Re: Financing of media. 94 04:42:40 am

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Trond says,
>Just to make myself clear: The drug analogy about the effects of
>advertising as the main source for financing of media was NOT to imply
>that advertising is "addictive", whatever that could mean.
>
>It was to imply that advertising-dependent media impairs the function
>of society's "collective brain" in the same way that drugs do for an
>individual.
>
	This is how I understood you, Trond. I still don't believe it.
Actually, I used to have debates with John Kenneth Galbraith over this
issue--he is a big fan of this position. He argues that where there is
a lot of advertizing, people opt for _private_ as opposed to _public_
consumption. I wrote a critique of that position in 1972 (yes, I was
alive then) in the American Economic Association Proceedings, called
"Consumer Sovereignty and American Capitalism" (or something like
that). I argued that consumption is the only thing capitalism really
gives people (as opposed to meaningful work and communities, etc.),
and we shouldn't critique capitalism for 'delivering the goods' in
this area (this was also a mistake of Herbert Marcuse, IMO).

Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx