billboard overlooking a school), being “anti-advertising” almost always means those kindly, well-intended folks have been lured into a snipe hunt. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/10 "2015-07-20T13:24:53Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > that was a really good, even if i still didn’t understand half of it I liked hearing you explain it… > This is why “anti-advertising” efforts all fall somewhere between useless and counterproductive, with “laughable” sprinkled across the spectrum. Yeah, I agree, we can’t escape it. No denying that. But just as a thought experience I wonder (please don’t yell at me for sounding like a hippy)… I wonder, if you lived in a cabin by the river and caught fish and carried water to your cabin where you raised goats and chickens (kept safe by your German Sheppard), you hunted deer, turkey, squirrels, anything that moved and had meat on it’s bones… you also chop wood and raise a garden… don’t you think you’d have a lot more piece of mind? A set of Encyclopedias, the 100 greatest books collection, a radio with batteries… pick up a new book to read every month from the library on your trip into town… I really do wish I could go back and live like that but I don’t know if I could give it all up. It seems we are stuck with advertising and trends and superficiality and new good things, truly good things, emerging all the time. I think you are right it is one way or the other with little in between. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/11 "2015-07-20T13:31:31Z")
Um, well, thanks. 🙂 I don’t think the choice is between living amid advertising and hiding out in the woods somewhere. But learning to “walk placidly among the noise and haste”\* is a skill to be cultivated… and then, more importantly, built upon. - Which, as _everyone knows_, was written in 1692… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/12 "2015-07-20T13:32:10Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > If attention is not a commodity then why do they spend a million dollars per as in the superbowl? Since there’s no substance to what \*\*MrDibble \*\*said, just a naked assertion, it’s not really clear if \*\*MrDibble \*\* doesn’t realize that it’s a metaphor, not a literal comparison, or if he gets it and disagrees for unstated reasons. It’s a pretty reasonable metaphor for any definition of commodity short of a finance-based definition involving trading. The author doesn’t get much past making that analogy though before he stops making sense - neither of the two problems he brings up make any sense. 1) The overwhelming majority of advertising both comes with our permission and compensates us for our attention. More importantly, the few types of advertising we don’t/can’t consent to are by far the least intrusive - billboards, signs on buses, etc. Actually annoying things like television commercials and magazine ads and internet ads are all easily avoidable by people not consenting to sell their attention for awesome tv shows, great articles and fabulous Web sites. His 2nd problem was “you might have noticed fisheries are doing poorly” which is so far from a problem with advertising that you’d have to meet him way more than half way for it to make any sense. Personally I think in spite of all the increases in how closely tracked we can be, advertising has gotten significantly better from an individual’s day to day perspective. I dislike advertising in my life and it’s pretty much a golden era for me - I get my television and movies from ad-free options like Netflix and Amazon Instant View, I can pay a premium to not hear ads on Pandora and Spotify. Great alternatives to ads that generally didn’t exist 20 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/13 "2015-07-20T13:52:27Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > The overwhelming majority of advertising both comes with our permission and compensates us for our attention. Er… how? ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/14 "2015-07-20T13:57:18Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Um, well, thanks. 🙂 > > I don’t think the choice is between living amid advertising and hiding out in the woods somewhere. But learning to “walk placidly among the noise and haste”\* is a skill to be cultivated… and then, more importantly, built upon. > > - Which, as _everyone knows_, was written in 1692… 😃 well, perhaps that is a discussion for another day… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/15 "2015-07-20T14:02:59Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Er… how? Did you stop reading? [QUOTE=Fuzzy Dunlop] …sell their attention for awesome tv shows, great articles and fabulous Web sites [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/16 "2015-07-20T14:03:21Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Er… how? How often have you been forced to watch television commercials against your will and without ever seeing the show you wanted to watch? Just 30 minutes of straight commercials followed by black. Or when was the last time you were marched into a movie theater and they played 30 minutes of previews and then the lights came on and they let you go? Do you spend a lot of time on sites with endless Web ads and absolutely no content? All of those advertisements would be non-consensual and without any compensation, just like driving down the highway and being forced to look at a billboard. The only real world difference is that bill boards actually happen and all my examples have never happened. The most disturbing ads happen to us when we’re actively engaged in something we voluntarily chose to enjoy and presumably consider somewhat compensatory or we wouldn’t put up with the ads. Like I said in my last post, if you really dislike ads you can opt out of a really high proportion just by paying a premium and possibly limiting your consumption options only ever so slightly. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/17 "2015-07-20T14:10:34Z")
Sorry, I guess I should have highlighted what I meant. I’ll… accept the “consensual” part, for argument’s sake. I am not at all clear what you mean by “compensates us,” though. I also applaud the new options for reducing ad traffic by paying a premium, which so far has been a very modest amount. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/18 "2015-07-20T14:17:07Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > Yeah, I agree, we can’t escape it. No denying that. But just as a thought experience I wonder (please don’t yell at me for sounding like a hippy)… I wonder, if you lived in a cabin by the river and caught fish and carried water to your cabin where you raised goats and chickens (kept safe by your German Sheppard), you hunted deer, turkey, squirrels, anything that moved and had meat on it’s bones… you also chop wood and raise a garden… don’t you think you’d have a lot more piece of mind? Trying to do this n a world with _7B people_, all doing the same thing? No, I wouldn’t have much piece of mind at all. > [@](#): > > well, just think about how much stuff you have in your house that you don’t need It’s a good thing that we’re not at a place where no one has anything more than their bare necessities. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/19 "2015-07-20T14:38:35Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s a good thing that we’re not at a place where no one has anything more than their bare necessities. Some balance maybe? I’ve moved twice in the past two years. I have 20 or 30 boxes full of stuff I haven’t even opened or wanted to open that whole time. Well lets says out of 30 Boxes there were 5 that I needed/actually wanted to keep. I’m not saying we don’t need STUFF. I’m saying we don’t need ALL THIS STUFF. That is a fundamental difference. You and I John see things differently on almost everything but science, and I’m a novice at science where as you know a lot. I’m just wondering, I’m sure we are going to disagree (maybe we won’t) but do we really really need ALL THIS STUFF? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672/20 "2015-07-20T14:43:49Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Trying to do this n a world with _7B people_, all doing the same thing? No, I wouldn’t have much piece of mind at all. The one small flaw with most naive greenie/BTTL scenarios. 🙂 > [@](#): > > It’s a good thing that we’re not at a place where no one has anything more than their bare necessities. I’d concur, but as R163 says, maybe there is a different - better - balance point. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-advertising-morally-justifiable/725672.md?page=2)