Steve_Rayhawk comments on Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms - Less Wrong
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Another way to think about this might be to ask which is cheaper:
At least in the short run, the government may be a natural monopolist here.
(In a longer run, the culture might change.
Advertising, and manipulations of symbols like the American flag, seem much less effective on today's Americans than on Americans of a hundred years ago. But are the differences a gain or a loss? Are our thoughts richer from improvement in collective epistemology, now that advertisers (and politicians) have exploited our irrationalities and removed some of them? Or are we experiencing extra overhead at the margin of bounded rationality, and it's just that the higher costs from more effort (and more learned jadedness) pass beneath our moral notice because they are part of the background, just like so many dust specks in the eye?
When I try to think about arguments about advertising regulation, it feels like a game of "accusation-of-rent-seeking tennis" between consumers and advertisers: "You think that any exploitation is okay, as long as it wouldn't take infinite computing power to avoid!" "You are making the insane demand to be freed from needing to think!")
I'm not an economist, but pages 32-33 of David D. Friedman's "Law's Order", about the social burden from pickpocket training and anti-pickpocket precautions, seem related.