Pam Peirce

You probably haven't thought about what you want nearly as hard as advertisers have thought about it. They have studied the statistics to decide if you are in the demographic that might be interested in what they sell, classified the type of consumer you represent, figured out where you might look to see advertising, and chosen the type of ad that would especially appeal to you. In the video cartoon Futurama, written by Mat t Groening, ads appear in dreams. The character who has woken up after being frozen for a thousand years objects. Other characters ask him "Didn't ads follow you around in your days? This is just an extension of the same principle." And yes, we are followed around by ads.
I once met a man whose business was to sell wholesale goods for a company that made stuff for babies. "Then," I said to him, "Your fortune is dependent on the birthrate."  "Yes, it is," he replied. His company probably didn't have enough clout to encourage people to have babies, but it would sure be in his interest to do so. Just as it was in the interest of cigarette companies to deny a link between cigarettes and lung cancer, or in the interest of oil and gas companies to scoff at wind farms or water-saving toilets (ours is a one-flush wonder, by the way) or in the interest of weapons manufacturers that there be wars.
Ads are more strident when the goods for sale are less needs than wants. We will get what we need if we can afford it, but to get what we don't need—special features, something that meets an emotional desire, something that lets us imagine ourselves rich or on the leading edge of innovation—that takes encouragement. It takes skillful ads, maybe a low price. Still, it has to meet a want—or seem to.

This is to be a blog about human desire. I will have much to say about our basic preferences as humans. (Secondarily, I will sometimes write about what some people want and others do not.) The topic of human preferences quickly involves the role of money in our lives and also involves the earth's environment, as it seems that individual choices have created a world economy that is damaging to that environment. The name is a reference to Freud's famous question: What do women want? (Answer: We are people.)

This is an introductory post, sort of a placeholder. By the end of January I will have added more posts to this  blog--check back then.