You would be surprised about what I know.
Yep.
Companies market over the long term in order to raise consumer brand awareness over the long term: if consumers later remember that the company makes something that they want, then they might buy it from that company. If the companies can actually make a few consumers want their products right then and there, then great, but those immediate extra sales won't cover the price of advertisement and as such are not the primary goal of advertisement.
Brand awareness? immediate sales? primary advertisement goals?
Dux, people are pretty simple things. If left alone, they tend to like things like food, sleep, sex, socializing, and quirky stuff that resonates with their own psychology.
If you advertise to them, you get large groups of people tricked into thinking that their life depends on them having the latest gadgets (that are expensive), a small dog in a handbag (like that fake chick on tv - where it poops, nobody says), plastic surgery etc etc in short, unnatural things.
It isn't a coincidence that the US corporations are very rich, while americans are the most unhappy population in any western nation.
That does kind of tend to happen when peoples minds are messed up with BS from people trying to sell them stuff.
The US population does nothing when the government lies to your face/steals from you, but it will trample people to death in black friday sales to save 25% on some imported plastic piece of junk.
"Devastating," how? Shoppers will only buy so many dollars worth of food; otherwise--that is to say, if your assertion were correct--they'd be hauling it out by the truckload after hearing a jingle. The "devastating" aspect of what supermarkets do applies to their operating costs: the "awesome display of statistics, psychology, economics, and logistics" is there to make sure that as little inventory as possible goes to waste and that the profit per unit of product sold is high.
Again, you're being naive.
Much of the food sold in the US isn't really food. It's filler with a nice taste, that came in an appealing looking box.
You think that the health problems and obesity endemic in the population happened by random chance?
You are what you eat. What is sold is garbage, produced at minimum expense, for maximum profit. When the box and the advertising cost more than the food inside, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you have problems.
You're presupposing the truth of your thesis to make your argument: business needn't be malicious. For example, just two months ago, my father warned my mother about the long hours (10-12 hours a day, five to six days a week) that she worked to pay her secretary's generous salary and bonuses. And, to my knowledge, she sees patients whose tiny, state-run insurance keeps them from other doctors' doors.
Needn't be. But it is.
Look up something called "group theory". In short, group theory means that in a large social group, it only takes a few individuals to mess everything up.
In the business world, unscrupulous, abusive, or psychopathic people have an advantage over those who are not, which results in business being overrun by lunatics, psychopaths, and generally crappy people who do crappy things.
I'm sure your parents are great people, but they're in the minority. Most of the money is made by the Halliburtons of the world, who are happy to sell things that kill babies, so long as their bottom line goes up.
If Wall Street were a giant fraud machine, then no-one would buy anything there. For example, one of my dad's friends does over the counter bond trading. In that field, screwing someone over is easy: All you have to do is take their order over the phone, get their money, and then not put in the trade. So my dad asked his friend, "how does your field not turn into one big pool of sharks?" The friend answered, "your word is everything". If the friend screwed someone over at 08:00, then the whole bond market would know about it by 12:00 and reject him forever by 16:00.
Incorrect. There used to be laws that stopped wall street from being a giant fraud machine. Things like Glas Steagal, derivative regulation etc.
Now, firms like HSBC launder billions in drug money and aren't even prosecuted. Stealing is expected, not tolerated. It isn't an accident that after those laws were taken away, wall street banks got mega rich while main street went into foreclosure.
Oh, and this "reject him forever by 16:00" stuff - wall streeters band together to rip off the public. They only reject a broker if that broker rips other wall streeters off.
The only reason people go into stocks/bonds is because interest rates are so low that theres nowhere to put your money. Thank the Fed for that.
The equities market is even more constrained. I, for example, am not allowed to trade unless my dad gets my intended trades cleared with the company beforehand, and if my trades weren't in by closing time that day, then he'd be in hot water. The company has this rule because the fact that my father could tell me what trades he was about to put in and thereby allow me to 'ride the coat-tails' of price changes thereby created. And that anti-insider-trading rule is but one in his inch thick, annually revised handbook of professional conduct and ethics.
Yeah right. That's why insider trading is legal for congressmen, and criminal banks like HSBC dont get prosecuted even when the justice department has an orgy of evidence.
You can have all the rules in the world, but unless you enforce them, it means nothing.
We had the crash of 2008, rigging in the precious metals market, rigging of interest rates in the LIBOR scandal, goldman sachs cooking books for Greece which destabilized the EU, wall street outright holding the economy hostage, rampant unconstitional money printing by the fed, financial markets int he world tremendously unstable due to criminal fraud and, oh wait...not one person went to jail.
Oh except Bernie Madoff, but that's because he ripped off wall streeters instead of the public, like you're supposed to.
And he talks about all the law-suits and unethical things that he sees, too. I don't see why my dad would lie to me about his life. I've been to his office, and he's no secret agent.
I don't know the man, but I don't think he's telling you the whole story.
You're dealing in absolutes.
I can't say either way. I didn't build it.
-Duxwing
No I'm not. We used the word "seems".
