The Cost of Effeciency

This is an interesting take of the economic debate: While capitalism has a visible cost – profit – that does not exist under socialism, socialism has an invisible cost – inefficiency – that gets weeded out by losses and bankruptcy under capitalism. The fact that most goods are more widely affordable in a capitalist economy implies that profit is less costly than inefficiency. Put differently, profit is a price paid for efficiency.--Sowell

There is a similar element in advertising. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn hated the commercial nature of the West. It seemed to be everywhere with ads and billboards and general commercial insincerity that seemed to him to compose the matrix of Western society. He hated the Russian state too but gave up the West partly because of its commercialism.
But advertising underwrites production from TV to hockey arenas to literary lectures. And, because it goes where the return is, it is exquisitely sensitive to demand, to what people want. It is NPR vs. the Kardashians. So, strangely, it is an agent of freedom, of choice.

Advertising, like profit, contains seeds of liberty. If you want to raise the bar for both profit and advertising, educate better.