[zjqhwxhr] Consumer education via competitor advertising

Americans spend too much, everyone becoming horrendously in debt. One possible cause of the problem is the effectiveness of advertising, inciting us to buy, buy, buy. We rarely see information urging us not to buy a product, telling us what is bad about it. One normally needs to search long and hard to find such information, a review by a consumer report, for example.

However, in this capitalist world, it ought to be a lot easier to find criticism of a product you are considering buying: simply look to a competitor, for whom it is in their best interests to attack their competition with negative advertising. However, we rarely see this. Why?

One reason might be because of fear of lawsuits from the competitor. The legal cost of fighting such a lawsuit (even if the negative advertising is permitted by the freedom of speech) might outweigh the gains from the negative advertising. If so, in the best interest of consumers, we are in need of laws that make it more difficult for one producer to successfully sue another producer for disparaging their product.

A competitor is often in a uniquely qualified position to criticize their competition. For example, consider cell phones, and the problem of discovering a reliable, well-designed cell phone that won't break after a year. A third-party consumer report can only (easily) rely on consumer surveys of the product, statistically measuring their defectiveness rate. This may take months, if not years, and by that time, the cell phone in question is obsolete. However, a competitor cell phone manufacturer, by virtue of being a manufacturer, is (probably) an expert in cell phone manufacturing, and can disassemble the competitor's cell phone, examine its parts, materials, design, and other manufacturing details to determine the robustness of the phone.

Another reason we see little criticism between producers might be some sort of game-theoretic cooperation between competitors. If two competitors criticize each other's products, the consumer buys neither, and both producers lose. Ultimately, this will lessen the consumer's tendency to end up in debt, which might be a desirable outcome.