Market destruction of the democratic ideal
See, here it is, a mini-rant...
No one seems to realise that the ideals of democracy have become debased by market principals. Not that free market principals are a bad thing in any way, but they're grossly inappropriate as a way of deciding who should run the shop. For markets, fine, but national elections should not be a market-place.
When democracy was first established however many hundreds of years ago, there was not an industry built up around analysing consumers, working out how to get them to buy product based on the colour of the corporate logo, or the positive and negative connotations of similar words that might be used in TV commercials, or the way that people attach value and invest emotion in brands much more readily than in products.
Now, marketers pay sociologists and phycologists large amounts of money so that they can extract huge amounts of money from corporations, by telling them that if they use a taller person to present their product they will achieve a 0.5% better sales rate.
You can't really blame politicians for employing those marketers within their election campaigns. They're politicians after all, they chase votes and power, not ethics. And you can't really blame the populous for voting for the marketed brand rather than the political end-product - thats what humans do.
But lets not pretend that the democracy we have today adheres or even aspires to the lofty and realised goals of the early democracies. Today, an election is just a market-place, with the various brands trying to outcompete each other to get you to buy their product with your vote. And like any successful modern-day seller, much effort will be spent selling you on the brand, they don't want you to focus on the product - the likely results of their election or re-election.
And like any modern marketplace, there is no pressure to make the product as good as it can possibly be - just to ensure that it's roughly as good as the competition.
I don't know how, but we have to get the brand marketing out of democracy - we have to stop them from getting inside our heads with thier highly tuned, very expensive, research backed marketing campains that have nothing at all to do with policy, nothing at all to do with democracy.
No one seems to realise that the ideals of democracy have become debased by market principals. Not that free market principals are a bad thing in any way, but they're grossly inappropriate as a way of deciding who should run the shop. For markets, fine, but national elections should not be a market-place.
When democracy was first established however many hundreds of years ago, there was not an industry built up around analysing consumers, working out how to get them to buy product based on the colour of the corporate logo, or the positive and negative connotations of similar words that might be used in TV commercials, or the way that people attach value and invest emotion in brands much more readily than in products.
Now, marketers pay sociologists and phycologists large amounts of money so that they can extract huge amounts of money from corporations, by telling them that if they use a taller person to present their product they will achieve a 0.5% better sales rate.
You can't really blame politicians for employing those marketers within their election campaigns. They're politicians after all, they chase votes and power, not ethics. And you can't really blame the populous for voting for the marketed brand rather than the political end-product - thats what humans do.
But lets not pretend that the democracy we have today adheres or even aspires to the lofty and realised goals of the early democracies. Today, an election is just a market-place, with the various brands trying to outcompete each other to get you to buy their product with your vote. And like any successful modern-day seller, much effort will be spent selling you on the brand, they don't want you to focus on the product - the likely results of their election or re-election.
And like any modern marketplace, there is no pressure to make the product as good as it can possibly be - just to ensure that it's roughly as good as the competition.
I don't know how, but we have to get the brand marketing out of democracy - we have to stop them from getting inside our heads with thier highly tuned, very expensive, research backed marketing campains that have nothing at all to do with policy, nothing at all to do with democracy.
posted by Jaymax | 17:05
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