I could say the same of your comment. Maybe you should not have been allowed to post it.
> I have no idea why society puts up with it.
Think harder. The desire to allow owners of corporations some freedom in which to grow them? The desire to avoid unnecessary regulations? The lack of hard evidence that advertising actually causes significant harm? The individual's thought that someday they might benefit from being able to advertise their own goods or services? All of these are possible reasons why society puts up with it. I am truly surprised that you could manage to have "no idea" why. Actually, I suspect that you are lying and you do have an idea, you just claim to have no idea to emphasize your point.
> I bet most people (well the non-wingnuts at least) would say they are against government propaganda. And the government is supposedly for the people.
The point is that the government should not actually need propaganda if it is acting in the peoples' best interests. Through history most cases of government propaganda have been when the government is subverting its people's interests and lying to them about it.
> But they're OK with corporate propaganda.
Corporations typically can't force you to do anything at gunpoint. This is the main reason why they're allowed much more leeway than the government when carrying out their wishes. To be more explicit, it is precisely because the people wish to _keep_ the government on their own side that they try to limit its means to oppose their own best interest.
> Corporations by design and law exist to extract as much value in the form of money or labor as is possible from people.
I see this spouted a lot, but I also see that many, maybe most corporations do not do what you say. Actually, I can think of many laws that in manifold ways restrict corporations from doing what you claim the law and their "design" forces them to do. For example, there are labor laws, trade laws, environmental regulations, and securities laws, many of which prevent corporations from maximizing profit or labor extracted. Actually, with this realization, I think I can safely treat this claim as a bookend without any meaning save its rhetorical, knee-jerk inducing quality.
"The point is that the government should not actually need propaganda if it is acting in the peoples' best interests. Through history most cases of government propaganda have been when the government is subverting its people's interests and lying to them about it."
That's a very modern view. There was absolutely no shortage of propaganda in the US supporting World War II, especially to encourage the myriad things Americans could do to support the war effort (buy war bonds, enlist, pay taxes on time, in the case of women work outside the home so more men could enlist, avoid overconsumption and wasteful behavior). And no one reasonably considered helping America's military effectiveness in WWII to be against the people's interests.
Official Government Propaganda is missing from democratic societies not because democratic societies are that much more respectful of the people's interests, but because democratic societies aren't as often unified behind the same agenda. When there is something all parties substantively agree upon in a democratic society, like winning a war or curbing drug use, the government relentlessly propagandizes it. When it's something that parties disagree on, each party has its own propaganda.
I actually suspect there's more political propaganda in a democracy, just because the propagandists have to argue with each other.
I could say the same of your comment. Maybe you should not have been allowed to post it.
> I have no idea why society puts up with it.
Think harder. The desire to allow owners of corporations some freedom in which to grow them? The desire to avoid unnecessary regulations? The lack of hard evidence that advertising actually causes significant harm? The individual's thought that someday they might benefit from being able to advertise their own goods or services? All of these are possible reasons why society puts up with it. I am truly surprised that you could manage to have "no idea" why. Actually, I suspect that you are lying and you do have an idea, you just claim to have no idea to emphasize your point.
> I bet most people (well the non-wingnuts at least) would say they are against government propaganda. And the government is supposedly for the people.
The point is that the government should not actually need propaganda if it is acting in the peoples' best interests. Through history most cases of government propaganda have been when the government is subverting its people's interests and lying to them about it.
> But they're OK with corporate propaganda.
Corporations typically can't force you to do anything at gunpoint. This is the main reason why they're allowed much more leeway than the government when carrying out their wishes. To be more explicit, it is precisely because the people wish to _keep_ the government on their own side that they try to limit its means to oppose their own best interest.
> Corporations by design and law exist to extract as much value in the form of money or labor as is possible from people.
I see this spouted a lot, but I also see that many, maybe most corporations do not do what you say. Actually, I can think of many laws that in manifold ways restrict corporations from doing what you claim the law and their "design" forces them to do. For example, there are labor laws, trade laws, environmental regulations, and securities laws, many of which prevent corporations from maximizing profit or labor extracted. Actually, with this realization, I think I can safely treat this claim as a bookend without any meaning save its rhetorical, knee-jerk inducing quality.