> The purpose of advertising is to make you buy more than you need.

That's an incredibly cynical way of looking at the situation. There is also the purpose of telling you about a product you can buy that might possibly be beneficial to your lifestyle. Through advertising you get to find out about that product faster, something especially important in these days of brisk innovation.

I can't recall ever having learned anything of value from an ad, but YMMV. Still, it's not cynical to say that advertising is meant to make you buy more, because that's why ad space is bought: to boost sales. And it's also not cynical to say that those extra sales would not have occurred without the ad, hence they were for goods people could have done without. Something which can be done without is unneeded, hence, it is not cynical to say ads are meant to make you buy things you don't need. Or rather, they're meant to make you think you need more than you did before. Advertising is the engine of consumerism.

> And it's also not cynical to say that those extra sales would not have occurred without the ad, hence they were for goods people could have done without

Here's the error.

Yes, they were products the target could have done without, but not something they can do without once they have the product.

Consider: The first iPhone. A device that opens possibilities to improve your life that never existed before. You could do without it, but once you have it you can't do without it.

I think you'd have appreciated an ad for the original iPhone if it eventually led to you buying one.

You're confusing need with want. Nobody needs an iPhone, not even after they get one. Plenty of people want an iPhone. To be fair, the statement "advertising makes you want what you don't need" is not a value judgment on whether that is a good or bad thing. It could be that advertising is beneficial to the world. It just seems unlikely.

Exactly! Installing an ad blocker would be an act of revolution, it can disable entire economic systems. Ad blockers should be banned for this very reason - it's terrorism at worst and treason at best.

Like it or not, consumerism and capitalism go hand in hand. It has reduced global poverty and has made many of us in HN very comfortable. Advertising is bound hand and foot with this system. To deny this is to attack the very structure that we rely on.

( the above two paragraphs are possible satire )

There have been some economies that ran on the idea that most people should only have what they need. At best they seem like dystopias.

There's a difference between saying people can't have what they don't need, and saying they should have the right to not constantly be told to want what they don't need.

that money will be in the economy anyway unless everyone decides to take cash and stuff it in a mattress