Additionally, you can argue there are many buyer's counterparts to advertising. At its most simple, the buyer has many tools to find items they want, i.e. search engines, etc. Additionally the buyer in many cases can inform the seller of an offer (generally below their desired pricing) and the seller can choose to accept or not. In some marketplaces, the buyer can effectively put out a request-to-buy, e.g. an open offer that many potential sellers can see and one may choose to fulfill.
Selling = Sofa is $999 and that is a good price for a good couch.
Abusive advertising = This sofa is so wonderful that hot women are going to seek you out to have sex with you.
When advertizging starts selling lifestyles is where it becomes abuse.
For example, my car's cooling system was leaking. I had a devil of a time trying to figure out where it was leaking.
It turns out there's a perfect product for it - a device that pumps air into the radiator. You spray some soapy water around, and where it bubbles is where the leak is.
So in 5 minutes I could have found the leak, rather than wasting a great deal of time because I did not know such a tool existed.
I'm sure there was a point in the past where something like this would have been taught in school in a classroom that had all kinds of tools and machinery in it.
I found out about the company I've bought several sets of sheets from because they were a podcast sponsor, I happened to need sheets, and I liked their designs more than other ones I was seeing at comparable prices. If I hadn't heard that ad, would I have still found sheets I liked? Maybe! But is that really a convincing moral argument against those ads?
In the front of the Mag between the articles you would have full page colour ads, some with skimpily dressed women selling boxed games, computer games etc.
In some of the mags, some of the articles were reviews of products, some of these reviews were obviously promotions, very much trying to sell the product. Very few were critical of the product under review.
There is a continuum in advertising from simple "this product exists" to "Will change your life". Far to many of the adverts we see today tend to the targeted "change your life" category.
Add to that that many of the ads on the internet have there own tracking built in that allows your existence to become a product that is sold without your knowledge or consent and you have a situation that has a bunch of moral questions to answer.
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>the value of money is well known and non-negotiable
I wouldn't start with these assumptions since prices fluctuate on their own for somewhat unpredictable reasons. Just because advertising is immoral in some ideal world, doesn't mean it's immoral in a real one.
Perversely, the more expensive a product the more perceived quality a product has, its perhaps why German cars are so popular. People like to show off their wealth which is what makes designer brands popular.
There is little point advertising monopoly products like fuel though, any advert is just going to be brand awareness maintenance in those situations, which also helps to keep the media/newspapers onboard for PR reasons to keep the bad press at bay!
Can you cite that? I would like to test it against lies, manipulation and coercion.
If what you were saying were true, then it would not be economically profitable to lie to customers. However we see that lying to customers is more or less rife. Therefore we must conclude that it is profitable to do so.
The guy who taught my accounting class was a former used car salesman. We were talking once, and I asked him how to tell an honest dealership from a scam one. He said it's easy, the honest ones have been in business for more than 5 years. In 5 years, one runs out of suckers, and goes bust. An honest dealership makes bank by selling again and again to the same people.
These days, with Yelp and such, it's even harder to get by by defrauding your customers.
"Selling" is simply informing people of the availability of one half of an economic exchange. Putting a notice up that says "Sofa, $50 ONO" is no different than putting a notice up saying "will pay 50$ for sofa".
"Advertising", on the other hand, attempts to persuade. It endeavours to use psychology to create a transaction when one would otherwise not have taken place. It's a sign that says "Sofa, $50. Incredible value!!". This is not ethical because if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising, then advertising distorts the market and makes it less efficient.
Note that unadorned "buying" and "selling" are mirror counterparts, but there's no buyer's counterpart to "advertising". This is because the value of money is well known and non-negotiable, while the value of the good or service is subject to influence. This is an inherent bias that always works in favor of the selling party.