The core competence in politics is...
Political decision-making part 5
Selling is and always has been the core competence that a person needs to secure his place in his social environment. It is not always just about products or services, but also about political content, attitudes and values.
People sell themselves, for example, when they look for a partner to start a family. He sells himself when he courts friendships. He sells his opinion, his world view, when he discusses and enters into relationships with other people. And he sells his time and his labor, either to an entrepreneur or to a system more or less of his own choosing.
No matter what one is good at: Composing the best music in the world, forging the most precise crankshafts in the universe, or mastering the most delicate operations on the human brain. Nothing spreads and sells on its own - not even the best political idea or the most just social concept in the world.
The widespread idea that what is good will prevail on its own is a beautiful illusion. It often fails already because of the developing awareness. Even or especially in times of the Internet, our attention budget is severely limited. Of course, you can always find examples of how products and ideas spread as if by themselves at breakneck speed. But these are the exceptions not the rule. We don't hear about all those that don't make it, due to the system.
In the Western world, selling has often come to epitomize the capitalist system. This is primarily thought of as shopping, excessive consumption, which makes many people appear reckless and selfish. The so-called capitalists themselves make their profits by selling, which they have to constantly increase under penalty of their own downfall.
Selling therefore means survival in the Darwinian sense. Competition between companies, between states and also between social systems is nowadays decided less by producers and more by "sellers".
We see, for example, in the consumer market that not everything that is produced sells. More than 90 percent of all newly introduced products do not survive the first two years. Because they find too few buyers. Whether this is due to the product itself, the communication, the price, the zeitgeist or all of the above is almost impossible to analyze, even in retrospect. We usually do it, however, and find a cause that our brain evaluates as plausible. Because our brain is "Darwinized" to simplification and energy-saving mode.
That's why we like to buy brands. Brand communication is the superlative of simplification because it summarizes complex mixtures in a simple way.
OPPOSITION? Click here