Cost of radio advertising?

If advertising were banned, so people shopped for things only when they decided they wanted it, would society be better or worse off? Yes, i know TV, magazines, and radio and the internet would cost a lot more. But companies could lower prices too.

• Answer:

  If that happened the economy would fail, there would be runs on banks, banks would default and fail, the housing market would collapse due to folk not needing more space to store more useless junk, Oil would sky rocket since people would spend less time on the road to and from stores/shops to buy more things. Thankfully none of these things are taking place today (he says sarcastically) so we need to be truly thankful for our consumer based way of life. Actually either way it falls spells DOOM for the economy. Presently we are a society of consumers, targeted and advertised to consume more because our economy is based on perpetual growth. Perpetual growth is unsustainable, thus we are heading into the economic crunch (depression really). Banning of advertisement and unbridled consumerism should have taken place a few decades ago in order to steer our economy to a sustainable 'balanced' system that does not require everyone to spend more and more money buying more and more crap to generate more and more jobs to generate more and more money so everyone can spend more.....