Noam Chomsky | Talks at Google
Any of you who’ve taken an economics course know that… the marvels of the market that we’re supposed to admire and worship are because the market is based on informed consumers making rational choices… Turn on your television set. Do you see efforts by corporations to create… informed consumers making rational choices? Is that what you see when you see an ad for cars? If we had a market system… when General Motors is advertising a car, what you would see is a list of the characteristics of the car, along with a report by Consumer Reports saying what’s wrong with it and so on… But you don’t see that.
“Huge amounts of capital are expended every year to try to undermine markets… by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices; and driving them to consumerism…
“That’s what ought to be taught in economics courses: massive efforts by the business community to undermine markets.”