> but the product they're really selling you is being better than your peers.
Which they suggest will make you happier.
The most toxic high-income advertising is all based around creating a need and then fulfilling it... because it turns out wealthy people tend to already have enough things to make themselves happy, if they looked at them differently.
I don't thing we fundamentally disagree on anything, I'm just saying every product advertisement tries to convince you the product will make you happier, and sometimes it not a bad thing- like Japanese McDonald's (where they don't use hydrogenated oils).
All advertising is based around creating a need and fulfilling it, but not all of those needs are toxic. Imagine getting an advertisement for a concert for some musicians you've never even heard of. You hear their music, and maybe they even have some showmanship. You like what you see and hear, and now you have a need you didn't have before, whether that's going to a KISS concert or whatever kinda music floats your boat.
Toxic ads encouraging you to indulge in toxic behavior, like an Instagram ad making you think you don't matter if you don't publicize every hour of your life, are a different animal.
That's all I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to be pedantic or anything. I just don't think putting out a Disney World ad of a happy family eating breakfast with Mickey Mouse is promoting or exploiting toxic values even though it convinces you that you need something you weren't aware of yesterday.
I suppose my distilled point was that the FI in FIRE stands diametrically opposed to the consumption-growth radiation of advertising.
So in order for FIRE to kill off McMansions and luxury cars most people would have to become resistant to advertising (or advertising would need to be limited).
When you put it that way, I think whether culture is upstream of business or vice versa and whether people have free will or are merely conduits for things their senses receive are unanswerable questions. All I know is this:
"If you treat people as they are, they will become worse. If you treat them as they could be, they will become better.
If we treat people as if they were what they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
I'm convinced that treating most people as if they have free will is more likely to get them to at least consider my ways.
I'm a bit more ambivalent towards free will en masse -- to what extent it exists doesn't matter to me, if there are still statistically significant trends.
Mostly because there are infinite ways to misunderstand an individual's motivations and thus arrive at a 'should' prediction that conflicts with observed reality.
Versus reasoning in from 'a lot of people ____, do they still after we ____?'
Which they suggest will make you happier.
The most toxic high-income advertising is all based around creating a need and then fulfilling it... because it turns out wealthy people tend to already have enough things to make themselves happy, if they looked at them differently.