Re: Remember the Housing "Bubble"?


"David Friedman" <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ddfr-62FF40.11271810042007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <ZZSdneREcq-FT4bbnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Dave O'Neill" <daveon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm not arguing that the sellers are trying to get the consumers to buy
things that are good for them, whether or not the consumers want to.
I'm
arguing that the sellers are trying to get the consumers to buy things,
and to do so they produce things that consumers want to buy--which
sometimes means unhealthy food.

I think you're being naive in way your are interpting cause and effect
here.
It goes beyond the production of things consumers want to buy, because,
like
with cigarettes, they have deliberately increased the "unhealthy" factor
to
make people crave the things more.

I don't see the distinction. What's the difference between what you
write and "People want food with unhealthy factors that taste good, so
producers produce and market food like that?" Obviously giving products
the characteristics that consumers want is deliberate--aren't you just
complaining about the fact that in this case you think what people want
isn't what is good for them?

I'm complaining about deliberately and consciously making things worse than
they need to be and then cynically targeting your audience with the
knowledge that this is what you are doing.

If you don't have a problem with that, then I'm at something of a loss.

Its less capricious than nicotine
because fats, sugars and salts are not actually adictive, as such.
However,
adding salt makes things taste better, so people think it tastes good.

Or in other words, salt makes things taste good so people think it
tastes good. That doesn't seem surprising

No, but you don't see a problem there?

There are several examples in common bread and cereal products where the
producers have added salt to an unhealthy point to get people to buy.

Likewise with adding sugars that we can't easily metabolise because they
are
cheaper and have a faster "rush" for the person. Yes, its about getting
people to buy, but its more cynical than merely wanting to make a good
product.

Where did I say "a good product?" I said they want to create products
that people want, and in the case of food we are designed to want things
some of which are not, in this environment, good for us. You have been
complaining that you think I am distorting your position,

Some of my positions yes.

but so far as
I can tell in this post you are offering things consistent with my
position as evidence against it.

You don't seem to have any issues with this kind of behavior and seem to me
to be saying its what any good business would do and its not an issue. I
consider that to be a pretty naive attitude about business myself, and a
fairly "cold", for want of a better word, position to take.

My issue is the food companies know what they are doing, they are deliberate
about it and they'll continue to do it until something external forces them
to change. In the UK the government have forced them to reduce salt content
and label food better. The food companies didn't do this themselves because
they had no business need to do so, and didn't want to.

You seem to have no issue with business as usual being the norm and I do.

Incidentally, wouldn't difficult to metabolize result in a slower rush,
not a faster one?

How the body handles sugar in the stomach and then how it gets it out of the
blood are separate. It is certainly one of the factors linked to the
increase in Inulsin resistance in humans.

Sometimes the choices are good, sometimes they are bad. Note that the
problems you describe would exist with no marketing at all--do exist in
poorer societies elsewhere in the world where there is a lot less
advertising.

In my view, leaving decisions to individual choice doesn't result in a
perfect outcome, but it does better than the alternative of giving A
the
power to choose for B in what A claims is B's benefit--because B also
might be wrong, and has less reason to care about whether his choice
actually benefits B. Also, of course, good reason to care whether it
benefits A.

One partial exception is parents choosing for their children, since
parents are more likely to care about their kids welfare than a random
adult is to care about another adult's welfare and children, especially
young children, are particularly badly qualified to make choices.

Why don't they advertise tabaco products anymore?

Because it's illegal.

Why is it illegal?

Because a majority in Congress voted to make it illegal.

In other words, the argument I think you are implying--the fact that
it's illegal shows it should be illegal--isn't one I agree with. Nor, I
suspect, would you in some other contexts.

No, I'm asking why it is illegal, not how it was made illegal.

Under your previous arguments, if something is something people want and can
be sold, then it should be.

So why not let Tobaco companies advertise and sell to school children? I
can guarentee they'd have a terrific hit rate and people would love the
product. So if we let them do that with food that can ultimately kill you,
why not another product?

People want it, the companies can sell it. Under your argument why is this
a problem?

... (about diet coke)

More precisely, it's targeting the people likely to value its
characteristics--which is what I was arguing above.

That's not quite what I thought you were arguing. I am arguing that
marketing and advertising is good at targeting audiences.

Yes. And I am arguing that you sell stuff by figuring out what a
particular set of people will want, producing it, and then trying to
persuade that set of people to buy it.

Kids aren't all that
interested in being thin and attractive to members of the opposite sex.

So you agree that they are not advertising diet coke for kids then?

I'm happy to take your word for it--as I said, I don't own a television
so don't have a lot of first hand data.

So you don't see the problems with this? Vis-a-vie my original comments
about coke (not diet coke) machines in schools, you countered with the idea
that they had a substantial diet coke market, which they do, but the markets
are not aligned, nor are they really trying to.

I think it has more to do with psycology and how kids and, for that
matter,
adults minds work.

People are actually really bad at making their own judgements about
things
including what is good for them and what constitutes risk.

Let me see if I can summarize what seems to me to be my central point in
the underlying argument:

We both agree that people are imperfect decision makers. We probably
both agree--perhaps you don't--that most people are more interested in
their own welfare than that of someone else, with a few narrow
exceptions such as parents wrt their children or people in love wrt the
person they are in love with.

I think people believe they are interested in their own welfare but we could
debate what that actually means and how it manifests itself.

It follows that there are inherent conflicts--I would like to have you
do things that are in my interest, you would like to have me do things
that are in your interest.

I think this is a slight simplification, because of the issue of how that
interacts with the interests of businesses and organisations and how they
cross over with individuals.

What is good for my company might not actually be in the interests of many
of my employees, for example.

It seems to me that the obvious conclusion is that people should be
limited to voluntary transactions as ways of getting other people to do
what they want. I can make you an offer. I can try to persuade you. I
can even try to persuade you with dishonest arguments, which is, I
think, your complaint about marketing. But if I can't persuade you to do
what I want, you don't do it.

I think you have a naive view of how this relationship actually works.

You, I think, want to substitute for that conclusion the conclusion that
some people should be able to make decisions for others and force those
others to go along with them--for their own good. Or at least, you
think--if I correctly interpret you--that A should be allowed to prevent
B from making arguments to C, for instance advertisers trying to
persuade people to buy their products. That makes perfectly good sense
if we could rely on A to want to consistently act in the interest of C,
or if we had some mechanisms for reliably making it in the interest of A
to consistently so act, but so far as I can tell we don't.

I think there are other over-riding concerns which have to come into play to
avoid tragies of the commons or other externalising factors which
individuals, or companies frankly don't care about.

A confectionary company having huge success in targetting kids for a high
fat, high sugar snack that is really popular doesn't have much interest in
Type 2 Diabetes as long at the instances of the disease are not
significantly impacting the sales, its not their problem. It becomes a
problem for other people, so how do you handle the conflicts of interest
there?

None of the alternatives results in people always making the right
choices. You can argue that people aren't "really choosing"--but then
you ought to conclude that they aren't really choosing their rulers
either, since the individual is in a much better position to evaluate
goods he buys and uses than politicians he elects and has a much
stronger incentive to do so, since in the case of the goods but not the
politicians his individual choice determines what he gets.

But often governments do actually make correct decisions, otherwise I don't
see why we should have stopped advertising cigarettes.

Dave


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