If I buy a $30 bottle of pills that are supposed to make me lose weight, well I lost $30 and I learned my lesson. If I send my kid to a fucked up school it might take years for me to realize it was fucked up, and the stakes are much higher.

A bit of back story. I'm the only person in my immediate family to finish high school, and I was raised by my grandmother who is not educated at all. She would have been completely unequipped to make a good decision about such things. Yet here I am, a successful software engineer, due in large part to a good public education. I can't see how I would have been better served by a private system.

Or you could send your kid to a public school which is also fucked up, but not have any other options because, hey, there aren't any other schools around, and nobody has any real incentive to fix it up.

I think your worry about someone starting a school that is actually a sham are very much out of proportion. In today's public schools, many kids can't read or do basic math, so it's hard to imagine something worse.

Also, the monopoly system is the only reason parents can't easily switch their kid to a different school. If this were an option, parents would be much more critical. Most parents today just settle for whatever is publicly available b/c it's "free" to them and they'd have to move to a different district to put their kid in a different school.

The only concern I'd have would be with religious schools which might teach BS instead of real stuff. But an appropriate level of government intervention in setting the curriculum and standard examinations would hopefully negate this problem.

"Final question for one million points: roughly how old is the Earth, anyway?"

Let me explain how schools work where I come from. The final year of high school is spent largely doing a series of examinations standardized across the state, called the Higher School Certificate. (It's a bit more complicated than that, there's a school-based contribution to the exams which gets normalized with another set of exams, but let's just pretend it's one big set of exams now, which tests everything you learn in your last two years of school.) The marks are all tallied up, and every student in the state recieves a grade between 0 and 100 which ranks exactly how well they did in their exams (if you get 95.4 then you did better than 95.4% of the state, et cetera). These numbers (called Tertiary Entrance Rankings when I went through, though I think they've changed name several times since then) determine what courses and universities you can get into (none of this namby-pamby admissions essay slash extracurricular bullshit stuff like in the US)... or for those who don't go to university it will be a major line item on your CV when you start looking for work, so obviously all students are very keen on making sure they get a high TER. This provides an obvious point for competition between schools -- schools will compete between themselves to get the largest number of high TERs, and parents choosing schools for their children will look at this information when choosing schools.

It's heartless, and it's cut-throat, and it's incredibly stressful for the students, and it works great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Academy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_league

Sadly, many kids in special ed programs and many behavior problem kids would not have problems in a different type of learning scenario... but the entrenched K-12 classroom, 30 students one teacher, hour long periods, boring books, exercises, silence, etc., is just a horrible fit for them.

But were you given a good education, or were you smart enough to educate yourself given a modicum of education and a structured environment?

The problem is that half of people are not smart enough. If you teach them to read using word recognition, they will not deduce phonics on their own, so their reading ability is permanently capped at a level suitable for a dull 8 year-old.

The problem with zero-competition government schools is that when they get captured by a fad (word recognition, new math, no student left behind, etc.), it happens everywhere. There is no escape. And then 20 years later you get a new generation of teachers that are the product of bad teaching. The result is a 50 year cycle of mini dark ages.

... I was raised by my grandmother who is not educated at all. She would have been completely unequipped to make a good decision about such things.

But would she want to make a good decision? Or to avoid a horrifically bad decision? The latter does not require education or sophistication, just the ability to ask about the relative rank of the nearby schools.

I didn't care about education until i was in my 20s. I would not have educated myself as a child or teenager.

"The problem is that half of people are not smart enough"

That sounds like a number you pulled out of your butt. Do you have any real statistics on that?

"The problem with zero-competition government schools is that when they get captured by a fad (word recognition, new math, no student left behind, etc.), it happens everywhere. There is no escape. "

I'm not sure I understand, but I'm pretty sure it's not true. Our schools are becoming more federalized, but that hasn't always been the case. States once had a lot of leeway in their education systems.

"The latter does not require education or sophistication, just the ability to ask about the relative rank of the nearby schools."

This isn't true. She'd have no idea what graphs mean, and even if she got it to some degree it would be very easy to mislead her. Think about it. Have you ever watched infomercials with absurd assertions that have graphs and numbers on them? You and I realize they are absurd, but most people don't. Think about it.

What I mean is if you were chained to a desk and forced to study something, would your mind have automatically picked out relationships and meanings, even if they were not explicitly drilled? Most people in the upper third of intelligence do this almost automatically. For them, the curriculum is not the education.

"The problem is that half of people are not smart enough."

