^^^^^ this. Mind control is the central definition of unethical. Even under an oppressive regime you can sing Die gedanken sind frei.
If they can take your thoughts feelings and intentions away from you, you aren’t you any more.
We all know how addictive drugs can be, people are often refered to as being powerless over an addiction. If someone has found a way to stimulate us in the right way we do become powerless to a weak extent, if we recognize what happening it is easier to reclaim our own will.
“Control” doesn’t require absolute and irresistible power. A gentle breeze, if steady and persistent, can move giant ships thousands of miles. It takes strength and awareness to counteract it, no matter how light the touch (and saying advertisers and marketers are heavy handed is an understatement).
It’s a tax. Or an externality, if you will. Some of us can resist some of the time, but none of us all of the time. And some of us are hopelessly and totally fucked by it. Pervasive and persistent psychological manipulation is not benevolent not matter how much money people can make from if. It’s like mining brains.
Advertising is (and rightly should be) quite heavily regulated. But outlawed?
Do you hate/fear the Geico Gecko that much?
So are these benign statements “mind control?”
“You should try this brand of coffee. It has a nice, rich, full, deep flavor.”
“Come visit the museum! Our admission is 50% off today.”
“Consider applying to our engineering program. There’s high demand for engineers and we offer generous scholarships.”
“Our automobiles get 45 miles per gallon and come with a five-year warranty. Come check them out.”
Thats a much different example. " look how sexy this lady is, look how sexy the guys chasing her are, she smokes x ciggerette" Maybe something like this could have a controlling effect on some if it hit the right buttons when they lit up.
Of various degrees. My general rule is that if NPR can play it (they call it “underwriting” when nonprofits do it) it’s okay. Purely informative.
“Bill’s Shoes. 123 Main St. Selling men’s and women’s shoes, boots, and sandals since 1969”. That sort of thing.
Once they start getting persuasive, it’s a gradual escalation from “you should do this” to “this is the best” to “hot young women will jump into your bed” to even scummier, insidious tactics, all the way to legal fraud and extortion. My opinion is that it is all negative, but of course some are less bad than others. There are degrees of unethicality.
But the words I used are the sort of phrases advertisements often use.
They’re all persuasive. Sales, marketing tactics (such as mentioning how engineers are in high demand without reminding people that past or current trends are no guarantee of future demand), misleading slogans like “buy one get one free”, are just playing mind games with people. On purpose. For money.
Richard Feynman said once that scientists need to kind of bend over backwards to show all the possible ways they could be wrong. Just refraining from outright deception isn’t enough. I think that’s a fair standard to hold businesses accountable to.
Not to mention governments of the people and for the people.
Uh, I don’t know which stores you visit, but “buy-one-get-one-free” is often true, especially at small family-owned businesses.
Is mind control ethical? Who cares? First World problem. If I could do it, you’d better believe you’d suddenly find yourselves doing some pretty unexplainable things.
Mind control become a factor when we start to identify with people, places or ideology. Once our identity becomes linked we give up some level of control. This is well understould by any one with manipulative skills. There are strong addictive narcotics that come into play, most of us are in denial about this.
It’s a contradiction in terms. Buying something by definition means it isn’t free. “Two for what until recently was the price of one” is more honest. Just charging the same sustainable price every day is even more honest, minus occasional price adjustments to align with the market.
The scummiest thing about sales pricing in general is people think they’re getting a good deal – when really the sale just illustrates that they’ve been getting screwed the rest of the time. Does anybody doubt people are manipulated into spending more than they otherwise would through these tactics?