[rhygar]

The cost of this is a loss of jobs for sign makers (and their suppliers), marketing agencies, and a loss of income for new businesses (and their suppliers) that want to make their presence known. Basically, the economy in that city is worse off overall as a result, and there are fewer jobs to go around.

[Strilanc]

The goal is not to create any type of job. You want jobs to be useful and create value for people. Otherwise you end up doing absurd things like hiring window breakers to create more window repair work.

Increasing the amount of advertising redistributes value instead of creating new value. It's a classic example of a prisoner's dilemma. Everyone does better individually by advertising more, but when everyone advertises more they do worse.

From the perspective of society, money spent on advertising is almost entirely wasted. It could be better spent on other things, like making air travel cheaper.

I know advertising does have a useful purpose: a mechanism to inform people about things they didn't know. But the amount of advertising necessary to achieve that purpose is minimal. Creating laws that limit advertising to that minimal amount is a net benefit to society.

[wr1472]

They said the same thing about technological advancements during the industrial revolution...

[rhygar]

Bzzzt! Wrong. This is not a technical innovation. This is government regulation of a market.

[brc]

Not all government regulations are bad. The worst thing anyone can do in support of free markets is somehow insist that there should be no government regulations.

We have regulations on vehicle drive-by noise limits. Yes, this costs consumers and manufacturers. But overall, it is a net gain as it results in a quieter society, which is better. Visual pollution is just as bad as noise pollution.

It's a sensible move for people to adopt if they choose to do so.

I actually think it would be broadly neutral. A lot of value invested in advertising is actually wasted. So redistributing that back into the economy may turn out to be marginally beneficial. For every signwriter that had to get a new job, perhaps a magazine editor, online ad creator or telephone sales operator got a job. Or perhaps the companies that saved in constructing advertising changed to improving their products instead.

It will always be impossible to know. But don't argue that all government regulation is wrong.

[botker]

All government regulation is bad because none of us has the moral right to dictate the behavior of strangers.

The aggregate gain in a quieter society that you describe is not an aggregate gain in happiness. It's a society in which we're silenced.

Advertising is a form of speech, and we should all support free speech in all forms, lest we find ourselves silenced.

Hacker News would be free of visual clutter if we all stop posting. If a government mandate forced us to stop, supporters may argue that it makes the world a cleaner place. Clutter-free as it might be, those supporters don't have the moral right to prevent us from speaking. That in essence is why all government regulation is bad.

[brc]

Government regulation is not necessarily the dictating of behaviour to strangers.

Every collective has it's own rules which are mostly designed to facilitate better running of the collective. This is true from the couple, the family, the business, the church, right on up to the planet as a whole.

It is imperfect to assume that everyone will agree to get along and abide by the same rules. Therefore, you need a level of collective creation and agreeance of rules in order to try and optimise behaviours.

Once you decide that there needs to be rules, you've got to decide on who makes the rules. There are many choices, from outright dictatorship to various levels of democracy.

So in a sense, we surrender ourselves to certain rules in the understanding that we consider the cost to be greater than the benefit. This will always involve compromises - but in a truly free society freedom to stick up massive advertising hoardings conflicts with the freedom to walk down the street without having to see such things.

The middle road, the compromise, is a representative government whereby we agree to rules in the understanding that, if the rules aren't working out in the way we want, we collectively change the rulemakers.

Of course, in practice, there is plenty of evidence that this is problematic. For the most part, there is far too much government regulation over matters which the government has no part in agreeing to.

In the case of the advertising hoardings - well, presumably whomever enacted the ban would be free to be challenged in an election and the decision overturned if people felt the cost exceeded the benefit. In this case, I don't really think it's a case of violating free speech, as the advertisers are still free to speak in many forms, just that there are restrictions in a certain form.

But a dogmatic sticking to an approach where nobody has any say over anybody elses business just invites ridicule, just as communists and socialists of varying stripes invite their own ridicule with ridiculous 'property is theft' comments.

[botker]

It's ironic that my anti-dogmatic stance (None of us has the right to dictate the behavior of strangers) came across as being dogmatic (Thou shalt not dictate the behavior of strangers).

Of course you're right that this is how the world works, from a Collectivist perspective. The Individualist perspective, which I tend towards, asserts that individual happiness is far more important than any attempt to "optimise behaviours".

  There are many choices, from outright dictatorship to various levels of democracy.

Tyranny of the majority is not inherently preferable to the tyranny of a dictator. The other end of the scale is self-ownership, which is not widely practiced today.

At the end of the day, my giant sign isn't harming anyone, and no one's forced to look at it. Restricted speech in the name of "cleanliness" is not acceptable in my book, but from a Collectivist perspective I guess it's alright.

If that stance invites ridicule, I accept -- just as long as we all remain mutually respectful about letting each other voice our opinions -- and that includes businesses and politicians.

[rayiner]

You're a nutter.

[botker]

What are you, an ex-girlfriend? This is Hacker News; let's maintain a higher level of conversation than that.

[philwelch]

> Bzzzt! Wrong.

Don't do that shit. It's annoying and adds nothing to the conversation.

[mshron]

... where there are serious externalities. Isn't this where government regulation is most suited?

[rhygar]

What externalities? What material harm is caused by putting up a sign, beyond "I disapprove of it"?

[cmdrreiki]

Poor aesthetics cause psychological harm through both distraction and pure ugliness. I shouldn't have to combat decades of scientific research on attention-stealing simply to maintain my train of thought as I walk down the street.

[rhygar]

Admit it - you have no evidence other than anecdotes to prove that signs cause material harm, and therefore externalities.

This is government red tape that hurts the economy in that city.