The studies of IQ and life outcome suggest that people of below-average intelligence do not spontaneously deduce general principles when given many specific examples. If you teach them to read by word recognition training, they will not figure out the rules of phonics on their own. It will be difficult or impossible for them to read a word that was not trained into them in childhood. (Whereas even really thick people trained in phonics can read words like "platen" or "vellus" that they have never seen before, and they can make themselves understood at writing down words they know but have never seen spelled.)

States once had a lot of leeway in their education systems.

I was thinking of decentralization even at a lower level. If all the schools in a city are captured by a stupid fad, it may take decades for the city to escape. If individual schools are left to run themselves, the ones that pick dumb ideas will lose students/money to schools that pick good ideas.

She'd have no idea what graphs mean, and even if she got it to some degree it would be very easy to mislead her.

She wouldn't be able to understand "the students here get the worst scores in town"? And she would keep not understanding it for 13 years? And you would never figure it out and ask to go somewhere else? There may be some students in that situation, but there are many families with some degree of awareness and ambition, and their ambitions will promptly show up in budget cuts.

You do a fine job of describing what I think is wrong with ads (that most ads consist primarily of false information, often conveyed via subtle signals that the consumer processes non-consciously). I also absolutely agree that making the consuming public aware of the options open to them in the market is beneficial to society. I agree that there's a tension here: if you want to absolutely ban all of the downside of the former, you also lose the upside of the latter. Thank god my disgusting bathwater is gone, but where's my baby?

However, it's completely preposterous to say that the only alternatives are completely unrestrained advertising on the one hand, and a government-sponsored consumer-reports on the other. The latter sounds like an experiment I'd like to see run, actually, but not enough to endorse it in my own economy, so I guess that shows how much faith I have in it. But we already live in a compromise: manufacturers of known social ills like tobacco, alcohol, and gambling, have restrictions placed on how they can advertise. We already have laws on false advertising, especially around food and drugs, and also laws on clarity in packaging (which is a form of advertising). I think that if there were public will to do so, we could iteratively, gradually, over years and years, successively tighten the requirements for truth in advertising.

I think it's plausible and practical that this might get us to a societal state where the standard for advertising is informative, useful, and much much less manipulative.

Or maybe it wouldn't get us there, because getting legislation right is a bitch (especially in the US, apparently). But I see no support for your out-of-hand dismissal of the existence of practical, plausible alternatives to laissez faire.

That's an outrageous claim. Take marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to patients. Unconscionable in my opinion (and many other first world countries agree). There are many limited cases where marketing is quite harmful. Indeed, we have reason to believe education is one of those cases. You simply need to examine the current state of law schools in the United States to see where marketing gets you. People fresh out of undergrad taking out six figure loans and being told the median salary at their law school is also six figures. Which it is. But what they aren't being told about is the bimodal distribution of law salaries and only the top of the class has any chance of paying back their loans. And let's not even get into those ads you see on TV from third rate schools trying to convince you to go back to get your "MBA".

Is it OK to market antidepressants? What about blood pressure or cholesterol medicine? Heartburn medicine? Asprin? Sunscreen? Toothpaste? Dentil floss? Athlete's foot spray?

Prescription meds are controlled such that a doctor must agree that the prescription is a good idea before the patient gets the drug. There have been instances found of conflict-of-interest-inducing quid pro quos between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, but it seems silly to blame the ad a patient saw for this. Most ads I've seen say "ask your doctor about x".

So what is the harm? What classes of remedies (drugs, procedures, OTC items) result in harmful ads?

Your complaint about education ads is interesting b/c you're bemoaning the phenomenon of people with a freshly minted college degree foolishly pursuing more education. If you are seriously worried about a highly educated segment of society being misled by a simple numerical trick like the one you describe, there must be no hope whatsoever for humanity if the only people we can trust to watch commercials are people with a Ph.D in stats.

If someone has not become well acquainted with the sorts of semi-misleading things mentioned in ads by the time he/she is an adult, something is seriously wrong, and the sort of paternalistic society needed to protect this person from him/herself is unacceptably oppressive to everyone else's freedom.

The line is pretty straightforward. No marketing to patients of any drug that requires a prescription whatsoever. The reason why these medicines require prescriptions is because they are more serious than aspirin or sunscreen, so it's an easy and reasonable line to draw. Marketing to doctors is fine (i.e. the market actors who have the base knowledge necessary to make reasonably informed decisions). There are plenty of policy arguments to be found on why direct marketing of pharmaceuticals is not a net win. There's a reason why it only happens in the United States and New Zealand.

> If you are seriously worried about a highly educated segment of society being misled by a simple numerical trick like the one you describe, there must be no hope whatsoever for humanity if the only people we can trust to watch commercials are people with a Ph.D in stats.

