Commercials

Only kidding...Dangermouse was one of my favourite after school tea-time viewing.

But a lot of TV is social programming.Benign,malevolent or otherwise,it can't be denied.

 

It can be denied. That doesn't fit their business model.

 

I think we are all influenced by advertising far more than we are aware of.

 

But to be captain obvious for a second: it's not why tv programs are called tv programs

 

Yes indeed,they can deny it as just being a societal norm...You know,like "It's just TV." The best liars believe their own lies.

 

You don't believe that anyone in a free market business honestly believes that money is everything?

 

^
I like to have some faith in humanity, so one or two persons in a free market business somewhere must not believe that money is everything indeed! I'm sure of it

 

How do you know for sure?

 

Because I am aware of the definitions of the word program. So even if it would be social programming (which some shows and adds clearly are) it is not in the first place why a show is called a program or the schedule of a tv channel is called todays programming.

 

They would not get promoted to a level where they could make important decisions.

In the US there is a law defining "fiduciary responsibility" that essentially says a corporate officer of a publicly traded company can go to jail if he doesn't always put the interests of stockholders first.

 

Not every person who happens to work in such a business is out to get any promotion by any means.

Very dubious.

 

That's true, but those people generally don't get to make important decisions about how the company is run. The top people promote individuals who are like themselves.

The alternative to the fiduciary responsibility law would be a situation in which corporate officers could use investor money for whatever purpose pleased them, which is investment fraud. Who would want to invest money under such conditions?

For those who want to spend their careers taking a completely different approach, they can become government regulators who look for illegal abuses of the free market system, or they can work for nonprofit charitable organizations that have a nonfinancial agenda.

That's the case in most families, so most advertising is aimed at women. I should have mentioned that earlier. Most likely, you made more purchasing decisions when you were single.

 

institutionalized evil - "we don't care who we kill/harm just as long as we make a profit" - now required by law

 

The alternative? How so? I may be missing something/misunderstand you...

 

That's why government regulation of business is so important. Those people have to do their jobs, and do them well, or we all suffer.

Could you design a better system? If we passed a vague law that says business leaders have to be "nice", how could it be enforced?

Getting back to advertising, this is why it's important for parents to teach their children not to believe everything they hear or read. Commercials are not intended to be sources of unbiased information. Nobody is too young to learn this.

Either the officers are putting the shareholders first, or they aren't. I'm not sure what any kind of middle ground would look like.

 

Is it a free market though given all the fraud and market fixing that has come to light in recent times? Rigging of Forex markets is just the latest one to emerge.

Regulation is obviously the answer, but regulators lack real teeth, and are usually big bank people anyway.

I do think that to a lot of folks in investment banks, hedge funds etc money is the only thing.

Given time, and maybe not much longer, and they'll probably crash the markets once more.