Advertising must work, otherwise why would companies pay fortunes to seduce us to buy their products and services? And yet, why does it work? Doesn’t the very success of advertising imply that most consumers are reliably suggestible?

If you need something, it is easier than ever to find it for sale somewhere. Apart from transactions online, many stores and suppliers post their catalogues online. But that’s just useful information for the shopper, not a sales pitch. The purpose of advertising is to get you to want something that you are not already looking for, or to convince you that you need something that you don’t already want—and probably will never need. There is a difference between informing people and influencing them. And there is a difference between those who know what they need and those who don’t. Sadly, advertising works best on the latter, which must include a lot of people to merit the billions spent on it.

The internet began as a distributed military network, for the strategic advantages of decentralization. When first made available to the public, it was exciting as an unfettered universal show-and-tell. Few foresaw its inevitable commercialization or that it would ironically become highly centralized, dominated by a handful of giant corporations, and choked to uselessness with distracting ads.

Invasion of privacy through “data harvesting” is a hot topic. Apart from outright identity theft, the data are traces of your online searches and activities, including your physical location and movements, who you contact, etc. In the West, these are mostly used to tailor online ads to your shopping habits—that is, to provide the advertising to which you are most susceptible as a consumer. So far, the motive is profit more than political control. In a society that revolves around the market place, however, these are hardly distinguishable.

With good reason, perhaps, we blame corporations for nearly everything wrong in the world today. Certainly, they have led the directions of technology‚ which we eagerly follow. Without the consumer (you and me, brothers and sisters!), none of that could take place. The silent partners of corporations are the people who buy their products and services—whether we need them or not. The shareholders of corporations are everyone who has a pension or portfolio. In short, most of us.

The other side of corporatism is consumerism. The other side of tracking and selling data is making those tracks in the first place. Those who don’t want to be traced should leave no traces. Those who resent their “data” having commercial value should rethink their shopping habits. Consume not, lest ye be consumed!

Easier preached than done, of course. Except through “market response,” after the fact, we are not consulted about what products should exist or what new technology is really useful. We did not design, and do not control, the world’s system of production and distribution. And yet it has come into being at every stage through our consent and participation. In our free-market society, not even governments organize how and which things are produced. This is left to “free enterprise”—in other words, to relentless efforts to make a buck by pushing whatever can be sold to gullible consumers. The bottom line is making money, not making truly useful things or making a society that works. The consumer is the silent partner of this dance of avarice: they lead, we follow.

On one side are labour unions, corporate cartels on the other. Not yet do we have a union of consumers capable of striking and lobbying effectively. Not yet is there the will to take charge of the “free” economy. The internet was free. Now there is a price on your head.