Advertising is theft of our time and attention. (If Time and Attention are our superpowers, then advertising is Kryptonite.) We have become accustomed to accepting this theft without understanding the value taken from us. The threat was driven home for me recently on an expressway in the hills of Ohio. I was just a little tired from driving 8 hours when I crested the top of a hill and my attention was stolen to a brightly lit billboard for a fraction of a second. I didn't read the billboard because I also was watching the road and had to stop quickly to avoid hitting the stopped vehicles in front of me. If I had actually read one word of the advertisement, I would probably have crashed.

Whether we crash or not, the threat to our lives from advertising is always there. It is taking everyone's attention away from the crash of our lives. It takes parents' attention from their children's future. It takes money from our pockets and our infrastructure (advertising is tax-deductible for businesses, but it's not tax deductible for me to stand on a soap box to tell you that advertising is probably going to kill you for a nickel).

Add up all of the fear, risk and actual life stolen by advertisers just to get you to turn your head away from the road, and then maybe you can start to see how they can be so rich. Most rich people get that way from killing other people one way or another. We pay advertising to kill us and brainwash our children, and now, the advertisers are even using the threat of a dying planet to sell more ways to kill the planet.

As I pointed out to B. Kean recently, we won't buy guillotines because we wouldn't know where to buy them without the rich keeping their vicious heads.