Yeah my post gives that impression, but I know that rationality is elusive: people are very suggestible. That's precisely why I think we ought to protect people from advertising.
I don't accept that business requires manipulative advertising. I don't want to get into the weeds of "what is advertising anyway?" or "if no one knows about your products, how can they buy them?", so let's just stipulate that there's "advertising" (i.e. what I describe above) and "manipulative advertising". People are entirely, obviously capable of buying things without a team of behavioral psychologists tricking them into it, and businesses are entirely capable of selling things without manipulating consumers into it.
The problem arises when companies are free to put resources into manipulative advertising; it's a classic race to the bottom. Company A spends $X on ads; Company B spends $X + $Y on ads. We quickly reach the status quo, except we spent $$$ on manipulating people into buying products instead of improving them, wasting tons of resources and probably causing people to spend money buying our stuff unwisely by preying on their hopes and insecurities. It is at least unfathomably wasteful, and maybe also evil.
(Also -- and this probably comes off as more hostile than I intend it to -- you don't know anything about me, if I work for a company, if I'm unemployed, if I work for a government, a university, etc. You can argue that modern business requires advertising without making assumptions like this).
I don't accept that business requires manipulative advertising. I don't want to get into the weeds of "what is advertising anyway?" or "if no one knows about your products, how can they buy them?", so let's just stipulate that there's "advertising" (i.e. what I describe above) and "manipulative advertising". People are entirely, obviously capable of buying things without a team of behavioral psychologists tricking them into it, and businesses are entirely capable of selling things without manipulating consumers into it.
The problem arises when companies are free to put resources into manipulative advertising; it's a classic race to the bottom. Company A spends $X on ads; Company B spends $X + $Y on ads. We quickly reach the status quo, except we spent $$$ on manipulating people into buying products instead of improving them, wasting tons of resources and probably causing people to spend money buying our stuff unwisely by preying on their hopes and insecurities. It is at least unfathomably wasteful, and maybe also evil.
(Also -- and this probably comes off as more hostile than I intend it to -- you don't know anything about me, if I work for a company, if I'm unemployed, if I work for a government, a university, etc. You can argue that modern business requires advertising without making assumptions like this).