In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If youve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself is that its purpose? No its not. Its to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. Its pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.

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About Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky was a contemporary American linguist and activist. Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power

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