Maxim Litvinov wrote:But you can't really permanently be defensive about these things.
Blah. I think a person can learn to control their wanting as well as their behavior, such that one needn't be permanently "defensive" at all. In fact, I would be reluctant to characterize it as an issue of defense against attack in the first place. I don't think indulgence is implicitly negative, and nor do I consider temptation (argument) to be a kind of aesthetic offense.
Maxim Litvinov wrote:But there are very subtle ways of undermining the former and maximising the latter, a few of which I discussed, and it's really hard to determine which if any of them should be considered naughty.
What's subtle and what's obvious is in many cases a function of what people are trained to look for. In many ways, this is a lot like learning to test. Business ethics is certainly a diverse subject, and like any diverse subject the context of a question will strongly influence its resolution, but I wouldn't call it really hard. It's accessible. Not rocket science.
Maxim Litvinov wrote:I mean, putting people in a good mood so they'll buy your lollipop seems innocent enough, but what about making them fearful so they'll buy your security system? Is it just a matter of steering clear of misleading or fraudulent advertising and being okay? Or is it a problem if you are deliberately targetting vulnerable people?
I don't think you can "put" people in a good mood or "make" them fearful with elective advertising as we know it today. People react to these things based upon associative processes, and not only are those processes learned but they are subject to analytical regulation. You shouldn't want to slap business for attempting to be empirical in their advertising methodology, whilst giving the culture a free pass for being analytically bankrupt. Modern marketing is a culturally reactionary argument. Fraud, on the other hand, is lying and theft.
Maxim Litvinov wrote:So many questions about business ethics. I don't think the general answer is to simply ascribe fault in most cases to one party or the other - business for fraud and the consumer for irrationality.
I wouldn't ascribe fault to a business for advertising, nor would I seek to fault a consumer for consuming. I don't think either are problematic. What's problematic is businesses that steal and consumers who consume without thinking. Broadly, it's a cultural problem - not one with the empirical advertising model.