How could we reorganize the economy to eliminate unnecessary work, like most advertising, for example, and then divide up the necessary work so that we could all work three day weeks, have two months vacation, and retire at fifty? Assume we have complete power to reorganize the economy. Feel free to abolish the mergers and aquisitions “industry”, for example.
Who gets to decide what is necessary, and why do you assume that advertising isn’t? Should developers of new products simply toss them on the shelves and be expected to compete with long-entrenched brand names in the industry?
In the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” didn’t they simply send them to colonize another planet, saying we’ll be on the next wave of ships right behind ya.
Assuming I have complete benevolent ahem dictatorial power, the lawyers go first.
We could find out about new products by:
- seeing them in stores
- reading about them in publications like “Consumer Reports”
- having friends tell us about new products
- having more disposable income with which to try these products, since their price won’t be jacked up by advertising
- by their labels proclaiming that they won “Best Hot Sauce” awards or such
Of course, that assumes
- that the new product is of any worth
- that it really is new
- that new products depend on ads (start-up companies may not have the money to advertise)
- that advertising really presents information of worth
Certainly, many good products survive without much in the way of ads. I am a hot sauce junkie, and can think of few suaces that advertise (outside of a couple of the mainstream ones). Ditto for many microbrews, Scotches, etc.
Bucky
Bucky,
A great many people don’t read Consumer Reports. Hell, a great many people don’t * read *, period. They are the people that see a detergent advertised on TV and buy the product that had the snazziest, catchiest ad. I don’t think that advertisers are necessarily interested in the people that actually research the product before they buy. It’s the impulse buyer that brings home the bacon. It’s the woman who goes into the store and as she stares at the rack of paper towels, remembers the commercial she saw last night, and tosses it in her basket.
The idea of proclaiming an award on the packaging won’t work because, frankly, a lot of products out there are mediocre at best, and undeserving of an award.
In a market with so many products, name-recognition is ESSENTIAL. Let’s look at bleach, for example. Unless it’s a color-safe bleach, or a specialty product, all liquid bleach is chemically the same. Clorox advertises simply to get the brand recognition, knowing that the average consumer will trust a product that they’ve heard of more than some random brand, even though the product is exactly the same as the competitor’s.
I see your point that less advertising would mean less cost to the consumer, but remember that people sometimes have a distrust of “cheapness.” If Blammo is three bucks cheaper than Tide, some people will still edge toward Tide because it’s a name they recognise, and Blammo can’t be all that good if it’s so cheap.
When it comes to scotch and other hard liquors, they’re already ham-stringed in the advertising world because they’re not allowed to advertise on television. Microbrews aren’t generally distributed nationwide, and that’s why you see less advertising for them. They count on impulse buying, seeing the product in a bar, etc.
So, advertising is necessary work, to a point. After all, who would sponsor television programs if there were no commercials?
Dividing the work amongst all people would be disasterous, really. It would mean lower wages because there are more people in the job market. There are only so many resources to go around, and, unfortunately, that means some people are going to end up with substantially less than others. The idea of splitting up all of the jobs equally looks nice on paper, but it wouldn’t work in reality. There’s not enough “real work” to go around.
Galen - Restructuring organizations from both the private and public sectors has been a “hot” trend since the late Eighties. I went through one such “reorganization” (this became a 4-letter word quite quickly, spoken in whispers in cubicles at this monstor Health Insurance Company.
If you’ve seen the ultra-hilarious, and much under-publicized (a shame) movie Office Space, you’ll see a characterization of this “restructuring” phenomenon.
Efficiency experts sweep into the company, talk to the employees, have them log all the tasks that they perform throughout the day. Then, after all the data is in, they work to eliminating unnecessary steps in the workflow. Cutting out middle-management is one of the most common results of a reorganization.
To answer your questions, you could hire efficiency experts to reorganize every company, and every task that is done in the world. Streamline the world.
Get started, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Anything’s possible. Dream the impossible dream.
How could we all get three day work weeks? There are some jobs which require round the clock attention. Or are you saying hire more people so that some people work 3.5 days, and the others work the other 3.5 days?
We don’t need to restructure anything. Just pass a law stating no one is allowed to work more than three days in a week. Things will get done very slowly, but so what?
PeeQueue
P.S. Just in case - I was joking.
Well, first off this is a pretty stupid concept to debate, since barring the use of powerful magic, the restructuring and the enforcing of it would probably drain from the economy whatever marginal gains are made from this new efficiency. The way I would structure society to gain the most in terms of economic efficiency would be to bar the government (and everyone in the country as well) from initiating force or fraud against people.
Basically, what is needed is a system where everyone is free to pursue efficiency as he or she sees fit. Advertising, as Phil pointed out, actually serves a purpose in the economy. So do lawyers. Just how else do you propose to settle legal disputes, arm wreslting? Government programs, especially with regard to farmers, burden the economy with huge inefficiencies, and cost huge sums of money to do so. And if I were smart and invested the chunk of my paycheck that goes into Social Security on my own, I could retire at fifty-five, not that I have any intention to stop working before I’m physically unable to continue.
The best way that I can see to do it is to revert back to hunter-gatherer days. Of course we will have to kill off a bunch of people before we can do it (enviromental stress of even the mildest kind will interupt that balance). Sure we won’t have nifty things like health care, but who cares!
a) Contrary to the OP’s assumptions, both Advertising and Mergers and Acquisitions work are valuable for society. Advertising is communication, pure and simple. M&A is the market creating efficiencies.
b) Some of us don’t view work as a bad thing. Some of us view work as a vehicle to improve our own quality of life and the quality of life of our society. Those of us that think this way consider people who dream of a world with 3 day work weeks, 2 month vacations and early retirement as deadweight.
Yes.
…aaaaaye don-wanna work! i jus wanna bang on the drum all day…
Yes. Then a few years later, all of the remaining “valuable” population died from ear infections thanks to unsanitized phones, since they had shipped off all the phone sanitizers. Makes you think, doesn’t it? No, not really.