The same arguments were made about predatory lending agreements and similarly misleading financial mechanisms. Society has come down in large part against these things, rejecting the idea that the consumer is wholly responsible to educate themselves. Marketing with law schools is a serious problem and the ABA is currently under investigation by several senators on this issue.

> If someone has not become well acquainted with the sorts of semi-misleading things mentioned in ads by the time he/she is an adult, something is seriously wrong, and the sort of paternalistic society needed to protect this person from him/herself is unacceptably oppressive to everyone else's freedom.

Sounds great on paper, but like most arguments of this type it doesn't hold up. In reality you've got people with average college educations going up against PhDs in finance, economics, psychology, etc. Companies can afford to pay these people huge salaries in order to increase sales, while the consumers are just regular people who get home after a hard days work and don't want to spend the balance of their free time on figuring out how the business execs are trying to trip them up. The bottom line is that in this country and others companies don't have the absolute freedom to represent their product how they want. As a practical consideration consumers don't have the time to educate themselves to the proper level and so regulation stops companies from taking advantage of consumers.

The argument that typically comes back is nanny state, etc, etc, etc. But I find it telling that it is only the people with the ability and education to combat predatory practices that make this argument. In reality America is composed of a diverse set of people, some with education, some without, some native speakers, some not. Some regulation to protect everyone who otherwise would trample the average citizen because of greed is the right thing to do.

Your argument against lenders and fine print is interesting. Post housing crash this sort of thing is blamed for herding lots of naive people into mortgages with terms they shouldn't (in retrospect) have agreed to.

However if you look at what regulators were doing during that period, they were actually expanding the core problem. Bush had started a war that was having real effects on the economy. In spite of Greenspan's attempt to clarify the government's position on implicitly underwriting Fannie and Freddie, Bush expended no effort at solving this problem, which had been much anticipated. Fannie and Freddie ended up not releasing any financial information to the public for several years!

This was also the time when many people felt very wise for having bought a house when they did. Prices were up 40% over a few years in many markets, and so it was easy for the American people to support an expensive war b/c so many were rich on paper thanks to the drastic appreciation in housing prices.

The regulations that tilt investment toward housing are supported by both political parties and created the massive bubble that ended up bursting.

Sure you can blame lenders for sloppy research, buyers for inadequate caution, but our government had everyone convinced that housing prices always go up.

You relate a sort of conspiracy theory about intellectuals being paid great sums to hoodwink the average person and suggest that better regulation is the answer. I'd argue that regulation is the biggest problem we have b/c it insulates people from the predictable and obvious consequences that they'd anticipate without this malign guidance.

Like a seatbelt made of tissue paper, it may appear to offer protection, but in reality it leads to risky behavior that no sane person would undertake without a large dose of naive trust in the ruling class.

While your formulation is deliberately obtuse, the underlying sentiment can be quite damning for a certain kind of free market fan-boy, the kind who insists that buyers in a market are rational in some individual or even collective sense, that they somehow optimize their own happiness or utility function.

That notion is patently absurd, and is actually flatly and irrefutably countered by the mere existence of marketing. If the decision-making process is rational, then there is no need, nor even ability, to forge emotional connections with brands through marketing. This is a plain fact that you do not seem to get. To wit:

Ads are often aspirational and emotional, and do not necessarily contain false information. Sure, paying tuition at a school won't get you into a prestigious school and owning a MB Air won't make you happy. But an ad communicating the virtues of a great product is a good thing if it informs consumers of the product.

You've cited two examples where ads are certainly misleading, and then seemed to imply that those ads "do not necessarily contain false information," as if they were therefore not deceptive. By attempting to short-circuit the decision-making process, by putting the emotional cart before the rational horse, the ads you describe are fundamentally deceptive. That ads like that exist, that they are paid for by people with skin in the game, and that they work, are all testament to the fundamental irrationality of market players on both an individual and aggregate level. Namely, they can be swayed by a manufactured emotional response before even having gone through the rational decision-making process.

So, the argument for which your reduction ad absurdum is actually a shadow is, "Marketing exists, therefore there is a fundamental problem with the underpinnings of free market theory. It does not match reality in one of the important ways that it purports."

You conclude:

[I]f you think ads are bad then the only solution is for the government to start its own version of 'consumer reports' and to publish a simple list of products ranked according to attributes. Hardly a remotely practical or plausible solution.

