{"id":255,"date":"2020-10-13T19:22:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=255"},"modified":"2020-10-13T19:22:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:22:22","slug":"mars25","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars25","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk&#8217;s Million-Person Mars Colony &#8211; Chapter 25"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Imagining Elon Musk&#8217;s Million-Person Mars Colony &#8211; The greatest thought experiment of all time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.marshallbrain.com\/\">Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"Chap25\"><strong>Chapter 25<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Will there be advertising on Mars?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When people think about the United States, one thing that certainly comes to mind is the advertising. Advertising is everywhere in the U.S. As one website puts it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;Advertising can utilize almost any form of media to meet its needs, including print, television, radio, cinema, outdoor, mobile and online. If there is a space where consumers are going to look at, advertisers will buy it up. The United States, in particular, is the largest advertising market in the world. China is to be the second leading market according to the ranking, yet its ad expenditures are estimated to represent less than half of the amount calculated for the U.S. &#8221; [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/272314\/advertising-spending-in-the-us\/\">ref<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Just think about all of the ads that Americans see in a typical day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>There are ads on television and cable television. [Even though customers have to pay a fee for the shows they watch on cable (fees that add up to $1,000+ per year for many cable subscribers), there are still ads on nearly all of the cable channels.]<\/li><li>There are ads on YouTube and Hulu videos.<\/li><li>When you are downtown, you can see ads on the sides of buses, inside the buses, and at the bus stops.<\/li><li>There is advertising in subway stations and inside of subway cars.<\/li><li>Every newspaper and magazine contains ads on nearly every page.<\/li><li>There are ads on the radio, sometimes approaching half of the listening time depending on the time of day.<\/li><li>As you drive down most major highways and city streets, there are billboards along the way.<\/li><li>There is spam in your email inbox, along with other forms of advertising.<\/li><li>Direct mail advertising arrives in your normal mailbox too.<\/li><li>When you go to the movie theater, there are ads before the show.<\/li><li>One of the most iconic American scenes is Times Square in New York, which is dominated by brightly lit ads.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But the place where ads are the most prevalent is on the Internet, which has become a sea of ads. I took this screen shot yesterday of a page I was reading on the Miami Herald Web site:<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/gif\/mars-miami-herald.jpg\" width=\"600\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After clearing the large pop-up ad that filled the screen at first, we can see an auto-play video ad in the upper right hand corner, with a Chevy ad below it, and a Sears ad at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What happens when we eliminate advertising?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About the only major site that remains ad-free is NetFlix:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;According to Netflix\u2019s own data, a subscriber watches Netflix for an average of 1.5 hours a day. That may seem high or low, depending on your own usage habits, but that\u2019s what it is, an average, which equates to about 45 hours a month. <\/p><p>Next, they took how many commercials are in an average hour of broadcast TV, which is about 15 minutes and thirty seconds worth of ads, meaning most hour-long programs are just about 44-45 minutes long.<\/p><p>A bit of simple multiplication and we get the figure that Netflix is saving us from watching 130 hours of commercials every year, on average, as opposed to live, broadcast TV.&#8221; [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/insertcoin\/2015\/08\/20\/netflix-saves-users-from-watching-130-hours-of-commercials-per-year\/#50b88285635b\">ref<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>130 hours represents 3.25 40-hour work weeks of time saved per year. It is like receiving 3.25 weeks of vacation time per year \u2013 an amazing amount of time saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Imagine if we lived in a world where all of the advertising has been eliminated. We can walk around, browse the Internet, etc. without the hundreds of advertisements bombarding us, and without hundreds of hours per year of our lives being wasted on advertising, with far fewer interruptions. We might use half as much Internet bandwidth as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What happens when ads are unleashed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not so long ago, advertising of prescriptions pharmaceuticals was illegal in the United states. Then ads became legal, as descirbed in this video:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Americans got stuck with endless drug ads\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_5jnn1AIt7Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The pharmaceutical industry is now spending approximately $6 billion per year on ads [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/233755\/leading-advertising-categories-in-the-us\/\">ref<\/a>]. Patients are the ones who pay for these ads, as the price of medicine is raised to cover the ad costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are these ads necessary? No. If you have a disease or condition that needs a prescription drug, your doctor is going to prescribe the best medicine automatically. The ads are a total waste of money and simply raise the cost of health care for everyone. This is why prescription drug advertising is illegal in every country on the planet except two (The United States and New Zealand) [<a href=\"http:\/\/articles.mercola.com\/sites\/articles\/archive\/2012\/07\/16\/drug-companies-ads-dangers.aspx\">ref<\/a>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you think about it, this is true of all forms of advertising \u2013 the ads increase the cost of products for no reason. Say you need a pair of athletic shoes. You go to a large athletic store, and there might be 200 different models on display. You can look at the shoes, pick the pair that is best for you and buy it. Ads are completely unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The thing that advertising does do is give a big advantage in the marketplace to large, established companies. They can afford to spend billions of dollars on ads, making it much more difficult for new, small, innovative companies to compete. Eliminating advertising across the board would create a much fairer playing field for everyone in the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How much does all of this advertising cost us?