>>13020128>>13020090So you are saying that social norms, advertising, marketing, PR firms, etc have literally no impact on the way people think or act, or on what is considered popular? That's simply false, and it contradicts the entire field of psychology and everything we know about human behavior and preferences. Marketing, advertising, PR, etc. has a dramatic impact on the way we view things. More generally, our social environment and the narratives and ideas that are present, both amongst the general public, and within pop-culture, exert a huge influence on the way we think. Modern advertising and marketing is basically a sub-field of psychology.
It's meaningless to speak of a "free market of ideas" in a context where multinational corporations and the government, literally spend billions of dollars a year on marketing and behavioral economics research, in order to better manipulate the general public without their knowledge or consent. There are entire firms and industries dedicate to behavioral economics and applying psychology and cognitive science to manipulate public opinion. These companies employ teams of PhDs from schools like Stanford and MIT, and they have already spent decades conducting such research, and they will continue to do so indefinitely. Most people probably haven't even heard of behavioral economics, so the public has no agency or say on these matters.
