@ what point does
persuasion become
coercion?
Not all advertising is guilty of so-called "coercion", & if one labels advertising coercion, then this more or less puts one in the same political correct position that many democrats stand for regarding the market (that advertising, & eventually the market, ought to be regulated or intervened).
I take a similar view towards advertising that I do towards competition: those who recognize advertising for what it is will be better able to resist supposed manipulative advertising.
If anything, I think the entire lack of exposure to the psychology of advertising (it can be argued that the lack of exposure to some amount of advertising and/or dialouge of advertising, i.e. censorship of the debate of advertising due to possible majoritarianism, can be equally harmful) makes people more receptive to advertising itself, & the same would go to a person trying to tackle calculus without the required knowledge of the mathematics that come before so (algebra, trigonometry, geometry, etc.).
It would not be fantastical to imagine citizens of a stateless society realizing the "pitfalls" of the market by addressing the concerns that people become prey to possible coercers.
If anything, I see the inherent lack of an arms race of knowledgeable consumers against advertisers, no thanks in part by interventionism (Statism) which is assumed to be "protecting" the consumer by the average citizen who endorses the State.
A similar thing has occurred regarding advertising, copyright patents, etc. on the internet with many proponents of open-source and/or the FSF, wherein the opponents to intellectual property must engage in continual intellectual arms race in order to stay one step ahead of regulators and/or closed-source proponents (the wikileaks admission of the ACTA treaty is a good example of this being effective).
I largely see this problem of "manipulative" advertising being sorted out by individuals realizing that they must equip themselves with the psychological equivalents of personal arms to protect themselves.
Of course, many idealists will despise the possibility that advertising psychology will become an integral part of one's education in a possible stateless society, but then again, it would probably be required regardless as more people would undoubtedly become entrepreneurs.
The line between consumer & producers would blur (prosumer, I believe is the term), until at some point, there is no clear distinction between consumers/prosumers/advertisers/ etc. & advertising is essentially liquidated to the individual level.
You can thank Google for helping to rev up the initial stages of this with AdSense, & individuals being capable of deriving revenue from something as benign as blogging.
You can thank Youtube (more generally, The Internet) for providing an early useful (even if it is susceptible the tragedy of the commons) preview at what happens when everyone can advertise themselves on a site that mimics television.
People that make their own productions are becoming prosumers & are helping others like them to advertise like products.
Roosterteeth.com,
cinemassacre.com, Renegade Studios (Star Trek: Of Gods & Men, the upcoming production of Anarchy In America) etc. are a few good examples of how fewer individuals, nowadays, can come together as entrepreneurs & become the new advertisers / content producers.
You can bet as the Internet develops (both with and around any sort of statist regulation), more methods of achieving ad revenue, & more evolved methods of advertising, will come about.
Per memetics, many of us have the advertising bug, in varying amounts, & do not even know it yet.
Advertising would kind of become a non-issue if almost everyone is engaging in some sort of entrepreneurship, which requires a knowledge of advertising (& subsequently, it's psychological effects), even if one is only possibly being an entrepreneur at the local levels.
Additionally, the decentralization of local & regional economies from the federal level (succession, panarchism, etc.) would make manipulative advertising less profitable, because at lesser levels of bureaucracy and/or oversight, more control is possible for the consumers / prosumers / regulators.
Of course, I favor & many others no regulation, no state, etc, but it can be demonstrated that even in a statist society, manipulative advertising & marketing can be reduced with voluntary, free-market actions of individuals.
The ultimate in de-centralization, to the point of the stateless society full of sovereign individuals, would make aforementioned not only self-regulated free-market action more effective, but also eventually deprive statist markets (red / pink markets) of economic activity, state subsidies for certain companies regarding advertising (the only manipulative advertising, imo, is state propaganda, such as Army commercials), & other anti free-market capitalists of the leverage regarding advertising.
In lesser words, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Advertising would eventually become a casual market occurrence that, per natural selection, competition, etc. "gets" those who who un-prepared for it, & "works" for those that are.
If we all became
Mad Men, there'd be no
Mad Men.
(FYI, this isn't a post praising the setting of the linked series as an ideal of some sort. It's a good show, however. )
*
linked terms forthcoming pending 2nd revision
