[ExI] control again

[William Flynn Wallace]

In The Blank Slate, Pinker offers us ways to take some aspects of our human
nature and make a better society.  I got to thinking:  what is the most
successful way of leading people, changing their behaviors, including
letting go of their money, and no psychologist came to mind (unless it was
Watson in his later career), no technique of conditioning, reinforcement or
punishment.

Then the idea struck me:  what influences everybody, everyday, in
significant ways, including spending their money?

Marketing.  Don't try to get people to change by forcing them in some way,
making laws as an example. (yeah, if you've got them by the balls, their
hearts and minds will follow, but that's wrong in so many ways),  Sell them
the ideas.  Great ideas will sell themselves to people and once some are
sold, others will follow.

So my vote for most effective manipulator of behavior of all time, without
doing anything authoritarian, immoral, or forcing, is Madison Avenue.

If you, like me, are someone who can be easily led by the right situations,
and can never be effectively pushed (which creates a powerful counterforce
in me), then it has to be marketing for the selling of ideas.  Freely
chosen things are usually much preferred to those demanded.  (Are they
really free choices is a philosophical question, not a practical one.)

There's gotta be a way to make buttloads of money out of this!

bill w
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