Advertisements are a scourge upon society, the environment, and ourselves. They are among the worst capitalism has to offer. Why not get rid of them?
Several cities, including Paris and Grenoble in France, São Paulo in Brazil, and Chennai in India have taken concrete steps in this direction. In São Paulo, ads are banned from certain parts of the city, and in Paris, they are prohibited near schools.
Several more cities are following suit, with a growing ad-free movement aiming to make cities a better place to live. ‘Adfree Cities,’ a UK-based nonprofit, is one such example. Cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, and Cardiff are part of its network, attempting to drastically reduce the amount of urban advertising
This is an excellent trend, and one that only lobbyists would fight against.
Since the online advert bubble seems to be bursting, I’m going to take that as a glimmer of hope. And until then, VPN maximus, ads be gone!
I agree. Line-of-sight advertising should be considered a form of pollution (like sound pollution). Plenty of municipalities already tax outdoor advertising to some extent, but the rates are way too low. I can understand why it isn’t usually a priority for city goverments but given how profitable advertising can be I hope more people demand that their local goverments change consider changes. It’s also potentially a bigger revenue source for cities. Either they extract more tax for public services or the billboards come down. Win-win in my opinion.
Agreed - I consider advertising and billboards to be a blight. I’m always pleased to see graffiti go up on some around here because it’s so much more human - one-off pieces that took at least some skill and a bunch of risk to put up.
My SO and I once looked into the cost to rent some local billboards with the idea to just put up local artists work like some kind of outdoor gallery/museum (and deprive all the local politicos and anti-abortion groups the prominent space). It turned out to be cheaper than we expected but not enough to do on a lark - we’d need to set up some kind of organization and fundraise and weren’t in a place to do that at the time so it went on the back burner.
Getting rid of them altogether would be better than paying into the existing system.
If advertisements are the worst of capitalism, that’s high praise for capitalism.
They exist because they subsidize other activity. As much as people complain about advertising, people complain about paying for things more.
I’ll pay for stuff if it’s worth it. I buy hardware and utilities. Spotify was interesting at first, but when you realize how much money you’re paying for music over the years, it just doesn’t seem worth it compared to how much money we make over the years.
So that almost makes me not care as much about advertising as I do about unfettered capitalism in general. There should be a wealth tax to discourage things costing so much to maximize profits. Investing is cool as a form of funding growth and innovation, but it squeezes returns and encourages extreme greed and profit. We should all make a little less, and things should cost a LOT less.
When capitalism ducks up, the government is supposed to step in (to help the people). When the government ducks up, Robin Hood is supposed to step in (to help the people). When Robin Hood ducks up, the people must step in with pitchforks and the government must step aside (to help the people).
It’s always been about the people. Government exists for the people, innovation exists for the people, business exists for the people, and even Robin Hood exists for the people. When those all fail, it’s revolution time.
I’ll pay for stuff if I can afford it, and I don’t think most people are against basic economy stuff, either. But when it’s out of control, and people can’t afford or it’s not worth it, and then you make their experience worse and have to resort to psychological manipulation, you’ve already ducked up.
In basically any interpersonal situation, if you have to resort to psychological manipulation, that’s a REALLY bad sign and something is super broken.
