I may have been unclear in my post, because I agree with a lot of your viewpoints.
If you want to pay your sportsballers a bajillion dollars that money has to come from somewhere. In general, the market has decided that ads are the optimal way of paying for things that people don’t want to pay directly for.
I dedicated only about a sentence and a half to this, because I think it deserves a separate post, but I don’t want to pay my sportsballers a bajillion dollars. I view the fact that people don’t want to pay for entertainment as an indictment on entertainment. Without advertising, the entertainment industry would be much smaller, but it would still be able to present high-quality products. This could mean less expensive sports leagues that don’t have 30 teams and don’t pay every player millions of dollars; movies without expensive special effects, expensive actors, and expensive marketing budgets; and news that doesn’t pay writers that readers wouldn’t pay to read.
The problem I have with the businesses would get by fine without ads is that it is demonstrably untrue. If you look up the biggest companies you will already know their names, their logos, their slogans, any music or sounds they use, etc. You buy from these companies all the time. Advertising works. Today you can quantify the effect of advertising better than ever. Anything on the internet can be tracked, and can be A/B tested.
This was poorly phrased in my post. The specific businesses in existence, specifically the biggest players in the market, stand to lose a lot without advertising. Their brands are often the source of their profitability. But I don’t believe businesses as a whole would suddenly become unprofitable. The biggest shoe companies would lose some cachet and market share, but it would still be profitable to sell shoes. And while lots of shareholders have an interest in dominant brands staying dominant, I do not view it as a net loss to the economy for some companies to lose market share while others take their place.
There are plenty of amateur sports events that don’t have either paid sports people or advertising. I think most people prefer the professional events over amateur events.
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I may have been unclear in my post, because I agree with a lot of your viewpoints.
I dedicated only about a sentence and a half to this, because I think it deserves a separate post, but I don’t want to pay my sportsballers a bajillion dollars. I view the fact that people don’t want to pay for entertainment as an indictment on entertainment. Without advertising, the entertainment industry would be much smaller, but it would still be able to present high-quality products. This could mean less expensive sports leagues that don’t have 30 teams and don’t pay every player millions of dollars; movies without expensive special effects, expensive actors, and expensive marketing budgets; and news that doesn’t pay writers that readers wouldn’t pay to read.
This was poorly phrased in my post. The specific businesses in existence, specifically the biggest players in the market, stand to lose a lot without advertising. Their brands are often the source of their profitability. But I don’t believe businesses as a whole would suddenly become unprofitable. The biggest shoe companies would lose some cachet and market share, but it would still be profitable to sell shoes. And while lots of shareholders have an interest in dominant brands staying dominant, I do not view it as a net loss to the economy for some companies to lose market share while others take their place.
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There are plenty of amateur sports events that don’t have either paid sports people or advertising. I think most people prefer the professional events over amateur events.