There's nothing ethereal about it. A business cost is always passed on to the consumer. And whether your wallet is skewered through the heart or bled to death by a thousand cuts, doesn't change the fact it gets drained.
OK. You seem to have a misunderstanding of how capitalism and commerce work. You see, money can be exchanged for god and services. When A pays B and then B pays C, if you then say this is the same as A paying C, it is true in the most broad, meaningless sense. You seem to not understand that companies have advertising departments, i.e. advertising is baked into the price anyway. You inane argument has as much meaning as when I see a haulage truck, I say to myself, "I'm paying that drivers salary." That is true, if I buy whatever he is hauling around from factory to shop, but is meaningless. You see money sloshes about the economy and we all pay each other for goods and services. And then there is tax. BBC license fee is a tax.
By your reckoning, if TV advertisements were suddenly banned, products would drop in price. Right? No. Companies would then have to find more inefficient ways of advertising.
Basic arithmetic. [cost of adverts] / [units manufactured] = [cost per unit]. If you want specifics, go look up a few numbers. Will the cost per unit be high? No. Fractions of pennies. But multiply that by the number of various units you buy every day, week, month, year. The point isn't that this cost if large or small, but that commercial stations are not free. There is a cost and it is borne by us whether we want to admit it or not.
cost of haulage / units manufactured = cost per unit. Oh now I'm paying for haulage, from factory to shop, too.
cost of labour/ units... oh now I'm paying the damn worker's labour cost.
cost of research/... oh and now research.
cost of water cooler in company office/.. I guess I have to add this to the cost too.
It seems I'm paying for everything here! Which means the true (fair?) price of all products is 0 pounds.
If you haven't noticed what is happening here, I am repeating your observation with all kinds of different costs that are need for a company to bring a product to market. I didn't realize I was paying the man who puts the water in the water cooler's salary, just by buying a DVD.
What you would be wise to observe here is how economies work. People pay each other for good and services. Saying I am paying to watch adverts is meaningless, unless you want to argue that the price of all those products that are advertised should be zero. Otherwise we have to take into account all the other people I'm supposedly paying when I buy a product.
You do - it's been explained to you twice now.
What you have explained is that you don't understand how the world works. You think advertising is some afterthought companies tag on the end after developing a product. Advertising is an integral part of how companies make money. It is a necessity. I'm not paying any extra to watch adverts, because if there were no TV adverts then companies would have to advertise in other ways. If you still want to argue that I'm paying for this, then explain if I am also paying extra costs for my product due to the logistics companies, the accountants and auditing firms, the legal firms, the caretaker who empties the bins at the end of the day. I'm paying for all of this, when in fact I seemingly shouldn't be paying anything for anything.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
