7/6/2018 How Mainstream Economics Helps Businesses Manipulate our Minds - Evonomics

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Business

How Mainstream
Economics Helps
Businesses
Manipulate our Minds
Do we really decide what we want?

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By John Komlos

A major oversight of standard economics is that it begins the analysis with

adults. This is convenient, because this strategy enables the discipline to ignore
the crucial and pernicious influence of powerful mega-corporations on the
formation of the mindset of children and youth during their formative years.
By disregarding the crucial first 18 or so years of life, mainstream economics
can simply assume that tastes are already formed when a person enters the
market place and by then they know perfectly well what they like and dislike. In
other words, they enter the economy as adults with tastes fully formed, so

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businesses do not influence them in their childhood. The technical term for this
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is that tastes are exogenous. So economists do not have to worry about tastes
because that is determined exogenously, i.e., outside of the economic process.

This dovetails well with the idea of consumer sovereignty,—the doctrine that
consumers dictate what businesses produce insofar as they “vote” with their
dollars to channel production in such a way as to satisfy their desires. Insofar
as tastes are predetermined, consumers express them through their wants,
supposedly inducing corporations to produce the right amount and quality of
goods in order to satisfy those wants. In the end, the consumer is king as
he/she determines what is being produced. If we would not demand stuff,
firms would not produce stuff. So our wants are satisfied and everyone is
happy, or at least it is claimed by conventional economists.

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However, this model is completely off the mark, because of the unfounded
assumption that tastes are exogenous. It is all too obvious that the corporate
world influences our culture and desires in profound ways. Hence, the theory
of consumer sovereignty is pernicious, because it enables economists to claim
that all is well. Producers are just doing what consumers want them to do. And
consumers do not need protection because they are in charge, after all. So
economists disregard that desires beyond the basic needs are learned gradually
and do not come into being spontaneously from within ourselves. Through the
process of socialization we learn the terms under which we become respected
members of the society. The foundation of our value system is learned during
those formative years.

In fact, the manipulation of children’s unconscious by the media lays the

foundation for a culture of consumerism that cannot be undone by rational
processes once the child reaches adulthood. Hence, it would be important to
create an environment in which the development of children’s unconscious
mind is largely protected from business influence.

The other important psychological principle prominent in influencing children

is Pavlovian conditioning by, for instance, reinforcing behavior by rewarding it.
The conditioning starts at an early age: fast-food chains give away toys to
toddlers as a way of conditioning them to want to frequent those eateries even
when they no longer receive the toys and the firearms industry has poured
millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns
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into the hands of more, and younger, children.about

Cigarette manufacturers
contributors
give donate
newsletter
out free samples. And we have many programs such as frequent-flyer miles,
bonus points with credit cards, free gifts, and premiums. Parents have not been
successful in shielding their children from this multibillion-dollar effort at
conditioning.

Hence, by the time we reach adulthood we have gone through a rigorous

process of inculcation inasmuch as Madison Avenue inundates us with symbols
of sex, power, and cultural icons in order to sell its clients’ products. Through
this socialization we assimilate a culture in which we learn to mimic the tastes,
values, and consumption habits of superstars and assorted other idols
projected across the media. Under such intense pressure, children are groomed
to grow up to become reliable consumers and choice becomes a pretense of
individualism.

Neoclassical economics ignores the role of the unconscious mind and the role
of conditioning in the formation of our personality because otherwise the
rationality of Homo economicus, who is objective about her wants, is super
rational, and is in perfect control of her taste, emotions, and desires would not
make sense.

However, it is deceptive to think that we are in control of our tastes and values.
Nearly three hours of TV watching daily would affect anyone’s thinking
patterns. Corporations invest extravagantly in order to promote those aspects
of the culture on which they can profit, sway our wants, and make us feel like
we need their product. They hire trendsetters to admonish us hundreds of
thousands of times to forget about the future and buy today before the bargains
expire, to indulge in instant gratification, and tempt us with the newest
glittering products, to carelessly disregard the future, putting caveats into the
fine print.

We’ve been so preoccupied with the threat of big government controlling our
lives that we were blind to the threat posed by other institutions, namely
Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the mega-
corporations that slowly but incrementally, year in and year out, did exactly
that which we feared the most: limit much of our freedoms and manipulate
much of our individuality.

So in order to regain our freedoms we would need to start by protecting the

individuality of our children from the conditioning of the corporate world. That
can only be accomplished if we can limit the power of Madison Avenue from
depicting an unrealistic but tempting view of the American Dream.

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2016 March 3
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DOES BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS COMPLEXITY ECONOMICS SHOWS

SUPPORT OR UNDERMINE THE US WHY LAISSEZ-FAIRE
WELFARE STATE? ECONOMICS ALWAYS FAILS

13 Comments Evonomics 
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Oswaldo Lairet • 2 years ago

Thanks for contributing an insightful, alternative notion on how economics really work. From
my perspective, this one sentence reveals the power of your insight: "...In fact, the manipulation
of children’s unconscious by the media lays the foundation for a culture of consumerism that
cannot be undone by rational processes once the child reaches adulthood."

I begun a largely vegan regimen (17 of 21 weekly meals), seven years ago. Yet, the industries you
mention have so brainwashed our society, that without my 4 unrestricted weekly meals, I
wouldn't have a smooth social, professional or family life. In fact, our own "animal brains"
initially rebel against us taking away, the menu of oxidant, toxic and generally degenerative
foods introduced to our sensory perceptors since childhood.

