The point is that advertising is a subset of marketing, not another name for the same thing. In addition to advertising, marketing includes building websites and providing information, research to determine market demand, and determining optimal pricing.
Surely if companies all dropped their marketing budgets to 0, they will increase the profits enormously and provide way more value to their customers! They dont understand anything!!
People tried to sell just as much back then. But they were only about 2billion so the average person didnt have to wade through a swamp of thirsty advertising 24/7. Maybe the whole thing is unsustainable, maybe we can control ourselves, maybe we are better that bacteria in a closed system that multiply untill they kill themselves
"But that's the last 2 generations did things, I can't possibly imagine any other way for life to work"
I'm not against value, I'm against the term "provide value" because (to me, and I'm probably a huge minority in HN) it is a term loaded with capitalist meanings.
We don't talk about providing value in academia, I assume they don't talk about providing value in philanthropic organizations or political movements. Whenever I hear the term it essentially means "to make money".
I appreciate that this is my personal interpretation of this though
