[fwdpropaganda]

> (...) why governments let advertising become such a big business (...)

> Nowadays advertising mainly tries to sell things that people don't need. (...)

Free market fundamentalists (I'm not one of them) would tell you that no one can judge better than the individual themselves what they need or don't need, and that if an individual says they're willing to part with their money to buy X, then that's them saying they actually need it.

Even though I don't buy this view because the world is more complicated than the binary cause-attribution that it implies, I do think it brings up the question of who decides who needs what. If I believe Axe deodorant will get me "the hottest babes" and I decide really need it, would you have the government override my decision?