Galbraith's Essay: Is Advertising Is Imoral?

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In this essay I will be looking at Levitt’s argument that advertising is enriching and look at how people might argue that advertising is in fact immoral rather than enriching. I will be agreeing with the fact that advertising is enriching and makes our lives better to an extent and disagree with the thinking that advertising an industry is immoral. John Kenneth Galbraith argues that advertising is immoral simply because it creates urgent desires that we want to satisfy but are actually not worth satisfying, he goes on to say that the only desires that are worth satisfying are those self-originating within us. If we analyze Galbraith’s argument, we can quickly see and spot flaws within the argument. Firstly the argument is highly dependent on “self-originating desires”, he describes those desires as those that are naturally within us, desires that are not taught. He says those are the only desires worth satisfying. Hayeth is quick to point out that that are a lot of desires that are worth satisfying but are not self-originating. If you thing of…show more content…
I’ve looked at Galbraith’s arguments that he used to come to the conclusion that advertising is immoral and I argued using examples why I think his arguments have flaws and why I disagree with him. I went on to look at Arrington’s arguments where he does not really say whether advertising is wrong or right but basically says that we do not have a good way of deciding that in which I agree with him, I analyzed his arguments and gave examples to show why I agree with him. I then went on to Levitt who says life is dull and boring and we need adverts to enrich our lives and subsequently take the dullness away. I also gave examples as to why I agree with that adverts are in fact enriching because we get to imagine ourselves living different lives that we are currently living and get to know more about

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