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Buying ad space and ad time is expensive. According to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/233755\/leading-advertising-categories-in-the-us\/\">this article<\/a>, &#8220;The entire ad market in the U.S. was estimated at 183 billion U.S. dollars in 2016.&#8221; There are approximately 120 million households in the U.S., so this works out to $1,525 per household. In other words, if there were no advertising, each household in America would be $1,525 richer on average because prices on all advertised products would fall substantially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We already saw this in Chapter 3 in terms of Nike:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Nike spends $3 billion on advertising in 2014.<\/li><li>Nike sells 365 million pairs of shoes.<\/li><li>Therefore the advertising cost baked into each pair of shoes is $8.21.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If Nike did not advertise, every pair of Nike shoes could be $8 cheaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Look at the cost of Bayer aspirin, which spends a huge amount of money on advertising, compared to generic aspirin, which contains exactly the same molecule but none of the advertising:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>When I look right now on Walmart&#8217;s site, a 500 count bottle of generic 325 mg aspirin pills is $3.64 [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.walmart.com\/ip\/Equate-Aspirin-Pain-Reliever-Fever-Reducer-Tablets-325-mg-500-ct\/10325057\">ref<\/a>].<\/li><li>Bayer aspirin is $14.24 for 200 pills [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.walmart.com\/ip\/Bayer-Aspirin-Pain-Reliever-325Mg-200-Tablets\/888206\">ref<\/a>].<\/li><li>Here is a 500 count bottle for $17.99 [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.walmart.com\/ip\/Genuine-Bayer-Aspirin-325mg-Tablet-500-Ct\/134045732\">ref<\/a>].<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These might seem like misprints, but as you look across the site, the cost difference between name-brand aspirin vs. generic is shocking. Primarily these cost differences are driven by advertising costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cars represent another area where a huge amount of money is spent on advertising. According to&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/the-35-companies-that-spent-1-billion-on-ads-in-2011-2012-11\">this article<\/a>, Honda spent $1.14 billion, Toyota spent $1.73 billion, Fiat-Chrysler spent $1.77 billion, Ford spent $2.14 billion and General Motors spent $3.1 billion in 2012. This is a total of $9 billion spent on advertising by these 5 companies. But Ford, for example, sold only about 2 million cars in 2012 [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodcarbadcar.net\/2013\/01\/2012-usa-auto-sales-brand-rankings.html\">ref<\/a>], so the price of each new car contained an average of $1,000 in advertising costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you think about it, all of this money spent on advertising is a total waste. We could radically lower to cost of goods sold in the U.S. economy by eliminating advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can we eliminate advertising? Of course. As mentioned above, it was illegal for prescrition drugs to be advertised in America until recently, and it is still illegal in most developed countries. Television and radio ads of cigarettes were made illegal in 1971 [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tobacco_advertising\">ref<\/a>]. Simply by eliminating advertising, the prices of every advertised product would fall dramatically, and there would be a level playing field for all competitors in the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What about the Mars colony? Let&#8217;s imagine that the Mars colony has 1 million residents and 4,000 restaurants serving these residents a wide variety of food every day. Is there any reason for these restaurants to waste human time on advertising? No. From the colony&#8217;s perspective, three things are going to be happening in the restaurant marketplace:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Restaurants that prove popular will be replicated to serve more people.<\/li><li>Restaurants that prove unpopular will be closed.<\/li><li>People will be inventing and opening new restaurants as the colony innovates. These new restaurants will succeed or fail based on word of mouth, social media posts, etc.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only is the time and money wasted on advertising in America unnecessary, but everyone on Mars will be better off without advertising in several important ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars26.htm#Chap26\">> > > Go to Chapter 26<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mars Colony Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars-preface#Preface\">Preface<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap1\">Chapter 1<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Elon Musk Makes His Big Announcement about the Mars Colony<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap2\">Chapter 2<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; The Many Thought Experiments that Mars Inspires<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap3\">Chapter 3<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Why Do We Need a New Socio-Economic-Political System on Mars?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap4\">Chapter 4<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Imagining a New and Much Better Socio-Economic-Political System for the Mars Colony<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap5\">Chapter 5<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What Happens When We Add a Massive Amount of Farm Automation to the Mars Colony?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars#Chap6\">Chapter 6<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How Will the Mars Colony Produce its Clothing?