A ridiculous concept — the only people that win in that are the incumbent producers. “I make a better widget at a lower price than BigCorp” — yet nobody will e

A ridiculous concept — the only people that win in that are the incumbent producers. “I make a better widget at a lower price than BigCorp” — yet nobody will ever find out about it because advertising that fact would be illegal. Journalists would become supremely powerful and (more) supremely corrupt. Just like radio DJs in the 20th century determined what music sold (and were often bribed accordingly,) the same thing will happen for literally everything. Journalism would become even more like advertising but people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I don’t want the equivalent of radio DJs determining what products and services win. Many professional sports would disappear, Motorsports, soccer, many olympic sports would cease to exist at the highest level. The Olympics themselves would no longer be broadcast (who would pay for it?) Kid’s little league teams would lose local business sponsors. Everything would be pay-per-view assuming the economics worked at all. Newspapers would all shut down. TV stations would disappear. Radio would be limited to small amateur stations — if that because the moment the host mentions a product, service, song, they’d be sued (wrongly or rightly) for potentially advertising. New restaurants would never survive (how will anyone know you exist: Signage and logos are all advertising.) Basically it would be North Korea with people shopping for inferior state-produced goods at inferior state run supermarkets reading state-approved messages about the greatness of the Dear Leader and his progeny. Even word of mouth referrals would be subject to lawsuits “can you prove you didn’t get a free cookie in exchange for saying something to your friends about this bakery?” An absolutely dystopian nightmare. And if there were an advertising ban, you can bet politicians would exempt themselves from such a ban.