Readit NewsYes, many people lived and died in an era when there was no time for economic activity beyond extracting dinner from local fauna or the land. The process by which they first learned about and acquired farm implements, giving them the time to do other things, is called advertising.
Just because an item doesn't prevent one from starving or freezing to death does not mean it is an "artificially inseminated need".
Sure, GDP might drop 10% in the short-term if all advertising was banished. Who knows. What I do know is that people won't stop wanting things that make their life better, and in general will continue to buy such things.
Advertising is not what keeps us from a peasant lifestyle.
This is nonsensical.
You can only buy something if you know that it exists for sale and where.
The process by which you acquire this information is, by definition, advertising.
I am not giving them the internet too!
They can take their unwritten pact and starve.
The worst offenders however, are the ones that require a payment to use, and still completely overwhelm you with the ads (Public transport in my case). I do subscribe to some services where the subscription removes ads, and I gladly pay for mobile applications that offer a reasonable (<10$) cost to ad-free experience. However, I have observed the overwhelming majority of content to be completely worthless, and I do not lose anything by not coming back.
Approximately the only people who can bash advertising without hypocrisy are subsistence farmers. The rest of us are paid to satisfy artificially inseminated needs. Perhaps our specific industries and employers use classier, higher-quality, and more subtle forms of advertisement, but in a truly ad-free world, we'd not spend money on anything but staying fed, warm, and reproductive.
If you feel (as I do) that they haven't sufficiently adapted to the current era, why do you think any other open protocol would be able to change more easily?
Over in technology, we're rapidly marching towards cheap household-scale solar panels and batteries, commodity autonomous driving technology, and cheap electric cars. Elon Musk's satellite constellation will deliver decent internet service regardless of the population density/economics needed to support fibre buildout. Telepresence is already good and keeps getting better.
The society coming down the line is one made of energy-independent prefab houses with no particular constraints on location (so they'll go to where land is cheapest), drastically improved freeway throughput (autonomous cars can pack much more densely), and car interiors not much different from small apartments (you'll be able to eat, sleep, and work while the computer drives).
So, as it gets easier to live farther from work, the economic incentives for everyone to cluster into a few square miles will diminish greatly.
1) My friend has one
2) I saw one at a party or work function
3) I was at the store a while back, browsing around (of my own volition), and learned about them
I could go on, but you get the idea. There are very many ways to learn about new things other than overt advertising. If we are being lenient, it's actually not too different from asking "how does culture spread and evolve?" Humans have been doing this stuff for thousands of years.
To address the second half of your post, I do agree 100% that it's impossible and unreasonable to draw a really hard line against all advertising. But I think we can certainly do way, way better than we do now.
Having your product out in the world with a brand name on it is a form of advertising, and it works really well because people don't recognize it as such.
Some people do recognize it, which is why they'll do stuff like de-badge their cars, to avoid being an agent of the "my friend has one" or "I saw one" form of advertising. My grandparents found this terrifyingly insidious and tried to be cognizant of and reject it whenever possible. Now we all wear logos without a second thought.
>3) I was at the store a while back, browsing around (of my own volition), and learned about them
Manufacturers jockey with retailers for prominent shelf space (or shelf space at all) as part of their advertising efforts.
Similarly, a storefront with signage in a heavily (foot) trafficked area is one of the most expensive (per impression) ad placements that money can buy.