Additionally, the industrial complex's army of scientists keep developing ever more precise
chemical combinations, designed to hijack our senses and exploit them to the point that
convincing my own kids to stay away from addictive foods it's impossible. Yet, earlier this year I
summarized for them, the key ideas (and internet links) I've developed over the years and while
slowly, this approach is starting to work. I'd gladly share it this way or privately, upon request.
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Richard Wilk • 2 years ago

A cursory search through the literature on consumer behavior would make it clear that theories
of psychological conditioning have been rejected for almost 40 years now, and the same is true
in media studies and allied fields. Influence, yes, but conditioning no, The Frankfurt school
(Horkheimer et al), and various ideas of consumer brainwashing were popular in the 1950s and
60's when people were in a panic about the vulnerability of children and the uneducated
(remember the comic book code?), and in the hands of early consumer advocates like Vance
Packard. Of course advertising has pernicious effects on society - andI wish it was as simple as
conditioning, but really, read the literature or at least consult some people with expertise.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

James Dickens • 2 years ago

This isn't Pavlovian conditioning. It is Operant (Skinnerian) conditioning. And the already weak
article that wants to prove a good point gets decimated by this inaccuracy.
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Reply S ae

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David Week • 2 years ago
The classical view of economics is not an oversight, but rather fits within the frame of Cartesian
idea of what it means to be human, which is to be an autonomous rational soul. The more we
find out about how humans really operate, the more we find this view deficient.

Many writers accept the idea contextual influence on human behaviour don't want to think
about its ultimate corollary: if our choices are conditioned, how conditioned is our choice in the
kinds of articles we write and read, and the kinds of theoretical thoughts we think.

What if nothing is outside the system?

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Ted Howard • 2 years ago

Yes, certainly, what is written here is a small part of the issue.

Certainly we are influenced by the context of our existence at many levels, from deep cultural to
sound bite advertising, to such approximations as we manage of rational consideration.

Certainly humans can be both highly cooperative and highly competitive, depending on context,
and the evolutionary justification for that is clear and complex. Reality has many dangers. As
one example, super-volcanoes are real. 1815 was the last time a little one went off, and gave a
winter to the planet that lasted 18 months. Bigger ones can create much longer winters. All of
our ancestors were sufficiently competitive to survive all such things.

And it seems that for most of human history (between such external destructive events), there
was sufficient abundance for humans to live in highly cooperative societies. And cooperation by
itself is unstable, and requires attendant strategies to prevent invasion by cheating strategies -
we see them at many different levels - within our cells, to prevent viruses, our immune system,
and many levels of cultural systems.

So if there is genuine scarcity, we can all compete, and compete hard.

And if there is enough for all, we can all cooperate, at potentially infinite levels (whatever level
see more

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Derryl Hermanutz • 2 years ago

That governments, politicians, corporations and other social institutions engage in systematic
and highly psychologically sophisticated propaganda to influence their target market's desires
and thinking and behavior, is not a controversial thesis. The ancients practiced the art of
rhetoric: appealing to emotion, reason, psychological manipulation -- whatever works -- to bring
the audience around to "seeing things my way".

Gustave le Bon laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of mass psychology in his
1895 book, The Crowd. In the 1920s Walter Lippman and Edward Bernays married le Bon's
group psychology insights to the homogenizing power of mass media.

In his 1922 book, Public Opinion, Walter Lippman argued that mass society requires
homogenous mass mind to be governable. Lippman drew on the spectacularly successful
techniques of the propaganda campaign that transformed Americans' public opinion from,
"Spend no US blood or treasure on foreigners' wars" to "Kill the evil Hun!", that was needed to
get the US into WWI (read Smedley Butler's little 1935 book, War is a Racket -- documenting
how the many pay to produce war profits for the few -- to discover whose interests were served
by US entry into that war and other wars). In 1923 Bernays published, Crystallizing Public
Opinion, advertising his ability to mould public opinion on contract to whoever could afford his
f B ' 1928 b k titl d i l P d t hi t lt i bli
see more

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David • 2 years ago

There is no way to "evidence this as Anderson suggests. We (the US) are the world leaders of
consumption and there is no doubt much of it is early conditioning.
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Joe Manning • 2 years ago
I agree. And Sheilding our children from this can a daunting task.
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DWAnderson • 2 years ago

Was there any evidence in this piece? You would expect some to justify limits on free expression
advocated in the conclusion.
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Unlearning Economics > DWAnderson • 2 years ago

While I agree the article was quite weak, 'limits on free expression' is a bit much. Only
people have a right to free expression; corporations do not.
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Alex Nongard > Unlearning Economics • 2 years ago

Corporations are people, my friend.
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andrewbb@gmail.com • 2 years ago

Pretty accurate. You might toss in the idea of telepathy and possession technology that
reinforces the conditioning.
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rorysutherland • 2 years ago

This is a surprisingly "Blank Slate-ish" view for a blog which calls itself "Evonomics". And seems
to follow that old economic assumption that humans are not to some degree instinctively
competitive, caring only about absolute not relative wealth; that we would somehow be content
with a minimalist and egalitarian existence had we not been otherwise indoctrinated to want
things.

As E O Wilson supposedly said of Marxism: "Wonderful theory - wrong species."

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JOHN KOMLOS

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John Komlos is Professor

about contributors newsletter Emeritus
donate of Economics and of
Economic History at the
University of Munich and has
taught at such other institutions
as Harvard, Duke, and the
University of Vienna. He is
author of What Every
Economics Student Needs to
Know and Doesn't Get in the
Usual Principles Text.

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