Scholars’ Marketing

Since when has our love for marketing been affecting the world?

Just because we didn’t have a word for it, not to mention an industry, does not mean that it didn’t happen.

Why do we assume that all those rules that Seth taught us over the years have been working only in recent times?

What if Adam Smith was not the wisest at his time, but the one who marketed himself the best?

Robert L. Heilbroner on “The Worldly Philosophers” says: “There is a long line of observers before Smith who have approached his understanding of the world: Locke, Steuart, Mandeville, Petty, Cantillon, Turgot, not to mention Quesnay and Hume.” What if they had better ideas of what people should do, but didn’t have a good network, PR skills or luck? When you read Smith’s history, you realize that these things mattered enormously, besides his ideas, talent and devotion.

I like to say that marketing makes the irrational sound rational. This is (not so) bad when it comes to purchasing an expensive phone or car.

This is terrible when it comes to the historical repercussions of not choosing the real bests in history to guide civilization.

This is of course just a supposition, but it makes you wonder where we would be in a world without marketing.

I’m guessing there would have been an Obama long ago.