The Mustache of Understanding Discovers

That too much advertising might be a bad thing.

This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

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Seen in isolation, these commercial encroachments seem innocuous enough. But Sandel sees them as signs of a bad trend: “Over the last three decades,” he states, “we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. A market economy is a tool — a valuable and effective tool — for organizing productive activity. But a ‘market society’ is a place where everything is up for sale. It is a way of life where market values govern every sphere of life.”
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Why worry about this trend? Because, Sandel argues, market values are crowding out civic practices. When public schools are plastered with commercial advertising, they teach students to be consumers rather than citizens. When we outsource war to private military contractors, and when we have separate, shorter lines for airport security for those who can afford them, the result is that the affluent and those of modest means live increasingly separate lives, and the class-mixing institutions and public spaces that forge a sense of common experience and shared citizenship get eroded.
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Actually, nothing erodes my sense of shared citizenship faster than seeing tubeworms in Very Pominent Positions at the New York Times.

As I have recommended before, if you want to read much, much better writing on the perils of advertising, go pick up a copy "The Space Merchants":

In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold all political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. However, the most basic elements are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel. 

For the record,  "The Space Merchants" was first published in 1952.

Or, as the Mustache of Understanding reckons time, 120 Friedman Units ago.