What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy itself. A thought experiment worth considering.

The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.

  • RowRowRowYourBotEnglish
    38·
    22 days ago

    And paying people to suggest they buy something off the guy who has more stuff than they can sell by word of mouth has been our way of efficiently distributing goods for thousands of years. It’s almost as if it is solving an actual dilemma.