Marketing is anti- free market. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and I’ve found only one other guy that has willed to write about this subject online. Here is a portion of his rant:

“A capitalist system consists of a producer and an INFORMED consumer. As I said before, advertisements are increasingly informing less and marketing image more. This allows companies to maintain a monopoly of image contrary to the blindness of market forces. What do I suggest to remedy the situation? Do as they do for drug advertisements in Australia, set up a governemnt advisary board to regulate advertisements to limit them to purely or at least primarily substance based. This would not only create a more informed consumer, but it would get rid of all those bullshit, “buy this kitty litter cause it’ll get you laid” commercials. And that’s good for everyone.” LINK

What’s happening is consumer rights are being violated due to the forces of marketing and its presence in public spaces. I don’t mind advertisements on private property (example: storefront signs advertising low prices), but things like billboards and commercials are invasive and create artificial demand, just like the Federal Reserve creates artificially low interest rates. Both are anti-free market. Anti-saving. Pro-consumption. Pro-spending.