Well, for one thing, some people believe that it is not the role of the Almighty State to dictate and micromanage every single action or inaction that businesses and individuals take.
Sometimes these people have the audacity to believe that businesses should be permitted to voluntarily exchange with broadcasters and that parents should be permitted to make their own choices with regard to the content their children consume.
Anyway, I agree. I don't buy this whole "liberty" nonsense either.
That freedom of action is generally predicated on the idea of competent individuals and businesses interacting voluntarily. When dealing with children that rationale goes out the window, because children are not competent to voluntarily participate in the economy. There is very little that is more in the province of the state to micromanage, even in a libertarian utopia, than interactions between businesses and people who are legally incompetent, like children.
If your counter-argument is predicated on businesses freely exchanging with parents to convince them what products to feed their children, I fully agree that they should be free to do that, but that's distinct from advertising to children directly.
The counter-argument is that advertisement is speech, even if it is undesirable, and that speech is information.
Parents who do not wish their children exposed to advertising could use the same rules they would use to prevent their children from being exposed to violent media and profanity.
I think the solution is for parents to simply start thinking of media portraying drug consumption and media portraying Twinkie consumption as logically equivalent, and for parents to stop paying for an information service to deliver them such media (television), and to demand the market provide a new information service which more adequately matches their preferences for media (a kid-oriented Netflix?).
This solution does not require a state to monitor and decode the nutritional value of information transfers.
Advertising is only kinda speech, in the sense that its a proposal for a commercial transaction. The principles under which advertising is regulated is similar to the principles under which fraud is regulated. Its not speech when you propose to sell something to someone that you don't own or that doesn't do what you claim.
For information which functions as advertising to also be a candidate for fraud it must first assert something as fact.
There are many forms of advertisement which do not assert facts or even include language. An advertisement could simply consist of a graphical fictional portrayal of consumption or brand usage done in a glamorous light.
If something does not include a representation of facts, it does include a potential for fraud, and it would not make sense to regulate it as such solely on a principle of equivalence.
> For information which functions as advertising to also be a candidate for fraud it must first assert something as fact.
That's sort-of fine, again, when dealing with competent adults. Though plenty of research demonstrates that even competent adults are incapable of avoiding being influenced by good advertising in ways that may very well be against their own interests.
But when targeting children, it takes very little before your slight manipulation gets treated as if it was fact by young children. That it isn't "asserting something as fact" by adult standards is meaningless when discussing advertising that is targeting children.
And as a parent: Short of locking my child in the house with no access to any media, there is no way I can prevent my son from being exposed to advertising that he (at 4 years old) is in no way prepared to objectively assess the fact content of.
That's not the point. The point is that commercial advertising isn't full-blooded speech (and thus may be subject to regulation for the same reason that fraudulent speech is subject to regulation).
> Parents who do not wish their children exposed to advertising could use the same rules they would use to prevent their children from being exposed to violent media and profanity.
That doesn't fly. The nature of advertising is intrusive. I have to sign up for porn cable channel. I have no control about what goes on air on Discovery Kids at 10 PM between the shows. I can choose what magazine I buy. I can't choose which ads are printed between the articles. It goes on...
Dumb mass media advertising could die tomorrow. Every advertising should be like AdWords (query initiated suggestions curated by the channel, not nagging driven by the advertisers). Unfortunately we still have mass media since that's profitable for the agencies mafia, they still get away selling impressions/exposure, not real results.
> because children are not competent to voluntarily participate in the economy.
But isn't it still up to the parents to decide what to buy?
There's a campaign in my country (Brazil) to ban/regulate all sorts of advertising to children, and I've heard some parents who support it claim (essentially) that they can't say "no" to their children. As someone who grew up in a lower-middle-class family and understood very early that I couldn't have all the toys, or even all the toys my slightly higher-middle-class classmates had, I find that trend rather bizarre.
What harm is there in banning advertisement directed at children? Perhaps they may become less well equipped to deal with advertising as adults (but this seems an easy enough problem to solve). Conversely, the benefits of banning children-directed advertising are huge.
It was easy (relatively) for your parents to say "no" because they just couldn't afford it. It's much harder when you can afford it, but you don't think it's good for them to buy your kid YetAnotherPieceOfCrapTheyveBeenAdvertisedIntoWanting(tm).
There are some parents who will not say "no", and there are some children who will holler until they get their way. The advertisers know this, and will take advantage of it. Different families deal with demand and desire for products differently.
Children can't consent. So the state has to protect them. One way to do that is by shielding them from things that hurt them.
It happens that junk food hurts them, and a lot of the reason why they eat junk food is because of television ads. Since they can't consent and the state must protect them, we ought to limit advertising unhealthy things to kids.
I'm sure 99.9% of parents, if properly educated, would agree that an overweight or obese child is a bad thing. They might not know what to do about it, and TV ads might turn out to be more powerful than parent's routine meal planning.
It might turn out that asking them to turn off the TV is impractical. Maybe telling them what to feed their kids is even worse. In terms of practical means to reduce obesity, most parents would not oppose limiting TV advertising to children.
A lot of the time, the measures the state needs to take to protect children includes protecting them from actions of parents that might very well be well-meaning, but just as clueless and easily manipulated by advertising as their children, but all to often even don't care.
