"Does negative press make you Sicko?" asked Google health account planner Lauren Turner. She was referring to the new documentary by left wing demagogue Michael Moore about the US health provision.
Turner used the corporate blog to condemn his use of "isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst". Why couldn't the media concentrate on the positive aspects of the system such as 44m uninsured Americans er, "the industry's numerous prescription programs, charity services, and philanthropy efforts."
This segues neatly into a plug for Google's core business, as she goes on to explain:
Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through "Get the Facts" or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?
We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek.
...
"Advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue," she urged.
So, to recap, the recipe for a disaster is easy: hire marketers with no authentic voice, ask them to pimp offal, and when they're busted for it make them force out an apology in which they blame it on their authentic voice.
I always have to smile at the mention of the invisible hand, though. It's a 230-year-old metaphor, yanked out of its original context about the balance between foreign and domestic trade, and given a whole new life as a universal palliative. The invisible hand takes the frightening, highly ambiguous complexity of the real world of market dynamics and reduces it to a simplistic, soothing mantra which assures us all will be well. Whenever the invisible hand shows up, I take it as a clear signal of what kind of discussion is actually taking place: one about religious belief.Obviously Adam Smith couldn't have been speaking from experience about a world so mind-bogglingly interdependent, with near-instantaneous communication, overnight exchange rate arbitrage, etc., but these things actually bolster his point.-Jimdoria (July 10, 2007, 02:41 PM)
[Natural] Systems do not act to organize themselves, it simply happens. This is not true of economic activity. Economic activity is always the result of intentional human activity...This is not generally true, and this is trivially demonstrated. Before Adam Smith gave us a framework in which to think about economies, it would have been literally unthinkable to engineer an economy. Clearly it did arise from the unorchestrated actions of the individual "organisms" working within it.
Economies do not just arise. They are built. And like all human structures, they are built with particular goals and priorities.-Jimdoria (July 12, 2007, 09:59 AM)
Currently, Economics assigns no value to anything that doesn't generate economic activity, and assigns positive value to anything that does generate economic activity.Again, this is simply incorrect. Modern economists think in terms of "utility functions", which are sort of black boxes that give an individual's value of "utility" value for something -- that is to say, how useful the thing is to moving a person toward his goals. One need not know what the person's goals are, or how the something helps achieve those goals; only that the person perceives the relative value there. Consider this, from Ludwig von Mises' Human Action (http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp ):
It is fashionable nowadays to find fault with the social sciences for being purely rational. The most popular objection raised against economics is that it neglects the irrationality of life and reality and tries to press into dry rational schemes and bloodless abstractions the infinite variety of phenomena. No censure could be more absurd. Like every branch of knowledge economics goes as far as it can be carried by rational methods. Then it stops by establishing the fact that it is faced with an ultimate given, i.e., a phenomenon which cannot--at least in the present state of our knowledge--be further analyzed [7].(why do we care about some guy named Mises? He was a very influential economist; see this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Von_Mises )
The teachings of praxeology and economics are valid for every human action without regard to its underlying motives, causes, and goals. The ultimate judgments of value and the ultimate ends of human action are given for any kind of scientific inquiry; they are not open to any further analysis. Praxeology deals with the ways and means chosen for the attainment of such ultimate ends. Its object is means, not ends.
In this sense we speak of the subjectivism of the general science of human action. It takes the ultimate ends chosen by acting man as data, it is entirely neutral with regard to them, and it refrains from passing any value judgments. The only standard which it applies is whether or not the means chosen are fit for the attainment of the ends aimed at. If Eudaemonism says happiness, if Utilitarianism and economics say utility, we must interpret these terms in a subjectivistic way as that which acting man aims at because it is desirable in his eyes. It is in this formalism that the progress of the modern meaning of Eudaemonism, Hedonism, and Utilitarianism consists as opposed to [p. 22] the older material meaning and the progress of the modern subjectivistic theory of value as opposed to the objectivistic theory of value as expounded by classical political economy. At the same time it is in this subjectivism that the objectivity of our science lies. Because it is subjectivistic and takes the value judgments of acting man as ultimate data not open to any further critical examination, it is itself above all strife of parties and factions, it is indifferent to the conflicts of all schools of dogmatism and ethical doctrines, it is free from valuations and preconceived ideas and judgments, it is universally valid and absolutely and plainly human.-Mises
Economics also exhibits scale bias. According to the rules of economics, large-scale economic activity is intrinsically more valuable than small-scale economic activity, as monetary value is generated more quickly and efficiently... The entire basis of economics is monetary value.The above quote from Mises also demonstrates why this argument is incorrect. The amount of "monetary value" that is generated is not the only, or even the most important, sort of value that economics is interested in. As I see it, economics tries to understand (and predict) why a person, given a range of choices, will opt for a particular one.-Jimdoria (July 12, 2007, 09:59 AM)
