Some hyperboles become part of the zeitgeist. From ideological incantations, they are transmuted in clichéd signs of belonging in one’s society or identity group. You are exploited by greedy corporations. You are a product. The author of the May 16 Economist newsletter “The World in Brief” says it in passing, so obvious it is:
Walmart’s ad operation is much smaller than that of Amazon, which is ahead in e-commerce and video streaming. But Walmart has the advantage in the ground war. In its 10,000 stores advertisers can buy access to customers on signs, screens and in-store radio. Next time you browse a supermarket for products, remember that you are a product too.
It is not clear what exactly the journalist is referring to. To check, I went to my usual Walmart but did not see a single third-party ad—except of course for the brand names and slogans of the manufacturers on the products on the shelves. I didn’t see any screen there nor did I hear anything else than boxed music. Walmart does sell advertising to third-party sellers on its website, though. What is the problem anyway with Walmart selling advertising?
Information on your existence and approaches related to your possible interest in exchanging is part of living in any society above the tribe or command levels, especially a prosperous society. Such information is quite certainly more beneficial for most people than state propaganda. Does private advertising mean that you are a product? Are you a product of Google because it can sell data that you give away when you use its services for free? According to Merriam-Webster, a product is “something (such as a service) that is marketed or sold as a commodity.” A slave would be a product. A free person of course is not. Even in a figurative way, you cannot be a slave of sellers whose proposals you are free to decline without any threat of punishment.
Referring to their concept of “slavery of wage labor,” Marxists would say that Walmart workers are slaves, which of course does not make sense: at any time, they can walk away and work for somebody else or for themselves. If Walmart employees are not slaves, it is even more obvious that its customers are not, even if they are exposed to advertising when they choose to visit the company’s physical or virtual sites.
******************************
The more abstract the topic you try to represent with DALL-E’s cooperation, the more difficult it is to obtain zir cooperation. It is not surprising because an AI bot does not think. Thie featured image of this post is the best I was able to obtain after a large number of instructions that were not understood:
The post Are You a Product? appeared first on Econlib.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Pierre Lemieux
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.econlib.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.