While I'm for reducing the power of the state, protection of children is not something society can abdicate from without severe negative effects.
I will admit that this is a tricky area. Children are people and people certainly can choose to come to the aid of someone else who is being abused or harmed. But dealing with children is somewhat special, since it is generally considered the parent's responsibility and prerogative to decide how to raise their children.
Sadly I don't think there is any way to come to any real, objective answer on this issue. It is one, IMO, that will cause conflict as long as there are people.
Yes but, for example, full fat yoghurt won't hurt them and wouldn't fit the guidelines. The guidelines stupidly and unscientifically advocate for lowfat milk products which leave all the potentially dangerous aspects of dairy while taking out the good stuff. If the problem is marketing to kids who can't consent, let's address that separately!
throwit hardly seems to be talking about a libertarian utopia. Kids are susceptible to advertising. They're also susceptible to what their parents teach them. For many of the first years of their lives, they have absolutely no ability to purchase any of these products for themselves.
Is it really so much to ask that we be allowed to make our own decisions about food? Come on, we're talking about food! Not medicine. Not heavy machinery or automobiles or airplanes or nuclear energy. Food!
You don't have to accept the position of the documentary, that the corporate form is intrinsically a bad thing. But tell me that the marketers behind the "Nag Factor" report don't disgust you.
It is nice to imagine that each family is an island of rationality, well-informed about choices and their eventual effects, never choosing the easy path, immune to marketing and peer pressure. In the real world, things are a little more complex. And the marketers behind reports like "The Nag Factor" make millions by subverting family relations to serve their purposes.
It is good to be skeptical of regulation, but this is so clearly a case where more good can be done than harm.
I'm not saying he's proposing a libertarian utopia. I'm saying that even in a libertarian utopia, regulating interactions between people who are competent to participate freely in the economy and those who are not is reasonably the province of the state.
I'm not talking about limiting anybody's decisions. I'm talking about regulating interactions between businesses and people who are incompetent to make their own decisions.
This is exactly what makes it so dangerous. Just food? Food is something that can be as deadly as drugs, yet is as accepted as air.
>Not medicine.
It's worse than medicine exactly for the sentiment you are expressing. No big deal right? It's so normal it couldn't possibly be abused, right? It's exactly the opposite. We can push poison and it's no big deal because it's "just food".
It's not about forcing people to make decisions. It's about deceiving people into make the wrong decisions for your own profit. That is not innocent business. That is fraud.
You're absolutely right! We shouldn't let these petty concerns about the competence of children infringe on our liberties! For too long has the Almighty State been sticking its nose where it doesn't belong and we should do something about all these ridiculous limitations.
Why should it be illegal for children to drink alcohol? Their parents should be permitted to make their own choices with regard to the beverages their children consume.
Why should it be illegal for an adult to have sexual intercourse with a minor? The parents should be permitted to make their own choices with regard to the sexual behavior of their own children.
Down with the meddling of the state! Our freedom is at stake!
"Why should it be illegal for children to drink alcohol? Their parents should be permitted to make their own choices with regard to the beverages their children consume."
I think you mean this to be sarcastic and obviously wrong, but many states in the US permit parents to give minors alcohol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Underage_consumption_map_2...) Some states permit this anywhere (including in pubs), others restrict it to the home. This is considered entirely reasonable by many, dare I say most, people.
There's a balance to strive for between making a statement concisely and making it nitpick-proof. I could have been more factually correct by stating that it's illegal to sell booze directly to minors, but that would've made the tone of my comment less rabidly libertarian.
The point, of course, is that parents can make a meaningful decision about whether they'll give booze to their kids a lot more easily than they can do the same for exposing their kids to advertisement.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that, even in those states, you could get in some sort of legal trouble for giving whiskey to a 2-year old. Obviously, we can't claim similar level of damage when it comes to advertising, but we don't seem to be willing to look more closely into it, either.
> I could have been more factually correct by stating that it's illegal to sell booze directly to minors, but that would've made the tone of my comment less rabidly libertarian.
Yes, it is a damn shame when reality gets in the way of your strawmen...
Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and South Carolina all allow minors to drink alcohol on private property without the consent of their parents.
In several states the only way you could get in trouble for giving whiskey to a 2-year old is if you gave it in sufficient quantities that child endangerment became clear. Letting your kid to take a small sip of whiskey under supervision to convince the kid that he wants nothing more to do with it is reasonable and legal in many areas.
These markets are already intensely and exhaustively managed.
I'm not disagreeing with you; what annoys me is that the people who suddenly claim to support business independence from heavy government regulation remain silent until some new law is proposed.
If there is a problem with banning businesses from advertising from children, then there is a problem with the FTC today, not tomorrow, because they already heavily regulate advertising, including what you can show to children. In the US government agencies have vast reaching legal authority to create and enforce their own rules. When there is a scandal they answer to elected representatives, but otherwise? Not so much.
Sometimes these people have the audacity to believe that businesses should be permitted to voluntarily exchange with broadcasters and that parents should be permitted to make their own choices with regard to the content their children consume.
Anyway, I agree. I don't buy this whole "liberty" nonsense either.