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars7#Chap7\">Chapter 7<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How Will Housing Work for the Mars Colony?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars8#Chap8\">Chapter 8<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How Will the Mars Colonists Construct Their Housing?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars9#Chap9\">Chapter 9<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How do we provide other services like water, sanitation, police force, fire department, health care, etc. for the Mars Colony?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars10#Chap10\">Chapter 10<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What might a typical &#8220;work week&#8221; look like on Mars? Who gets a free ride on Mars? Who will do the undesirable jobs on Mars?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars11#Chap11\">Chapter 11<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What do we do with lazy people on Mars? What do we do with the assholes?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars12#Chap12\">Chapter 12<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How would insurance work on Mars? Yes, insurance&#8230;<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars13#Chap13\">Chapter 13<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How will we make chips on Mars? Pharmaceuticals? Medical devices? &#8220;Stuff&#8221;? Will Mars be an actual backup plan for humanity?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars14#Chap14\">Chapter 14<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What Will the Transportation System on Mars Look Like for Mars Colonists?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars15#Chap15\">Chapter 15<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What will the political system look like? How will it be organized?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars16#Chap16\">Chapter 16<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Building Experimental Cities on Earth Today to Find the Optimal Configuration for the Mars Colony<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars17#Chap17\">Chapter 17<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How can we apply the Mars colony&#8217;s principles to the billions of refugees and impoverished people on planet Earth today?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars18#Chap18\">Chapter 18<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How will entertainment work on Mars? What types of entertainment will be available for Mars colonists?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars19#Chap19\">Chapter 19<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How will children work on Mars? Who gets to have children? What is the colony&#8217;s stance toward children?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars20#Chap20\">Chapter 20<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Starting the process of building experimental Mars colonies on Earth \u2013 Mars Colony Simulation 1000A<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars21#Chap21\">Chapter 21<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Can the economic system proposed for the Mars colony significantly improve the Welfare situation in the United States?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars22#Chap22\">Chapter 22<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How much land will the Mars colony need?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars23#Chap23\">Chapter 23<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Thought Experiment: What If Everyone Makes the Same Wage?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars24#Chap24\">Chapter 24<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; How Will Innovation Work on Mars?<\/li><li><a href=\"httsp:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars25#Chap25\">Chapter 25<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; Will there be advertising on Mars?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars26#Chap26\">Chapter 26<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; What should be the ultimate goal of the Mars colony?<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars-restaurant-floor-plans\">Appendix A<\/a> &#8211; Restaurants<\/li><li>Interviews with Marshall Brain on the Mars Colony:<ul><li>Inside the Rift,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidetherift.net\/business-technology\/2017\/10\/19\/the-second-intelligent-species-marshall-brain-on-jobs-mars-and-technology\">The Second Intelligent Species: Marshall Brain on Jobs, Mars, and Technology<\/a><\/li><li>&#8220;Stuff They Don&#8217;t Want You to Know&#8221; Podcast,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.stufftheydontwantyoutoknow.com\/podcasts\/moving-to-mars.htm\">Moving to Mars with Marshall Brain<\/a><\/li><li>&#8220;The State of Entrepreneurship&#8221; Podcast,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NCStateEI\/videos\/1590821230975861\/\">Entrepreneurship and Mars<\/a><\/li><li>Institute for Emerging Issues, First in Future Podcast,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/iei.ncsu.edu\/tag\/marshall-brain\/\">Parts 1 and 2<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>See also:<ul><li>Links about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/MuskMarsColony\/\">The Elon Musk Mars Colony<\/a><\/li><li>Links about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/ConcentrationOfWealth\/\">The Concentration of Wealth<\/a><\/li><li>Links about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/2ndIntelligentSpecies\/\">Robot advances and the second intelligent species<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>[Feedback and suggestions on any part of this book are greatly appreciated. Contact information is&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/#contact\">here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagining Elon Musk&#8217;s Million-Person Mars Colony &#8211; The greatest thought experiment of all time by\u00a0Marshall Brain Chapter 25 Will there be advertising on Mars? When people think about the United States, one thing that certainly comes to mind is the advertising. Advertising is everywhere in the U.S. As one website puts it: &#8220;Advertising can utilize &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars25\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Imagining Elon Musk&#8217;s Million-Person Mars Colony &#8211; Chapter 25<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-255","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}