[scotty79]

Same reason they shouldn't be able to pay with gambling, scamming, prostitution or their organs. Advertisement industry is all a scam. It's a privately levied tax that lets sellers win competition with themselves and ultimately the customer pays, both in price of products and in their attention as well.

[sanswork]

Without advertising how does anyone get visibility into new products? You are proposing winner take all markets when you propose banning advertising.

[scotty79]

Single, public, online product and service database provided by the market regulator. Since the country gets income from taxing commerce it's only fair that they also provide discovery service. If you want to sell something on the market you have to enter it into this database, with the up to date price and relevant documentation.

Consumers can access the database through provided UI or through 3rd party tools using this database API.

[sanswork]

That sounds incredibly dystopian to me. If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors. Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors.

That sounds wonderful! How do you see dystopian?

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

God forbid I listen to my neighbors and their experiences! Come on, there's even a term for it: "word of mouth".

[scotty79]

Oh, no. I can't get exploited by multitude of corporations. How dystopian. That's why we can't have nice things. Because every time an idea encroaches on some billionaire's profit it's suddenly too much power in hands other than those privately holding billions. Any government so far has been more transparent in what they do, than something like Amazon.

> you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials

You already have to do that for commerce. It's called incorporating.

> giant list of your competitors

Isn't that what market is? Giant amount of competitors is what's best for consumers. And what's best for them is the only thing that matters because they together have the money to foot all the bills.

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

It's fine, you can provide as much documentation as you want for your product or service. You are even encouraged to provide it. Like user and service manuals for your products. Maybe you even should be required to post them if you significant amount of your product.

Consumers can decide using the provided UI, or using 3rd party tools, which can't take money to promote specific items, because that, unlike verbose entry in the database, would be an ad.

> You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

Do you read all of the databases alphabetically? No, I end up with search engine, for products and services, with open data and any kind of filtering and sorting that anyone can dream of. No more enshittificarion of the result to sell clicks of confused customers.

[ndriscoll]

Retailers could always highlight high value products they are offering within their storefront (without being compensated by manufacturers to do so; that would be a scam ad).

[sanswork]

How do retailers find new products? Why would they bother highlighting new products if there is no pull demand from community awareness. You'd just pick one vendor and agree to only sell their products for better rates

[ndriscoll]

They publish contact information for vendors? They reach out to vendors through their published sales channels? Go to industry trade events or follow industry periodicals where that's the purpose?

They'd highlight new products because they believe they're good.

The solution to your last problem is to make exclusive dealing contracts always illegal and actually enforce antitrust law.

[sanswork]

All your solutions are forms of advertising.

[ndriscoll]

Contacting a sales department at their provided address for that purpose is responding to a request for you to do so. This is nothing at all like taking money to propagandize people.

Putting a product at a prominent part of your store because you think it's a good purchase for customers is also completely different from accepting money from a manufacturer to place it prominently.

Going to an event where everyone specifically went to meet and exchange information about what people in their industry are doing is also again entirely unlike paid promotion.