Is Advertising Morally Justifiable?

A pox upon the editor who gave this piece such a poor title. This is an economic critique of advertising, it is notably dispassionate, and in fact carefully contains precisely zero moralizing whatsoever.

Section 3, How economists defend advertising and why it isn't enough is interesting. For a while, I had casual access to economics academics. When I asked how economists treated advertising, they either looked baffled, or said it basically didn't matter.

Betteridge's law of headlines.