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.

  • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    6 hours ago

    But who in the modern political system wants to go head-to-head with multinational corporations

    Very few people currently in the modern political system could or would be willing to take them on, true. But we have 2026 to start filling the next House and a third of the Senate with people who would be up to the challenge. We need to primary strong candidates and we need to platform third-party candidates wherever they can actually win.

    To those who say “there will be no more elections” - yes, that’s what they wanted, but what they have actually done was dismantle the government and set the US careening towards economic collapse. With Trump’s brain failing and his administration making idiotic mistakes left and right, we shouldn’t assume they’re going to get everything they wanted exactly how they wanted it.

    These are unprecedented times, but the 1930s were unprecedented times too.

    Progressive government by its very terms must be a living and growing thing, that the battle for it is never-ending and that if we let up for one single moment or one single year, not merely do we stand still but we fall back in the march of civilization.

    Then-governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 1930

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 hours ago

      FDR also came into the presidency after a devastating economical collapse which we are just one ecological disaster away from experiencing.