And why not? This may sound like a utopia, but there’s nothing fundamentally impossible about it.
Advertising is not even necessary for a capitalist society to function. In fact, it opposes its main principle of free competition. Most modern countries have laws to protect free competition, but for some reason novody cares about the blatant unfairness of advertising: if a company has a lot of money to spend on ads, they can sell a lot and grow bigger, whatever crap they sell; if a company can’t afford ads, then are doomed no matter how good their product is.
But the main argument for abolishing advertising is even more obvious: advertising is pure manipulation. It targets people’s weaknesses to coerce them into coughing up money for something they don’t really need or want. It’s litteraly an “intentional deception to secure unfair gain”, the definition of a fraud.
Additionally, advertising targets especially the most vulnerable: the youngest, the oldest, the least educated and the poorest. It certainly causes serious harm to people psychologically, financially, and in various other ways (overconsumption, pollution, …). If it was possible to directly link advertising to its real consequences, the advertising business would rightfully be considered as criminals.
Advertising is still permitted simply because of the usual laissez-faire attitude of our governments, but also because of the assumption of unlimited growth: in a world where wealth is supposed to keep increasing forever, there’s no reason to even think about preventing the excesses of agressive business. If anything, immoral business is still business, and why complain as long as it contributes to a few GDP points?
Let’s dream about it for a minute: no more ad-funded media, no more junk news sources, no more social media influencers, no more ad-funded social media or search engines, etc. A society without ads is a healthier, fairer and more honest society.
Slavery was considered by many as something natural and unavoidable, until it was finally seen for what it is: the cruel commoditization of human bodies. Nowadays advertising seems natural and unavoidable to everybody, even though it’s nothing more than the commoditization of people’s minds.