I have to say, that's quite a gem. In reverse order, I guess, is the best way to address it. Last, your point about it being impractical or implausible is vacuous and, further, not germane. How would the impracticality of any given solution affect the existence or nature of the underlying problem? Second-to-last, if you really believe that the solution you offered is the "only solution", then that is a failure only of your own imagination. One could at least imagine a tighter regulation of advertising claims, for example. (It's suspicious that the "only solution" you offer is the most oppressive and impractical one. Triumphalism like this is rarely the hallmark of independent thought, but often stems from having swallowed someone's propaganda whole.) Third-to-last and finally, the "if you think ads are bad" remark is hardly the most charitable characterization of the author's original point, and is in fact what is termed an "overgeneralization," a kind of straw man. Some more charitable attempts might be, "If you think that advertising about such important and life-changing things like which school to go to will carry unsustainable hazards,..." See how much closer we are to a solution just by framing the question fairly? Granted, the solutions one might come up with from there are perhaps less simplistic and less susceptible to vilification on ideological grounds, and that might not suit your rhetorical purpose. However, I submit that this approach has a countervailing good quality that ultimately recommends it. It shows good manners, maturity, and a willingness to actually further the discussion.

I think you are mistaken in your understanding of rationality. Emotion is part of rationality, not separate from it. To make a rational decision, a rational person ought to consider his/her emotional response as input to the decision function, not throw it away.

Also, different individuals have different utility functions, and not all are practical, far-looking, mature, or wise.

Your view of humanity seems rather grim if you think that people are so easily misled by advertising. While dishonest claims in ads are a bad thing, those fall under the category of "dishonesty" and not "advertising". An ad touting an inaccurate gas mileage for a car is no more abhorrent than a window sticker or owner's manual stating inaccurate gas mileage figures, and of course laws exist to discourage companies from engaging in either practice.

If anything, advertising omits negative facts about a product or service. But in a competitive marketplace firms have an incentive to publicize negative aspects of competing products (note the Velveeta ad claiming "Cheddar's lumpy, cheddar's oily..."). So the complaint about ommitted negatives is actually a complaint about an insufficiently competitive marketplace.

"Anchoring Bias: Phone Numbers Used as Anchors When Estimating the Prices of Goods"

This is my core point as well, thanks for taking the time to lay out a better case than I did. It's rather shocking once you realize that the human brain is not rational in the way we often think it is. I find this fact to completely destroy most libertarian principles.

How does it do anything of the sort? The most fundamental libertarian principle is simply that one should not use force/aggression/fraud to compel someone to do something against their will[1]. That people should be free from use of oppressive force does not require that they be purely rational.

As for the economic arguments that libertarians often use... understand that consequentalist libertarians like to demonstrate that free market principles usually result in better outcomes for most people, most of the time. I don't know any libertarian or free-market advocate who will contend that there are no pathological edge cases to the free-market / laissez-faire approach. They simply accept that as part of the system and acknowledge the role of private charity to fill gaps.

And to add one more point... while the Austrian School of economics, which is very influential to libertarians, and may sometimes be thought of as almost synonymous with libertarianism, does indeed put a strong emphasis on deductive logic and universal laws, I don't find many (if any) libertarians / austrian economists, who contend that humans are strictly rational, all the time.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

1. There is such a thing as rational utility, and 2. Bureaucrats can figure out what it is.

Huh? So you're saying there is only libertarianism or bureaucratly controlled economies? That's wrong on it's face.

Here's my idea of a good economy, markets for most things with good government regulation of health, safety, etc. And, a few public industries like water, power, and healthcare. This system doesn't fit your model at all.

"By attempting to short-circuit the decision-making process, by putting the emotional cart before the rational horse, the ads you describe are fundamentally deceptive. That ads like that exist, that they are paid for by people with skin in the game, and that they work, are all testament to the fundamental irrationality of market players on both an individual and aggregate level. Namely, they can be swayed by a manufactured emotional response before even having gone through the rational decision-making process."

What makes an emotional response any less worthy than a rational response? Plato's ideas on rationality are just plain wrong- the cart before the horse is a poor metaphor. If you look at any neuroscience research in the area, you soon see that that good decision making is completely impossible without both, together. I highly recommend Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide" as a highly readable book on the subject.

Following emotional cues is not "short-circuiting the decision-making process", and is not in any way "fundamentally deceptive".

EDIT: Not to mention that intangible value is still value. If marketing makes an item higher status, and you value items based on the status they confer on you, then that marketing is creating enormous value. Branding literally makes a product more valuable in a consumer eye, and that is the only measure of value that matters.

That is an extremely black-and-white view of the world. I think ads are generally not useful, and the small use they do provide is vastly overwhelmed by their negative attributes. I fully support truth-in-advertising laws, but I would never go as far as your proposed solution. Poor, emotion-laden advertisements are really due to fundamental flaws in human psychology which will be there no matter what we do.