This is what's so fundamentally wrong about Ms. Turner equating advertising with democracy. Advertising is "might makes right" although it's economic might rather than brute force at work. But this is actually the opposite of democracy, where the central tenet is that the mighty cannot be allowed to simply overpower the weak if we are to have a just society.Again, I'm afraid you've got it quite backwards. The "might makes right" epithet should be applied to democracy, for it is this philosophy that allows 51% of the people to choose the fate of the remaining 49%, for no better reason than the strength of their numbers. Always keep in mind that America is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. In our society, the thing that protects the weak from abuse is the Constitution's limitations on the government, and the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Voting democratically has virtually nothing to do with it.-Jimdoria (July 12, 2007, 09:59 AM)
The major trouble with free market economic theory is that there is virtually no free market. Oil is controlled by a few major players, pharmaceuticals by a few, and the list goes on. On the other side governments provide various payments to those in need, in the form of welfare and rent assistance and so on, and subsidies to business for providing employment and infrastructure that the the state cannot or will not provide.As I read your argument, there are two main prongs: (1) large enterprises interfere with the workings of the market; and (2) government regulations interfere with the market.-Grorgy (July 11, 2007, 05:57 PM)
Not that cartels necessarily hurt consumers. In line with a recent strand in economics that University of Chicago economist Lester Telser began, Bittlingmayer argues that cartels can be an efficient way of preventing ruinous competition when firms' fixed costs are very high and their variable costs are low. If you doubt that that's a problem, take a look at airline profits since deregulation. The added cost of taking another passenger is close to zero, which is why airlines get into so many price wars and are often on the verge of bankruptcy.
Beginning in the early 1970s, economists studying antitrust found that it often created monopoly by preventing companies from pricing too low or expanding too much. Antitrust authorities, they found, often were more interested in preserving competitors than in preserving competition.
Economists also found that regulated industries often lobbied for the anti-competitive regulation in the first place. Consumers never asked for an Interstate Commerce Commission to prevent new truckers from entering the business. Nor had consumers been heard from when the federal government set up milk marketing boards to restrict the supply of milk and drive up the price. The main players were truckers and milk producers, who wanted to limit competition.
As I see it, economics tries to understand (and predict) why a person, given a range of choices, will opt for a particular one.
If Google does act unethically, then it's certainly our prerogative to take business elsewhere, but we can only do so if we debate the issue.
Let me add something i think is important for this discussion:The tools for the population to be informed are already out there if that population chooses to be informed.
Most of economic theory seems to be based on the presumption of a fairly rationale (in terms of their self interest) and informed public.
One of my biggest concerns about the world we live in is that the commercial marketplace has their hooks in every level of power in our society, and is set up to distributed advertising/propaganda/misleading information in an incredibly effective fashion, and leveraging every innate weakness of the human psyche.
In such a situation, it's my belief that the normal controls that a "free marketplace" might excercise are ineffective in practice. You don't get the benefits of democracy if most of your population is not informed about the issues.-mouser (July 13, 2007, 05:32 PM)
Let me add something i think is important for this discussion:That's not necessarily correct. Only the most basic economic theories are based on such assumptions, and most economists are well aware that this is a crude way of modeling. There are a lot of economic theories that deal with informational asymetries (like the principal-agent theory), different risk aversions, non-rational choice and the like. But AFAICT (it's been quite a while since dealt with that stuff at university, and my curriculum only included parts of economics then) there is no unified theory to wrap all this into a big picture. The problem is, IMHO, that some people generalize the most primitive theories to help them pursue their agenda and their real (hidden) interests.
Most of economic theory seems to be based on the presumption of a fairly rationale (in terms of their self interest) and informed public.-mouser (July 13, 2007, 05:32 PM)
One of my biggest concerns about the world we live in is that the commercial marketplace has their hooks in every level of power in our society, and is set up to distributed advertising/propaganda/misleading information in an incredibly effective fashion, and leveraging every innate weakness of the human psyche.This point of view is pretty much mainstream in most parts of Europe (at least Western and Central Europe), and most people here agree that there has to be a strong "social" component in economy and society, and that effective controls have to be in place to regulate the "free marketplace". The problem is that there has been a lot of pressure lately from the U.S. (and globalization in general) to abandon all those social "hurdles". Life has become a lot tougher here over the last 10-20 years.
In such a situation, it's my belief that the normal controls that a "free marketplace" might excercise are ineffective in practice. You don't get the benefits of democracy if most of your population is not informed about the issues.-mouser (July 13, 2007, 05:32 PM)
In theory, democracy is a bulwark against socially harmful policies. In practice, however, democracies frequently adopt and maintain policies that are damaging. How can this paradox be explained?And here's another essay by the author, followed by some arguments against its thesis: http://www.cato-unbound.org/archives/november-2006/
The influence of special interests and voter ignorance are two leading explanations. I offer an alternative story of how and why democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and they vote accordingly. Despite their lack of knowledge, voters are not humble agnostics; instead, they confidently embrace a long list of misconceptions.
Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state. And if there is one thing that the public deeply misunderstands, it is economics. People do not grasp the "invisible hand" of the market, with its ability to harmonize private greed and the public interest. I call this anti-market bias. They underestimate the benefits of interaction with foreigners. I call this anti-foreign bias. They equate prosperity not with production, but with employment. I call this make-work bias. Finally, they are overly prone to think that economic conditions are bad and getting worse. I call this pessimistic bias.
In the minds of many, Winston Churchill's famous aphorism cuts the conversation short: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." But this saying overlooks the fact that governments vary in scope as well as form. In democracies the main alternative to majority rule is not dictatorship, but markets. A better understanding of voter irrationality advises us to rely less on democracy and more on the market.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8262
I offer an alternative story of how and why democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and they vote accordingly.
Honestly, I get the idea that (Jimdoria's) coming at the argument from the point of view that the movie's point is self-evidently correct, or at least so honorably intentioned as to be beyond challenge. So any viewpoint that has the temerity to challenge it must be, prima facie, evil and not deserving of our attention.
Jimdoria claims that there's no counterbalance to corporate power. On the contrary, the consumers hold far more power than the corporations. Imagine that the next edition of 60 minutes or 20/20 showed hidden camera footage of Nike sneakers being assembled from, say, the skin of babies purchased from their parents in India and Africa. Even ignoring legal issues, how long do you think Nike would survive? Contrast this with the political solution in a democracy, where you have to wait years for the next election, and then run afoul of laws preventing you from even a truthful ad exposing how Senator X has done some evil deed. The comparison is clear: free-market justice can be swift and complete, when it's dealing with something that the consumers care about.I think part of what you missed here is that you speak in terms of the entire consumer market. In the aggregate, you are correct that the market holds sway over the corporations. However, if you are to assume that the consumer market is working via their moral values as posted earlier in the same discussion, then you must also understand that the aggregate value is all that matters, and not any subset of those values.-CWuestefeld (July 16, 2007, 04:15 PM)
Situations like this can only be mandated by public policy (the merits of this mandate not withstanding), and is what is most commonly seen in most free-markets today. Often these regulations can be seen as protective and/or anti-free-market; but in a global market, there is noI haven't had a chance to read all this thread but I definitely will!
way a consumer or even a significant sub-group can hold sway. It is only when the TOTAL market (or significant portion thereof) deems this to be against THIER values, does the "consumer" hold any sway over the corporation.-steeladept (July 17, 2007, 08:54 AM)
I gotta disagree with you there Steeladept :)I am very confused by the example you showed, as that has no bearing (that I can see) on the moral values the market places on the corporation. Perhaps I am just not acquainted enough with the subject of your example. I tend to ignore most "organic foods" information as a bunch of high priced examples of an otherwise commodity item.
Look at food -
Nestle who has always been one of the big bad corporations is now producing a lot of organic food - it's quite possible they're paying paltry wages etc., but the fact is when people want something, the big corporations (& everyone else) go and produce it or grow it.
Likewise, using your example, the less people who want something, the less companies produce that article.
Or, the less people accept the conditions under which something is produced, the more the companies will be willing to change work conditions etc.
Basically, corporations, politicians, etc. (individuals too!) do what they reckon they will get away with - I think they are a good reflection of what we accept as a society. In times when politicians are very corrupt, it's usually the case that people are fairly "corrupt" themselves - even though they might complain bitterly about the very same politicians...-tomos (July 17, 2007, 09:16 AM)
I am not put off by the screening company making money because Michael Moore is well known as a producer of propaganda. His movies usually have a particular viewpoint that they advance fairly ruthlessly. Nobody considers them neutral or unbiased sources of information.
Situations like this can only be mandated by public policy (the merits of this mandate not withstanding), and is what is most commonly seen in most free-markets today. Often these regulations can be seen as protective and/or anti-free-market; but in a global market, there is no
way a consumer or even a significant sub-group can hold sway. It is only when the TOTAL market (or significant portion thereof) deems this to be against THIER values, does the "consumer" hold any sway over the corporation.-steeladept (July 17, 2007, 08:54 AM)
Look at food -
Nestle who has always been one of the big bad corporations is now producing a lot of organic food - it's quite possible they're paying paltry wages etc., but the fact is when people want something, the big corporations (& everyone else) go and produce it or grow it.-tomos (July 17, 2007, 09:16 AM)
I am very confused by the example you showed, as that has no bearing (that I can see) on the moral values the market places on the corporation.well I was following in the footsteps :P of the Nike example --steeladept (July 17, 2007, 11:34 AM)
One of my biggest concerns about the world we live in is that the commercial marketplace has their hooks in every level of power in our society, and is set up to distributed advertising/propaganda/misleading information in an incredibly effective fashion,