The argument you seem to be proposing applies to any policy whatsoever. "Well, you have to convince people to vote for you and your policies". Ok, sure, that's what's being done.
My point is, that process of convincing is advertising.
So they'll only ban non-political advertising... until they decide your movement isn't political for the purposes of the laws. It's too obvious, and too tempting, a cudgel for any government to have.
Political messaging is more than TV ads and mailers. There are rallies, online groups, town halls, organizing, basic human communication stuff.
---
The way we reign in government isn't by having no rules (the argument you're making reduces to "any rule can be weaponized against political opposition"), it's political checks to ensure weaponization doesn't happen. Or put another way, there is no system of rules that constrains a regime defined by its rule breaking.
That's likely to be the case anyway, because politicians are rarely willing to restrict themselves. The US Do Not Call list has an exception for political spam.
(See also: why the two biggest political parties are unlikely to support better voting systems.)
There are other (democratic) countries with restriction on political ads. For the ruling party it isn't as bad as they got other means (official government communication etc.) while advertising is mostly needed as a tool for the opposition for being able to bring topics on the agenda.
The United States government is not allowed to regulate commerce unless it is interstate. So it defined interstate commerce as anything that substantially affects interstate commerce. Did you cut down a tree in your backyard and use it to make your own pencil with your own labor? That kept you from buying a pencil that might have been made in another state. Interstate commerce.
Did you just represent an idea, and did I pay you with my attention? Advertising. Prison.
You are being needlessly obtuse. If you are not going to at least pretend to be acting in good faith, then you just shouldn't comment at all.
> The United States government is not allowed to regulate commerce unless it is interstate
This isn't true even in the slightest. You are thinking of the Commerce Clause (Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution), which states that Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, between states, and with tribes (which are kinda foreign nations).
This does not state that the Federal Government cannot define what is legal and illegal. This is done pretty regularly. 24 states have legalized weed and 39 have made it available for medical use, YET it is still illegal under federal ruling and these dispensaries get raided by Federal Agents routinely. There is no violation of the Constitution here.
And remember, law doesn't work like code. It needs to be interpreted with intent. The letter of the law is imprecise and is not meant to be absolute. If you know what someone means, don't derail the conversation as if you have a gotcha. You're welcome to request better language, but you don't "win" by misrepresenting what is well understood. We're trying to communicate, not exploit software.
Is that supposed to be a gotcha? You campaign. Talk to people, spread your message. You don't buy ads, you hold rallies. Encourage supporters to talk to friends and family. Do interviews. Is your idea of political participation limited to purchasing Instagram ads?
This is all very simple to dostinguish: did you pay or have any other kind of contract with the person talking about you/your product? Then it's an ad, and could be made illegal. Are you just talking to people and hoping you'll convince them to talk to others in turn? Free speech, perfectly fine.
If I'm in green tech can I set up a charity whose goal is to raise awareness of the problems of climate change and what we can do to fight it? I'll claim that I really care about it and that's why I'm in the solar business in the first place.
I mean… that means you can’t hire people to get signatures for petitions for the very thing you’re trying to get passed. I think their point is pretty fair.
Money for advertising is already a super sized network effect, making it difficult to challenge incumbents unless you're already rich,
Look, it's a radical idea and on its face, all at once, is impractical at the moment. So I suggest rather than pointing out the myriad of holes like shooting fish in a barrel, you give it the benefit of the doubt and roll around the ways it could work in your head. And what your online/offline experience would be if it were even 10% effective.
It already is that effective in a lot of the world with stricter advertising laws, and as a Canadian I do find the levels of advertising in the us landscape to be jarring. So there are examples
Money is much easier to combine though. You can convince 1000 people to each donate $100 and now you have a sizeable amount to run a campaign. Convincing _and coordinating_ 1000 people to each talk to five neighbors is _much_ harder, and much less effective since the messaging will be all over the place.
Strict regulation of ads is one thing, outlawing advertising is another. There are places that don't allow billboards and other street-level advertisement, but that's a long way from outlawing advertisements in general.
I get that it's a nice idea to many, but I follow a general rule of adding extra skepticism if the problems of some approach are absolutely obvious and the response to pointing them out is "don't worry about, that'll sort itself out, let's just do it". Especially when the collateral damage might be huge and the energy feels like "this will save us".
Companies holding rallies is fine, as long as people outside the rally, in a public space, are not unwillingly confronted with ads. Organizing flash mobs as a way to do marketing should indeed be illegal if ads themselves are illegal.
All Advertising is Marketing, but not all Marketing is Advertising.
I think the distinction should be thought of as Marketing (not Advertising) is to inform customers that opt-in to the information. Usually, marketing (excluding the Advertising arm) is for the benefit of a willing participant, where-as Advertising is for the benefit of both the willing participant and also the Advertiser (& advertising media) against an unwitting participant/user.
An example could be a product, company, political candidate's website that has a calendar for upcoming events, information pages about the product, etc. This can include tacky graphics and UI/UX, or even strategic language to stand out and show "personality". What it can not have are advertising boxes for unrelated advertising injections that the user did not go to the website to learn about. That would then be a Marketing site with banned Advertisements. The same for the Marketed product, they can not Advertise on unrelated media; basically inserting itself against the users will (the Advertised product being placed/injected/"forced" upon the person/user).
Stop being so pedantic. Everyone knows what the topic is about. "Ban advertising" is the goal and not the policy itself. Start with the obvious and unambiguous examples if you still want to act like this. Do you still disagree?
It's all about scale, really. In France advertising for political parties is very restricted. We don't get to endure the kind of insane propaganda Americans have.
How exactly does it work in other countries but the US?
There's very little outside advertising in Sweden, for example, and mostly restricted to cultural advertising. Road shoulders belong to Traffic Authority, and all advertising and billboards are banned there, so you won't see the insanity pf billboard after billboard here.
So how did Sweden do that? By political will and persuasion perhaps?
Political advertising also adheres to certain rules. And while there's a lot of it in a few months before elections, it's still surprisingly contained compared to some countries
In the UK there’s a lot of screens on pedestrian walkways, and small adverts on roundabouts but very few motorway (highway) adverts.
On the motorway there’s signs for services (rest stops) with all the major brands logos on, and maybe one or two billboards every 30 / 40 miles outside of city centres, then more as you come into a city centre.
I’ve also recently noticed a massive vertical screen on the side of a building near a busy interchange in my city (Manchester).
Public transport is littered with small adverts - on underground’s / metros there’s a lot of posters on escalators and buses have a lot inside, plus usually a big banner on the side (or a full skin of the bus but they’re fairly rare at least in my city).
Political advertising is capped at £20 million per party, but our newspapers do most of the real political propaganda come election time in terms of what stories they cover / who they endorse in their editorials (or sometimes they allow a major candidate to write one). The BBC also lets all parties with some traction do a 5 minute party political broadcast.
When I’ve watched some live US TV channels I’ve been amazed by how many “Vote X for Y, paid for by Z PAC” adverts there are and am thankful UK parties can’t spend anywhere near the same amount.
How would you do that?
How exactly would that work?