Are you a product? – Ecolib

We must be careful with words, expressions and slogans, especially with the political hyperbole that supports the statist zeitgeist of our time. You are a product of greedy corporations. The author of the May 16 post Economist newsletter “The World in Brief” says it casually:

Walmart’s advertising business is much smaller than that of Amazon, which leads the way in e-commerce and video streaming. But Walmart has the advantage in the ground war. In its 10,000 stores, advertisers can purchase access to customers through signage, screens and in-store radio. The next time you’re looking for products in the supermarket, remember that you are a product too.

It is not clear what exactly the journalist is referring to. To verify, I went to my usual Walmart, but I didn’t see any third-party advertising, except of course the brand names and slogans of the products on the shelves. I didn’t see a screen or hear any advertising. However, the retailer does sell ads to third-party sellers on its Walmart Marketplace website. What’s the problem with Walmart selling ads anyway?

Information regarding your possible interest in bartering is part of life in any society above the tribal or command society, especially in an affluent society. Such information is certainly more beneficial to most people than state propaganda. Does private advertising mean you are a product? Are you a product of Google if it sells data that you give away by using its free services? According to Merriam Webster, a product is “something (such as a service) that is marketed or sold as a commodity.” A slave would be a product. Of course, that is not a free person. Even in a figurative sense, you cannot be a slave to salespeople whose proposals you can reject without any threat of punishment.

Referring to their concept of “wage labor slavery,” Marxists would say that Walmart employees are slaves, which doesn’t make sense: they can walk away at any time and work for someone else or for themselves. If Walmart’s employees are not slaves, it is even more clear that its customers are not, even though they are exposed to advertising when they choose to visit the company’s physical or virtual locations.

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The more abstract the subject you are trying to represent with the cooperation of DALL-E, the more difficult it is to obtain cooperation. That’s not surprising, because an AI bot doesn’t think. The featured image of this post is the best I was able to obtain after numerous instructions that were not understood.