By Lance Winslow

What if advertising was illegal? What if it were taken away? What if our nations media charged for their content and news instead of delivering it free and collecting from advertisers? You might be surprised how close that came to be back in the olden days. Thomas Jefferson once said that all advertising was misrepresenting and lying. He indicated if it were not for the news in the papers the whole thing would be a lie?

Today it seems it is just the opposite, as the news is not truthful and full of misrepresentation but the advertising is under very harsh scrutiny with rules and regulations from the FTC. So many rules in fact that often they cannot even tell all the benefits of a product or service because someone may say that from their perspective that the commercial may not be true. This opens the company up for complaints to government agencies and even class action lawsuits.

But what if the government went further in their regulations and rules on advertising? If they made it any tighter then companies would not be able to advertise and then no one would buy anything, because they may not be informed that it was even available. Likewise the media outlets of radio, TV, newspapers and even websites and Internet Search Engines would have to charge the viewer or reader for information.

This means people who worked in these companies who were advertising, which sold things, would be laid off. Additionally our prices for news would go up. The jobs losses and lost sales in so many companies would mean that our economy would take a huge hit. The American Quality of Life would be severely reduced. Think on that.