[joshuamorton]

This gets back to what I said about comparative advantage. The monetary transfer is only bad if you assume the company can only gain if you lose and the situation is zero sum. If you using toothpaste is good for you, and good for the company, what's the issue?

To use a more current example: would Pfizer marketing in a way that intentionally appeals to anti-vax people be mind control to their detriment?

Taking a step back, there are at least (but really I think only) two reasons for an advertisement: to raise awareness or to convince. The first clearly isn't unethical. Saying "we exist" isn't really mind control, and results in a more informed consumer. I admit that most ads that appear to do that don't just do that, but an advertisement that simply points out that Colgate is a Toothpaste brand that you can buy Is ethical. Its exactly the same as putting your logo on your box (which is a form of advertisement!) and having your box at eye level on the shelf (which is also a form of advertisement!!).

The second type convinces people that one act may be better than another (our brand > their brand, or brushing > not). These can be ethical or not, but GP stated that, essentially, advertising is always going to be detrimental to the consumer, which implies that everyone is already acting in a globally optimal way. That seems immediately suspicious, does it not?

[ashtonbaker]

Thanks for expanding. I agree with your delineation between raising awareness or convincing, I think. I don't think it's the most helpful way to understand ads and their potential for harm. There's another way to categorize ads - maybe orthogonal - based on whether they are presented as part of an advertising network or not. There's a fundamental difference between showing a box on a shelf and buying ads on a billboard. Or perhaps the line should be drawn at targeted ads. It's of course possible to show benign "we exist" ads via Facebook ads, or political disinformation ads in a newspaper, but it seems to me that certain methods of advertising are obviously more conducive to harmful, manipulative ads.

Also (and this is more radical), I do think it's a legitimate to want to unsubscribe, even from "we exist" ads. Attention is valuable, it shouldn't be considered an inalienable right to sneak anything you want into my consciousness for the purposes of selling. Even if you accept that it's not a zero-sum game. I recognize that this is not the status quo at all currently, but it's the feeling behind comments like the above.